--around the bend--
you're an angel when you sleep
how i want your soul to keep
on and on around the bend
-Pearl Jam
Bender is alone for a very long time before he notices someone is watching him.
He has a bottle in his hand--the pinks of his fingertips poking out through matted gloves--and a joint between his fingers, alternating them between his mouth without really noticing which one he chose. His hair is very stiff, very shiny. Mostly covered by a hat, so it's hard to tell, unless you've seen it before.
Ever since ever since ever since he thinks, for no reason he can find. The mantra had been chanting in his head for so, so long he stopped trying to understand what it meant, and just let it lull him in and out of consciousness. His lungs ache from the smoke pouring out from the chimney above him, and in the building he leans against country-western glides around his head like a (damnit) mosquito (damnit damnit)
She watches him, and continues to when his eyes fall on her and stay there.
She's at a distance, across the sidewalk he sits on, her back facing a storefront he can't read the name of. For a moment, he knows who she is, he sees what she was; darkdarkdark hair falling in a palepalepale face, black parka with a frizzed-up hood and doc martins shining in the bleak Chicago light like broken glass dipped in paint. Her lips are pink, and her cheeks are flushed from the stifling cold. Her hands are in her pockets.
A belly pops from the parka, round and covered by floral-print fabric.
He sees her, and he knows, and he doesn't care.
A melody hums in his throat, but doesn't make it to his lips like it used to. Just sits there, cementing. Fucking lazy.
He knows the song, but it isn't until he gets to the second chorus that he knows what it is.
Help! I need somebody Help! Not just anybody...
Since when does he listen to the Beatles?
She's walking across the street now, and Bender thinks she might just be going to the store three fronts down, with books and shit, but no. Just keeps coming straight and straight and straight and then she's there, her feet beside his, her neck craned down on him like a kindly vulture wondering if the meat on his bones is spoiled. Or maybe he's just seeing things.
"Hi," came her voice. Not a squeek or a dead-pan or a burst of nonsesencal mutterings, but a clear, determined but sympathetic voice.
He saw that she maintained Claire's fashion sense, under the parka and the hair and the swollen belly. Her lips glistened with either spit or gloss.
"Bender?" she said quietly. "Hey, it's me. You remember me?"
He did remember her.
Help! I need someone...
"Hey-lo," he drawled, tapping the tip of the bottle against the sidewalk. His face felt frozen.
She bit her lip, as though deciding what to say next. "Are you okay?"
The laugh came suddenly, and without warning. He found no humor in it, he wasn't amused. He was just laughing at nothing and laughing at everything at the same time.
"Do you like the Beatles?" he asked, the dry smile still a ghost on his lips.
She laughed, too, only a little, quietly. "Are you smoking?"
He lifted his joint to her half-heart idly. "Want some?"
She patted her stomach by way of answer.
Bender wondered, for no reason at all, if he had ever gotten a girl pregnant.
"How's...jock boy?" He couldn't remember his name.
She pursed her lips, as though the name bothered her, but nodded. "Fine. He's fine. Dislocated his shoulder a few years ago. Lost his scholorship."
He felt a tang of pity, even though he had no right to be pitying anyone. "Sucks."
She nodded and looked around, as though expecting someone to come and arrest her any minute. "Should you be doing that out here?"
He asked her why she was here.
She said something like, "just dropping by" and he told her to go away.
"Do you want something to eat?"
He was very, very hungry but also very, very unpleasant and said no, he didn't want anything to eat and please, go fuck yourself.
She remained impassive, and told him that Claire asked how he were doing, and she didn't know what to say. "She misses you," she said.
"'r you still talking to her?" He pulled his collar higher up on his neck, and for a moment the bare ends of his fingers brushed the cold point of a diamond stud embedded in his earlobe.
She said yes, she was, and that Bender was being a dick.
The sun was setting, and already people were stumbling around the streets smelling like booze and drugs.
"Life sucks, doesn't it?" he commented.
She looked like her face was being flushed down he toilet. "Is that your excuse?"
He took another drag from the empty bottle and raised the joint to his lips without breathing in, "Mmhm."
She shifted on her heels, paused, and dropped a roll of fives into his lap, as thick as Bender's fist and frayed at the edges, like she had been rolling them in her palm for hours.
With that, the damn basket case stomped off around the bend with the hint of tears in her eyes, and Bender fell asleep on the sidewalk with the smell of old money and dying smoke in his nose.
A/N This turned out way different then what I intended, so if the lyrics at the top seem irrelevant, sorry.