Aquamarine paint chips stick to the back of his shirt when Remy tucks himself against the wall, steals a second to pull the slide on the pistol and check the chamber.
"You got one shot, LeBeau!" Through the gaping doorway, the living room is a wreck. The dining table is up-ended and sitting on its white lacy cloth, and there behind it is Pietro, taking cover. He's been keeping track of the shots fired in his direction. "Peek your head out!" He taunts, lining up his shot. "Let's see how fast you really are."
It's hard to hear over the whir of the half dozen fans warring with hundred degree summer temps. Remy grits his teeth, follows the crisscrossing cords along the wood floor to the far side of the bed and Anna's red and white striped stocking clothed toes. She's sitting with her back to the en suite bathroom door, glaring daggers at him through her smeared mascara. Her ponytail is sticking to the shoulder she's clutching, the tips of her curls are turning liquid red.
Remy exhales hard, flexes his fingers on the grip of the gun, and catches out of the corner of his eye Anna wrinkling her nose, twisting her lips, screaming NO as loud as she can when she's trying to keep dead silent.
Really? For one golden moment, Remy plays at being frustrated by the restraint imposed upon him by her blessed, good heart. Then, he swallows and yells out, "get outta hea! Nobody gotta die for this." The sound goes, and he feels it give him away.
Pietro squeezes the trigger, fires through that wall. An animal noise follows. Remy yanks himself away from the doorway, hisses about the rust color staining his blue jeans, and catches the corner bookshelf with his left hand, and arm, and everything to keep from falling on his ass.
He doesn't look in Anna's direction this time. Remy checks the window instead. The black frame of the fire escape is wet from a sun shower. Four stories down, alley cats scatter through firecracker wrappers. And somewhere, way out there, cops are telling the dispatcher they're on their way. He's convinced they won't get here in time.
Her compact is on the torn up dresser to his right. He'd recognize that ugly plastic turquoise disc anywhere. Remy dumps the puff ball on the floor, kind of hopes it gets sucked into one of the fans, and crouches, crawls back to the bullet hole under the light switch. He figures if he does it just right, he can tilt the mirror around the doorjamb and get a bead on Pietro without drawing attention. Not how it goes. The sun smacks into Remy's palm and lights him up like a firefly.
Probably would've lost that hand if there was anybody in that mirror. As it is, the table is lying face down and the living room is empty. The old green front door is still swinging a little. Remy makes certain the kitchen is clear, grabs the phone from out of the sink on his way back to the bedroom.
Anna's composure is just starting to crack. Was, anyway. She wipes her face with the back of her right hand and is looking fierce again by the time Remy gets on his knees. "Ya tough, chere," he tells her, quiet like, and forgets the phone.
All she's got to say about it is, "shame I gotta be."
And ain't that the truth.
Autumn gets grey-green in this kind of weather. So does the street food. Remy figures Anna ought to be sprawled out in front of a 60" TV in a penthouse suite, nibbling raisins and sucking on peppermint candies. Instead, she's running around with him and picking at a hotdog wrapped in a paper with a picture of a chihuahua on it. C'est la vie, or something like that.
"You know, Kit told me Pete's flyin' in for Thanksgiving." Anna's pressing fingers on her lips one at a time. The orange spice food grease looks pretty good against that warm red shade of lipstick. "Might end up goin' to that reunion after all."
Remy lets the yellow umbrella come down a little farther on their heads as he digs his hand into the far hip pocket of her khakis. "Ah, right. D' high school thing." If he knew a word like vapid or trite, he'd be using it to describe the prospect of strolling down that particular memory lane. But he doesn't. He just points at her a half-hearted grin. You silly thing, those old classmates don't matter nothing anymore.
Anna reciprocates with blameless doe eyes and offers him a bite of the hotdog, which he takes, and she makes sure to smudge mustard on the tip of his nose. That's not the end of her teasing. "I was almost thinkin' ah askin' you to come with me. But, man, there'll probably be dancin' involved."
"D' horror." He adds another stain to his off-color overshirt. The traffic light on the corner where they're waiting puts real time to his wait for laundry-themed revenge. "Well, somebody's gotta go n' keep d' prom king off y' back."
The green walk signal lights up on the reflective surface of the puddle on the curb. Oil rainbows ripple into kaleidoscope shapes around Anna's black heels. "A good friend ah mine actually won the crown. Both of 'em, him and his… girl." By the time they reach the other side of the street, the mood has gone dark. "It was kind of a duh."
"I know this story," Remy chips in when the lull lasts too long. "Dey's no dance 'cuz you pulled d' fire alarm."
Anna turns immediately to thawp him in the chest with her free hand. Doesn't hurt. She's already smiling. "I did not ever say I pulled the alarm. It was probably Kitty's old boyfriend. They were havin' it out that night."
Just now, the space they share is too close for a public space. Remy ignores the awkward tension in Anna's body, puts the right kind of pressure on the small of her back—the sort the makes her never want to pull away. "Well, maybe it was me." It's a whisper, like a secret. It's not true, it just goes to show that lying ain't all bad.
"Right," she says with a chuckling breath. Typical Anna, unwilling to laugh out loud even with her eyes shining like that, and the dusky city glittering wet, and today being absolutely perfect. "If I'd ah known you back then, I wouldn't ah put it past ya." She's mostly done saying so when he sinks and tastes her quiet smile.
She wriggles away when they both get sick of standing on the boulevard in the spray of passing cars. When they finish eating, he makes a throw-away offer, "I git you a fire engine to roll up in," and she scowls, doesn't appreciate the joke like he wants.
Remy doesn't believe in promises, and he's got a bad feeling when he signs the RSVP card. The time between the ink drying and the night of the reunion is like a long sigh. He's tired as the grave ages before the setting suns gets to glinting in the handcuffs he's wearing.
Flashing lights are whirling around the face of the apartment building. Remy gets to thinking he ought to holler at her window. Maybe apologize before they haul him off. He's just staring, though, because tonight feels like the climax of some kind of great romance film like they show at festivals. Right about now, the background music should be lifting as the girl tears out of her room, runs out across the garden…
Anna's overdressed for sitting on the couch, alone and in the dark. She tells herself to watch the sitcom playing on the television while she fumbles with her earrings and peels off the beautiful watch Remy gave her last Valentine's. Tonight has been a nightmare. She's not going to forgive this. She could, she wants to, but his fault and her self-respect are pretty much a package deal. At this point, she couldn't toss one without losing the other, too. What she can do, though, is cry about it. There's no one else around to see.
He realizes it's not happening way too late. It's before the cop comes back around the car, to Remy's credit; but the thought still flies past him like the tail of a runaway train. She's not coming out. There's no moment of love rising above the hard luck drudgery of their lives. Yeah. It's all he can think. Just, yeah, alright. Knew it. Go on back to your fairytale life, chere. He reserves the right to be pissed. Everything is clearer when he's seeing red.
Black streets and mint green cell walls and glass doors can't crowd out all the stupid thoughts in his head about her. He makes bail in the morning and he doesn't call her. No. A week creeps by and she doesn't call him, either. So, he runs. It's Christmastime and he'd rather spend it with family instead of waiting on a court date. When Bobby asks about Anna, Remy tells him they broke it off. Not that they ever did. But it's done.
Anna catches Scott on the phone while he's still in town from the reunion. When she agrees to grab coffee with him at that café on the corner of Main with the blue checkered sign, she promises herself she won't spend the entire day complaining. Anna ends up just keeping quiet, watching the clouds of cream in her cup while Scott does all the talking. Stories of everyone else's lives distract her long enough that she finally gets a breath of air that doesn't smell like a memory of Remy's cologne.
By the start of spring several months later, they've both got mental merit badges for surviving New Years and Valentines and the journey to and from pretty much every place they used to go together. There's just that one, inevitable hump they have to get over, where they happen to cross paths while out and about in the city they both call home.
It happens on a Tuesday, under the obnoxious macaroni orange scaffold of a music studio's remodel in progress. One is on the way to the bus stop, the other is headed to a convenience store around the corner. Their eyes meet and the world falls to a hush. Anna's only aware that she's dropped her phone when Remy bends to get it. He's not really wearing a smile when he hands it back, and she's kind of furrowing her brow when her cold fingertips graze his thumb.
"You look just the same," she says like she's thinking out loud.
He pulls his chin down, gives her a slight nod. "Yeah, nothin's changed." It sounds like a warning.
She glances over her shoulder, back the way she's come, and peers at him again like she's looking for something. "Where you headin'?"
Anna knows his tells, knows what it means when he tugs at the inside of his duster's pockets, when he refuses to break eye contact like she'll up and vanish if he does. She lets it go.
"No place important. Not really." For a few seconds, it seems like that's it, that's the end of it and that's closure and now they can move on with their lives. Maybe they could have, but then Remy asks, "you?"
"Pharmacy," Anna almost whines, but she holds back. "Kitty's stayin' with me now. She's got allergies or somethin', I don't know." She takes a tentative step in the direction of the store, and Remy follows just like that.
They're chatting about the storm in the forecast as they cross the welcome mat. They go together to the aisle with the lozenges with the rainbow label and back up to the front to the check out. Anna smiles sweetly and thanks the cashier, empties her wallet in the cherry red donation box by the registers, and Remy nicks a handful of peppermint candies.
Author's Notes: Written to the tune of Jolene by Ray LaMontagne.