A New Decade
Parker rings in the New Year the only way she knows how.
She steals.
The job is easy enough. She plans her attack a few days before and reviews her plans on the flight over in first class. She does not miss being a flight attendant. She lands the day before, on the 30th, and spends her day in her hotel and shopping. She spends about four hours in the pool and then watches Juno, UP, Wall-E, The Lion King, and Pan's Labyrinth. She falls asleep at six in the morning and then wakes up at noon. She is happy and she waits for the fall of night.
It takes her fifteen minutes to break in, and another ten to find her walking out of a back alley way. She is zipping up her white backpack. It's still clean; Sophie cannot yell at her for ruining one of her Christmas presents.
She sighs happily and glances at her watch.
It is eleven thirty and 2009 is almost over. She grins. Her last theft of the year and of the decade. She can hear the screams and the laughs from her spot on the street. She grins and catches one of the last running trains.
But in the end she ends up walking about ten blocks on the crowded New York City streets. It's not fun, especially in the heels that she knows she has to get used to for the next con. But she does it.
She smirks as she pulls on another of her Christmas presents. A black fedora, one of four she now owns.
She is a regular cat burglar, dressed in black, and her backpack is sticking out like a sore thumb. She doesn't think she could be happier.
She reaches the edges of the crowd and starts to push her way towards the center. She has ten minutes to gain as much ground as possible.
She goes unnoticed in the New Year's Eve crowd that has flooded Times Square. She is simply a young, blonde, attractive female who is wearing a black jacket and black pants with a backpack. Nothing is unusual about her. Even her personality cannot give her away. In New York City there are plenty of crazies normally, and they go just as unnoticed on New Year's Eve. She counts down to midnight with everybody else; after buying a drink, a party hat, and noise makers like everyone else because tonight she is just Parker.
She has a smile upon her lips and a lie in her eyes that only she and others in her profession could ever see. And even then, those who would possibly spot her lie are few and far between, limited to a scarce handful of people. But those people, they are back home, drinking, three of them drinking, and partying it up in the apartment. Without her.
Even Sophie had come from London to visit. Tara had mysteriously disappeared for the night.
So Parker is missing the teams second New Year's together, but she does not mind the fact. Because this city is where she became famous. And she feels that since she has been here for the past fifteen years, she has to be here for the next fifteen years. Just because she might have people who might be categorized as friends or family doesn't mean she has to drop the real Parker, the loner Parker.
She doesn't want to drop loner Parker.
At ten seconds to midnight, she pulls a tall, strange man towards her. She smiles and he returns the favor. He is warm and when he draws her close she can barely contain a shiver. She is not sure if the shiver is from the cold of the almost January night or of excitement. Her head is cranked up to see him. She had always thought that she liked taller men, but now she is starting to change her mind.
But when the ball drops, height is the farthest thing from her mind.
She kisses him. She doesn't care if the kiss is good or not, she cannot even be asked to remember. And when they break apart they are grinning and cheering, "Happy New Year!" they call, their noisemakers adding to the crowd of perhaps millions that was celebrating. They tilt their heads back, gradually growing apart, party heads on their heads and their cheap cardboard toys hailing the heavens.
A New Decade.
2010; two-thousand and ten.
A whole new ball game.
The ball has dropped and Parker, in a moment of sudden clarity as she is watching with fascinated eyes as couples awkwardly make out all around her, wants the shiny, diamondy, glittery ball of joy. She wants it just as she wants money, and sex, and food, and jewels, and fine art. But, she makes an exception and stills her greedy fingers. It is a special occasion. She cannot steal the Ball of New York City. She cannot. Well she can but…
It was a New Year.
It was a New Decade.
She'll be so many more things in this decade than she was in the last decade. She has help too. She'll do it. That's her resolution. But she will not lose the loner, strange, insane Parker. She shall not give up on herself.
Her head is not even barely fuzzy with champagne, because she has always been able to hold her liquor, a trait that is more likely earned than natural. Her ears are soaking up the music from the many television specials that are being shot. Her hat is askew, her hair mussed, and she is grinning. She is not the only one.
The thrill of it, though she is not quite sure what it is, carries her back to the museum. The artifact that she had stolen earlier that night is burning a hole in her backpack and she smiles as she retraces her steps. Her theft has so far gone unnoticed.
She is twenty-five. She has eyes that are seemingly too old for her body. She is apparently slightly insane.
And yet, to the very perfect eyes of the most perfect being in the world, which she does not believes exists, she is probably the sanest she ever has to be to survive. No more, nor less. Don't change, she thinks to herself. Because that is all that anyone had to do. Survive. Anything other than that is a lie, and Parker knows this too well. Which is why money has been her constant in her long years of life. So, survival is her key to life.
And she's doing it well enough without her favorite pastime. Her money is still with her. So she decides to do something she has only done once before, only once before of her own will. Because she does not need any more money, she still wants it though, of course, she then makes a decision that will later become a turning point in her life.
She doesn't not want to let go of the real Parker.
But, since this year and this decade she wants to do more than just survive, she has the thought in the very back of her mind that maybe she wants to live, she does something slightly crazy.
But she does want to see if there is more to the real Parker.
So next year, she'll bring her friends, her family, along for her tradition. And they'll toast to the New Year with champagne and grinning faces.
She is lost in the fantasy for a second. She is grinning. But then she remembers that she is on her belly in the air vent. She is cold. The artifact is shining.
She thinks that maybe her eyes are glowing, because it's as dark as hell in the museum. She grins and she does something slightly crazy. Slightly insane.
Twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.
Her first theft of the year and of the decade.
She puts it back.
Fini.
Happy New Year and Happy New Decade.