It's snowing outside of the large alcove studio apartment. January, a bipolar month. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it's warm enough that the snow drops from the sky and melts on the ground just as fast. Sometimes, as now, the roof drips, drips, drips while the snow experiences a crisis of self, thinking it'd be happier as puddles. Bathed in the glow of streetlights, I lean against the dusty, finger-printed window and watch it fall several stories to the busy street below, where it'll become part of something larger.

Transports stuffed with bread, others with beer, some with vegetables, chug through the narrow street. Around them, cars deke in and out of the bustle. Horns honk, people talk and yell and laugh. Feet fall, walking the same old path but never stepping in the exact same place twice. Some people slow to shoot furtive glances down dark alleys. I don't know what they're looking for, but I think maybe they're craning their necks to catch sight of the art sprayed on the wall or they're pitying the bums slumming in the shadows or they're hoping to feel the proper amount of shame for an instant while they take in the sheer, preposterous amount of waste we leave behind.

Not much better, I open a package of cigarettes and drop the cellophane to the concrete floor. My apartment is repurposed, an old factory split and filled with bare concrete walls, retrofitted with shitty plumbing that gurgles and complains more often than not and a temperamental heater that chooses when and when not to work. I can't hear my neighbors, though. Bully for me.

The bathroom door opens and she steps out, ignited for only a blink in the harsh fluorescent light. Red, skimpy lingerie, red stiletto heels. It's not how she was dressed when she entered. She turns off the switch before I can really get a good look at her, throwing us into shadow again. Now there's just the green neon light from the strip club across the street. I look back out to the city and listen to her approach. She stops to grab a lighter off the stubby, scratched coffee table, seeing what I hold, then comes in just inches from my shoulder and flicks until the flame catches.

I lean into her, puffing a putrid cigarette's cherry into life. The smoke coils down deep in my lungs, filling them up, rotting them. Exhaling, it curls toward the ceiling, looking to stain it yellow.

She throws the lighter toward the table, uncaring where it lands, and asks, "How do I look?"

I glance quickly. Curling burnished gold on scarlet and ivory. Caramel eyes lined with thick, dark liner. Lips, cherry red. She's got a classic kind of beauty. I can't tell if it's accentuated with the makeup, or marred, that's how fucked up about her I've become.

She touches my face and cups my cheek, guiding me around so I'm forced to look at her more clearly. "Natsu?"

"Good, Lucy. You look good."

Fantastic. The time we spent apart has only exemplified her more exotic features, only made her more into the siren I want.

She smiles the kind of smile that's a ghost of its old self. She isn't as happy as she once was. And neither am I. As I did the first night back in town, after I found her dancing across the road in that dingy, smoke-filled, alcohol-soaked dive, I want to ask how she ended up there. She didn't answer me then, so I stayed to watch her take off her bra so everyone could see what she had to offer, and her panties, so they could imagine having her. Then I took her back here and did what her other fans could not: lived out that fantasy. Intimacy wasn't a street to candour. She still wouldn't answer my questions. Likely, she won't now, either. So I don't bother.

Her hand drops away; my skin is cold in her wake. "I go on soon. Thanks for letting me use your place to get ready."

So she didn't have to walk a kilometer through slush I told her. Really, it was just to get her back into my apartment.

She starts to move away, going for the trench coat that will cover her body while she slips into the back of the club across the street.

"Come back."

She pauses. "What?"

I look away from the busy city. "Tonight. Come back. After your shift." I give her the same line as I did before. "You don't want to walk home in this shit."

"I could take a cab."

"You could save your money."

Her cherry lips press together, seriously considering my offer. I'm sure she knows why I want her to come back. It's why she didn't pretend to cover herself coming out of the washroom, it's why she stands too close to me and touches me more casually than she'd ever dared to before.

"I'm done at two."

I don't smile. "I'll leave the door unlocked."


A/N: I fought to put into words a ghost of an emotion. I thought maybe it was about the characterization—that I would find the perfect voice within the perfect dialog by twisting a character I associated with good feelings into something broken, but no. I think it lies within the setting, the grungy room, the drifting and dripping snow, the broken heater, the neon signs and shadows and dirty windows.