Smoke from your cigarette dances in time to the rhythm of her voice; billowing now with red-blooded passion, then thinning to an uncertain thread on the next rolling bar. Your hand shakes when you take a drag, trying not to listen as her soul spills raw into the hot and hazy air.
She's so young. Younger than you. When your lungs stretch tight and burn, you relent, puffing careless rings at the low burning gaslight hung intimately over your table. Down there on the rough stage, swaying in a sharp edged pool of blue light, she caresses the mic like every eye in the house isn't watching. You lay your head on the table. She's so young.
Caitlyn's hand in your hair coaxes your eyes shut whether you want them to or not. Her fingers soothe from temple to nape, curling loosely in the tangles at the base of your skull. Your hand finds her knee under the table. A very deep part of you wishes every Friday night could be like this. Another part of you wishes you weren't here at all.
The story begins and ends with a piano, or rather, with the hands that play it. You know the story by heart now, and even while she croons wistful about tired regrets and empty street corners, you recognize the story in her song rather than her words.
The sister plays the keys like a dusty legend reborn; like generations of prodigies, geniuses, and masters were resurrected into this single frail body all at once. Gifted doesn't even begin to cover it. But the fates are unkind and the sister turns to other avenues just to make ends meet for her little family. A mishap at the factory spells the end to the sister's moonlighting as accompanist. She, the angel with the voice like honey, like thunder, still can sing in tune to the half-rate pounding of some back alley piano-man. The sister sits below the cracked floor lights and watches her little family bring men to tears with little more than a whisper.
But she is not content with bowing to the fates' whimsy. First, a series of clumsy break-ins, some loose cash and unsecured heirlooms. It's not enough currency, and she runs into difficulties trying to liquidate the tangibles. Soon she turns to pre-daylight robbery, holding up shopkeepers with their morning deposits. An organization catches wind; they want to know if she'll show up at x place and y time with z item. She accepts. And again and again.
Every night at nine she's singing in that blue spotlight, the sister smiling, proud. The sister knows nothing.
When all's said and done, it's an erratic yet extensive crime spree. She's an amateur though, and only through sheer unpredictability does she manage to get this far before the Sheriff sniffs her out. But by then she's got enough, by god she's got enough, and the money is already gone. After a few hushed procedures and dodged questions, the sister is installed in her rightful place at the keys, fingers dancing just as flawlessly as before.
There's a fire to her voice that makes your palms sweat, makes your heart twist on itself. You feel like you're betraying them but you don't even know them. You only know about them from the story but you feel like it might as well be your story, the way you ache. Caitlyn's hand is wrapped in your hair but it could just as easily be wrapped around the grip of a rifle, ready, aim, fire.
You try not to feel the soundless suspense of a dozen officers waiting for their cue. You try not to think of the sister's heartbreak. You try not to see the dreams of one little family slipping away like so much blue smoke.