I promised TrueThinker gift-fic, and I'm eternally grateful to her for putting up with the wait. This is the first of (what will be) a series of connected vignettes that take place in an alternate universe setting, beginning in the 1950s. Please enjoy!
A Series of Small Errors by Neko Kuroban
I: Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat
Sometimes he catches sight of his own reflection, and the face he sees there is not his own.
It is always as unexpected as it is short-lived, but this is how it happens: he will spy himself mirrored in the sleek curve of an automobile, in the glass of a storefront, in the long looking-glass behind the bar in an upscale restaurant, and he will find his father in the set of his broad shoulders and sharp, angular features.
That afternoon, he is faced with his father in the burnished metal in the elevator doors in his office building. He is not dreamer enough to wonder if it means something. However, he does consider, perhaps, that it is a reflection of his own fatigue. His face is unlined, his hair is still jet-black, and his eyes remain undimmed, but he feels far older than his years. Twenty-nine tomorrow, and the number surprises him. (How can it be so low? He feels as if he has lived many more lifetimes.)
The heavy doors roll open with a hiss, and he dismisses the idea - foolish sentiment, and nothing more - as he crosses the marbled expanse of the lobby. He had once appreciated the lavish appointments. When he was a younger man, the dark mahogany paneling and red plush had created an illusion of baronial splendor. After the austerity forced upon the world by the War, these surroundings seemed nearly beautiful in contrast to bleak modern minimalism. Now, the excess of riches is just that - excess. It serves only to embarrass him.
The newspapers and the radio programs had uniformly called for days of rain, but the forecast had not described how it would fall in sheets, how the girls in the secretarial pool would make coy jokes about gathering up two of every animal and a man for each one of them and building an ark of their own, how the city's gutters would overflow, how everything would be reduced to brutal inefficiency. It irritates him. All of it.
The year is 1955, and this is Manhattan.
How is it that man has not yet conquered nature?
He tightens the sash of his wool overcoat, and he steps out into the deluge.
It is the fourth day of this, but the client he is meeting thinks the same as he does: a crisis on the part of others does not call for crisis on his own behalf. This particular client is too indirect to be the sort of man he respects. This is the kind of man who is happy to let drinks grow warm, to let cigars burn down, to let business rest while he discusses the weather and makes jokes about his wife's interest in horse racing. He had been almost pleasantly surprised when the man had been adamant that he would not cancel their scheduled meeting. He could appreciate his determination, if nothing else.
Broad Street is the emptiest he has ever seen it, but a taxi sits idling by the curb not far from his building. The driver is reading and smoking a pipe with the windows rolled up, sealed tight against the rain; he is half-obscured by the smoke that fills the vehicle. It is apparent that he doesn't expect much in the way of business on a day like today. He raps his knuckles against the rear window - once, smartly - and opens the door without waiting for a response.
The driver jerks his graying head up from his tattered book in surprise, but he relaxes almost immediately. "Oh, hey," he drawls, and he chases it with a forced laugh. "Caught me off guard for a mo'. Pisser of a day, ain't it?"
The interior of the car, the man notices as he slips inside, smells like Christmas: leather and burning tobacco leaves masked by an overwhelming spray of pine-scented aftershave. However, the cab driver's voice is like autumn - warm and whiskey-rough - and his cough is a smoker's cough, leaves breaking underfoot. Both seem incongruous on this dismal April afternoon.
From his pocket, he retrieves his steel lighter and cigarette case, both gifts from long ago. "I take it you won't mind if I smoke." His every syllable is crisp and precise, and they twist his dry words into biting insult.
The driver laughs, but it is an uncertain one. "What can I do for you, friend?"
It is rare that he takes notice of those who work beneath him: porters, elevator operators, barkeeps, waiters, drivers, or even the women in the secretarial pool. However, his eyes flicker up, just for a moment. The driver has not yet set down the paperback in his hand. It strikes him that the book is neither the Bible nor a lewd pulp novel, both of which he imagines are popular with the blue-collar masses, but a book on Marx. His gaze lift to the other man's face, and he realizes that the driver is only a handful of years older than himself but careworn and lined where his is smooth. He, too, has seen and lived more than most.
Without warning, the other door bursts open, and a girl ducks into the cab.
She slams the door as if she is sending demons to gnash their teeth and wail in hunger in the dark, as if the foul weather is one of Moses's plagues, but her impish smile suggests that the rain delights her. The girl (no, a woman, he decides, but the kind of young woman where the girl radiates out from inside of her and youth overwhelms maturity) carries no umbrella, and she does not wear a coat. Her shoes are colored and impractical, her yellow dress is soaked, and her rich brown hair - pinned up; her hat is clutched in the hand that holds her purse rather than perched on her head - is dripping water onto the cracked leather seat.
"Hi," she breathes, rifling through her handbag without once looking up. "I need to be in...aha!" She pulls out a paper cocktail napkin, waving it in a childish gesture of triumph. "Eighth street and-" she cuts herself off as she notices the man sitting beside her in the backseat, and she swears.
He raises an eyebrow, and he is about to speak when she cuts him off.
"Oh! Sorry! I didn't mean to hijack your cab! I am so, so sorry," she gushes. "Damn, damn, double damn." She twists around in her seat to peer out the windscreen through the street, and her brows lower at the sight of the deserted street. She turns back to him with plaintive eyes. "Please tell me that you're going down Broadway." Once is apparently not enough, because she repeats herself immediately. "Please tell me that you're going down Broadway."
He has to admit that he is. "Astor Place."
"Are you willing to share a cab? I swear-I swear, I'll pay half." She does not wait for him to respond - he is poised to say no - before she calls to the driver, "We're sharing!"
The man looks to him for confirmation, and he waves a hand as if to say what does it matter? The driver shrugs and turns the key to fire up the ignition with a low grumble, perhaps already dismissing him.
The woman beside him, however, turns the full force of her attention onto him. "Thank you!" she exclaims. "You're saving my life; you don't even know."
Without warning, she holds out one small hand. He does not take it in both of his, the way he usually does with pretty young women he meets at cocktail parties and the vapid wives of his wealthy associates, but he does take her hand.
He is surprised when it fits neatly in his.
"Azulon Hamill," he says - out of reflex, and nothing more.
Her smile broadens into a grin. "Ilah."
Continued...