"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them,

and then you never know where the hell you are."

-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Camaraderie and Conclusions; Spike was effortlessly good at these things. All he had to do was meander into a room and anyone would fall under his curse. Spike shamelessly misused it when necessary. Spike's other great talent was detachment; allowing him to cut ties without as much as the twitch of an eye. However, the memory of certain blonde was impervious to this talent's touch. This "certain blonde" always held a starring role anytime our cowboy dared to close his eyes, but a raven-haired shrew lately began to make frequent cameos in his dreams too.

Not that he'd ever let that wench or anyone know about this feeling stealing its way into his soul. Any admission of these kinds of fleeting feelings would just fuck everything up more than it already was. He hypothesized that the reason Faye had begun to make the leap from an occasional cameo to a reoccurring character in his closed eye cinema was because of how frequently she had been visiting. It was amusing and exciting that no one, not even the goddamned dog, noticed one of them creeping about the ship like idiots in the dead of the night. It was a stupid, bad idea, but so are Spike and Faye. Undoubtedly, the venom of her kisses would slowly poison him to death, but her skin was nicotine.

Last night was different. The cigarettes at 3 a.m. felt poisoned by invisible fate delivering apothecary. She walked like carried the weight of an entire case bourbon on her shoulders when in truth it was only a single bottle and poorly disguised sadness. That wasn't new. Reluctantly, I had learned that Jack Daniels became her confidant when some untold demon of her conscience made jail break. But what killed me were her eyes. It was as if the more that the alcohol fogged up her judgment; the clearer her goddamned eyes became. The way that those wide, bottomless emeralds burned into my flesh made me want to carve a hole where my heart would be, if I still had one that is, and present the damned, still-beating thing to her.

Faye's other talent, besides resurrecting that thing that normal people call a "heart" in me, was her acrid tongue. Even now, as I lay on this lumpy, yellow couch, her whispered words echo off the metal walls of the ship.

"It's your fucking eyes. When you're staring at me you see her. "

Her words continue to sting me like a rubber band. God, I must be some kind of masochist or something. I didn't want to notice how much her voice cracked or how her damn eyes grew so dark and so empty when she said that. The worst part of it all was how she looked as she put back on her clothes. She never looked more child-like and fragile.

If I were another type of person, then maybe I might have felt guilty. I have done too many things that would make your grandmother cry and taken way too many lives to feel guilty over some woman. But I couldn't stand staring at the ceiling in my room after she left my room and probably the Bebop again. Regardless, I dressed myself and walked around the entire ship twice trying to find her just so I could tell her that she forgot that weird, red thing she always wears in my room. After my ill-fated search I stretched out on the lumpy, yellow couch and had a nightmare, the type that leave you gasping for air, about-you guessed it, Faye.

"Man, its hot…Where is everybody?"

I exhale to no one but the goddamned dog and the kid who are too busy roaming around cyberspace to give a half a shit.

"What a depressing group."

Jet has to know why it feels like hell in this tin can, but when I find him on the observation deck I just know by the look on his face that the woman has something to do with it.

"We're experiencing technical difficulties."

I catch the crumpled up piece of paper, and sure enough it's her terrible third grade level handwriting.

"It'd be too hard to see you. So I'm leaving without saying good bye. Please! Please! Do not look for me… Free at last?"

I offer, but Jet and his fatherly instincts shoot my idea right out of the sky. He offers some excuse about Faye sucking all the money out of the safe. As if. We would have ended up at the Tomato with Ed regardless if she had stolen the money or not. Jet has a thing for camaraderie, but this is typical shrew behavior. Running away and making dramatic exits? Yeah that's her. She's gonna come back like every other stunt, so I don't know why Jet's so hung up about it. She always comes back.