In Between Days

by Joyce1

It’s two separate worlds, sometimes. And it’s hard to remember which one is mine.

In Between Days

*****

She sat there like a photograph

of someone much farther away

We shared a brief bustop on one of those

in-between days

*****

He saw her for the first time on a grey November morning, fumbling for a cigarette under the shelter of a bus stop.  She looked young-- very young, and her clothes didn't suit her well.  They lacked subtlety-- too tight, too low, and hardly covered by a worn overcoat-- and he wondered for a moment if she was one of the girls from the corner district heading home after a night of work.

"Could I trouble you for a light?"  Her voice was surprisingly sweet, well-schooled.  He fished in his pocket for a lighter and shielded the flame from the damp wind as she coaxed the cigarette to smolder. 

She sighed, and took a long drag, a look of utter contentment spreading slowly over her face.  He saw that she wasn't as young as he had originally thought-- her eyes were older than they should have been, and there was something bitter about the smile.  Her red hair, braided loosely and thrown over her shoulder, was the only bright thing in the dingy plastic and metal of the shelter.

"Thank you," she said, sitting down on the metal bench to wait.  She looked once at him, and then down to the tail of her braid.  She seemed surprised to see it there.  He joined her on the seat, opening his paper with a rustle.  She glanced quickly at the headlines over his shoulder, and he watched out of the corner of his eye as she grimaced and bit her lip.

"Horrible, isn't it?"  He gestured to the picture of the happy family smiling up in newsprint, all obliterated in a night.  "And for no reason, too.  This makes eight, I think."

"Ten."  She looked down at her fingernails-- they were short and neatly filed and covered with a clear varnish.  Much more suited to a businesswoman than a streetwalker.  "And there's always a reason.  It's just not always one we want to see."

He raised his eyebrow.  "You sound like a psychologist."  Almost an accusation: I had you neatly filed into a category, and you're not staying where I put you.

She laughed, and it was empty.  "That's a big part of my work, I'll say."  She looked at him and slowly let out a cloud of smoke, a nebulous wall between the two of them.  "You think I'm a prostitute, don't you?"  There was something on her face that might have been accomplishment.

"Well."  He let the word hang in the air like the smoke, a grey-colored Yes.  Embarrassed if he'd made a mistake.

She smiled-- but it was a surface smile.  A good one, one that might work in the darkness of a club, or underneath the yellowed pool of a streetlight, but not in the diffused morning light.  "That was the idea.  I'm not offended, I promise."  Her lips were still waxy from the lip gloss she must have applied hours ago, standing in front of her mirror at home.  He wondered if anyone had sat behind her on her bed, silently watching her turn herself into an object for someone else.

"Are you an undercover cop, then?"  She looked so tired and slight that he doubted she could take the rougher elements that no doubt she dealt with.  He hoped she had backup.

"Something like that," she said.  The tip of her cigarette glowed as she inhaled. 

"Must be hard," he offered, dropping his paper to the ground.  There wasn't anything but bad news in there, anyway.  "Living two lives, I mean."  Her eyes were bright, and she turned her face to the scratched plastic window for a moment. 

He imagined he could hear her swallowing a sob, but her voice was measured and cool, unaffected.  "I suppose.  It's two separate worlds, sometimes.  And it's hard to remember which one is mine."

"Do you have a family?"  He surprised himself.  Do your parents know what you pretend to be?  Does your lover?  Your husband?

She took one last pull on the cigarette and ground the stub into the cement with her foot.  "More family than I care to admit to," she said wryly, with a half smile.  A real one.  "And they can't know."

"Can't?"

"Can't.  It's not safe.  They think I work a desk job."  She traced some of the scratches on the window with her left hand.  Kyle wuz here. Carla luvs Sean 4ever.  Fuck off.  "Whoever wrote that was more real than I am.  At least they could leave a mark."  Her voice lost some of its armor; she sounded wistful.

"You leave a mark, I'm sure."  He wasn't sure why it was so important that she believe him, but it suddenly was.  "You get them off the street, right?  You're making it safer for us."

"I'm not doing a very good job."  She rubbed her eyes slowly, and brushed off some of the mascara that flaked off with her touch.  She bent down to pick up the paper he had discarded and opened it to the grainy photograph of the family in newsprint.  Two tow-headed little boys, a dark-eyed woman, and a man with his arms around them all.  They were unnaturally still, and she traced a pale finger along the woman's face.

He nearly asked if she had known the woman, but the question was caught on his tongue by the squeal of brakes.  The bus idled in front of them, and he stood up to go.  "Is this not your bus?" he asked as he readied himself to go into the rain.  She shook her head, and tried to hand him back the paper.  "Keep it," he called over his shoulder.

"Thank you."  He wasn't sure if he heard her voice over the growl of the engine, or if it was just something he wanted to hear.

***

"I can't do many more assignments like that, Simon."  She tapped her fingers against the polished wood of his desk.  "Put me on something else.  Please."

Simon raised an eyebrow.  "Please?  You're that desperate, Gin?"  She nodded.

"I know someone would have to take over that post.  I know I'd have to train someone else.  But I'm getting confused there."  She shrugged her shoulders.  "I don't feel like I'm being useful, and it's all starting to blur."

"Explain."

A faint flush spread over her face, scrubbed pale under the office lighting.  "I didn't put on my Illusion charm last night.  I didn't realize it until this morning, when a man at the bus stop looked at my hair."  Simon's face was impassive, but she knew that there was a storm brewing.  "I don't think I forgot, Simon," she pleaded.  "I think I had just-- confused myself to the point that I didn't remember.  And the man at the bus stop...." 

"Yes?"

"I almost told him."  Told him everything.  About the war that he doesn't know exists, about the murders, about the jobs I do.  About how I blend in, melt away everywhere I go.  About how everything I am is a lie.  Simon caught the unsaid truths and nodded.

"I can't let you have any time, Ginny," Simon apologized.  "You know we're understaffed as it is."  Ginny bit her lip; yes, she knew.  "I can try to transfer you to something else, though.  We need another op on the LeStranges, if that would help."  Surveillance on the LeStranges would involve some serious work.  She'd have to research; find a fool-proof identity-- maybe even a Dark Mark.  She rubbed her left forearm lightly, imagining the cold burn of the Mark on her flesh.  But to work the LeStrange case-- she'd be able to do something.  Maybe she could keep some of those grainy photographs out of the paper.

"Yes," she said.  "I can do that."

*****

A/N:  This is a strange one, I know.  And this is just an opening, a sort of darker spinoff from my 'That Still Center' universe.  (By the way, the sequel to TSC should be ready sometime soon.)  We'll see when I can get the next chapter of this up.

*****

She sat there like a photograph

of someone much farther away

We shared a brief bustop on one of those

in-between days

She gave me her smile

And I looked underneath

at the lipstick on her teeth

She asked me for a light and

if I thought her hair looked okay

And we grew out of the smalltalk

into stuff that strangers just don't say

We discovered that we're both

pleasantly furious half of the time

when we're not just toeing the line

And we sat underneath the shelter

as the rain came down outside

and the bench was cold against

the underside of our thighs

I said, "I think we need new responses,

every question is a revolving door."

And she said, "Yeah, my life may not be something special,

but it's never been lived before."

We decided our urgency will wane when we grow old

There'll be a new generation of anger

new stories to be told

But I said, "I don't know if I can wait

for that peace to be mine."

And she said," Well, we've been waiting

for this bus for an awfully long time."

She sat there like a photograph

of someone much farther away

We shared a brief bustop on one of those

in-between days.

-- Ani DiFranco