+J.M.J.+
A Slaying Song Tonight
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
Basically this is a slightly comic chapter with a lot of humor at Maguire's expense, causing some black exasperation on his part, and obviously, with its fair share of menace (naturally).
Disclaimer:
See Chapter I. And I did not invent "skitching".
II: Dashing Through the Snow
To preserve some amount of anonymity, Maguire drove to the West Side: no having to lug his camera case onto the El and no one would spot the piece he carried inside his topcoat.
The snow that had fallen the night before had turned into a slick ice pack on the streets and despite the chains on the wheels, his car skidded slightly, not enough to cause problems, but enough to cause some concern, lest he be late.
Some kids ran across the street, right in front of him, running from one streetlight to the next. He jammed on the brakes and released them to avoid skidding.
"Hey, look both ways next time, son!" he yelled out the window good naturedly, hiding his annoyance. For a moment, he wondered if he might be photographing the kid's mangled body, a victim of his own stupid recklessness.
As he pulled away, someone knocked on the rear window. Maguire glanced into the rearview without turning his head.
He cursed under his breath: he'd picked up a passenger. A thirteen year old kid had grabbed the rear bumper to hitch a ride with his heels sliding on the icy street: "skitching", the kids call it. He'd hang onto the bumper like a barnacle to a boat either till he tired or he dropped off of his own will. Swerving the car did no good, neither did stopping, getting out and chasing them away, since that was exactly what they wanted you to do. And much as the idea amused Maguire, he wasn't going to stop and back over the kid at an intersection and pretend the car had slipped into reverse. If he just kept driving, the kid would let go or they would run out of ice, whichever came first.
The kid dropped off at the next street corner. Maguire breathed a soundless sigh of relief.
He pulled the car into an alleyway behind a drug store and parked it, intending to walk to the site, build up his cover by snapping human interest shots along the way: the Salvation Army band on a street corner, a man and his son dragging a fir tree home on a sled, people plodding through the snow carrying tissue-paper wrapped presents.
A kid sliding on a wooden shovel zoomed out from an alleyway across Maguire's path, nearly startling a curse from him. A laughing group of kids were sliding down a pile of snow in the alleyway on shovels, slates, cracked tea trays, anything that could substitute for a sled. He zigzagged through the line of fire, holding his camera case high so the kids didn't bang into it.
At the next street corner, he walked into a barrage of snowballs. A group of kids lurked behind a board fence around a vacant lot, throwing snowballs through a gap in the fence at men passing by wearing top hats, like one old coot who ran cursing after his black high silk rolling across the sidewalk, or winter-and-summer bowlers like Maguire's. He jammed his hat on and held it there against any assaults.
His efforts almost caused him to miss Compass Street, but he retraced his steps.
He spotted, coming toward him, a young woman gripping the hand of an eight-year-old girl with curly blonde hair pulled back from her face and tied up with a large pink bow, a green velveteen dress with a wide, starched white collar fringed with lace taut over her fat little body; white tights and those strapped patent leather shoes called Mary Sues or some foolish name like that. Oh, and a doll in a blue dress under her arm. What a picture that would make…
The little girl tried to pull away from her guardian, but the woman yanked her back.
"An-gel-i-ca Campanini, get back here!" the woman cried. "My God, you'll be the death of me!
"I wanna see the horsies," Angelica whined, referring to the horse-drawn freight wagon rumbling past.
"Any closer and you'd be under their hooves," the governess said. "The last thing I need is for you to get killed, after all the trouble you caused at the party."
He had the right girl…
To be continued…
Literary Easter Eggs:
The kids' snow pranks—I don't know if they do it in Chicago, but in south Boston (Irish mob territory: don't tell me you've never heard of the Winter Hill gang) have a pet amusement in the winter which they call "skitching". The kid sliding on the shovel is borrowed from…It's a Wonderful Life. And since the wardrobe department for RTP was daft enough to put a bowler hat on a British actor (bowler hats are to England what cowboy hats are to the West), I decided to have some fun with that via the snowball-tossing kids.
Mary Sues—They're really called Mary Janes, but I thought I'd be really cheeky. Maguire's a confirmed bachelor, so I doubt he'd know the proper name anyway.