Smash!
by Memphis Lupine
--
At precisely eight o'clock in the morning, as the thick rain clouds stoutly refused to allow the sun ample room to stretch fiery fingers out, the Silver Bell opened for the weekend. Dono was by no means a foolish man and he had long discovered that, come the end of a week of work, many men were more than willing to waste a minor portion of their paycheck for drink and women. It was, he supposed as he rapped his knuckles on the dull wood of the door leading to the changing room, an escape from the stress of overtime and such to earn the money needed. When one of the girls yelled an incomprehensibly welcome, he wrapped his hand around the door handle, twisted the knob, and flung it open with a bang.
"Topaz, where's m'brush?" a slight woman in a red dress harkening to the flapper style popular in the twenties demanded, sweeping her naturally red hair over her shoulder and glowering as she swiveled in her heels. "I can't go out lookin' like this, y'know?" The girl in question, a lithe blonde with a flashy gold dress and a yellow hankerchief swathed about her neck, tossed the toiletry and she caught it.
"Hello, girls," Dono rumbled, thumbing his tie and the standard pinstripe suit folded over it. A chorus of greetings came from the ten odd girls, some glancing at him, others smiling, while a few otherwise ignored him. "Are you dolls about ready to go out and wow 'em?" He flashed his infamous grin, a charmingly nasty smirk that he used on most everyone, and the girl in red, stage-named Ruby, straightened from her quick chore. A mass of red curls went to her back once more and she looked at him warily.
"Mister Dono, sir," she began, hands tucking around the curve of her small hips, "you seen Sapphire? We gotta get on stage soon and she ain't here yet."
"Sapphire is always late," a green-coded girl, black hair bundled into a whispery braid, snorted carelessly, fixing the faux necklace wrapped around the stretch of her throat. "It's nothing to be worried about, you know she ain't gonna come unless she manages to kick that sleazebag she been sleepin' with out on his lazy ass." A thick tube of lipstick was quickly stolen from the girl on her left, who made a disgruntled sound and merely plucked a different tube from her beaded purse, and she, obviously known as Emerald, wound it out, putting it to the pout of her lower lip and sweeping it across. "And you know what those picture girls like to say: the show must go on!"
"How very considerate of you, Emmy," said Dono wryly, swiping a hand through his greased hair and nodding acknowledgement to each of the quietly gossiping girls as they filed out in tiptoeing steps behind the stage. "Speaking of the show, it starts in less than a minute," and he checked his golden pocket-watch in a rather pointed manner, "so I'd hurry if I was you."
More than one girl squealed anxiously, to be hushed by unappreciative older dancers, and they bit lips as they all vanished into the lifted wood held dark by closed curtains. Staring at the ticking hands of his watch, he stumped the other hand into his pocket and waited patiently, working his jaw steadily as if a piece of tobacco was clenched between his molars. The last resonant tick as the second hand struck the final note was timed exactly with the explosion of brass instruments and an ironically heavenly chorus of showgirls, and he smiled with satisfaction, snapping the slender lid over the pearl face and stuffing it into the pocket it was kept in. "Enjoy the show, boys," he said to himself, and he abandoned the littered room, closing the door at his back.
--
The sun's trickling light passed through the half-closed curtains sewn together of a filmy cloth reminiscent of glittered mists, and she wrinkled her face into the uneven folds of her pillow, one arm tugging around it to hold it closer to her cheek. As she tried to snatch whatever bits of peaceful warmth were left to her while reality slowly gained on her, she kicked her small legs from under the swathed quilt and prodded the floor with ginger toes. Though it was nearly summer, a bit of cold still managed to drift out of the darkness beneath her bed, and she disliked the smooth feel of polished wood under her bare feet in any case. A pair of satin slippers were found by her wandering feet, and she squirmed her heels into place, pulling eyes open reluctantly and slowly moving into a sitting position.
Adjusting the collar of her nightgown, she rolled her head from one shoulder to the other and cupped her hand over her mouth as a small yawn tipped out her throat. For a moment she remained motionless, fingers playing over her chin and the other hand palmed over the wrinkled sheets, and then she popped her head forward with a defiant snap, yanking the pillow into a nondescript flatness. She stood from the bed and jerked the sheets expertly, folding them and tucking the quilt around, and grasping the lapels of the curtains to pull them fully open. The stream of light that shone instantly over the roof opposing their house caused her to blink and squint a bit in order to fully recover, and she rocked back on her heels in a satisfied manner.
Out the door she went, crossing the carpeting rolled down the upper hall's wide corridor, and slipped a hand over the honey banister as she crept agilely, quietly, down the steps. "Good morning," she called to the few people crowded into the large den, cousins of intimidating presence and swarthy skin much like she. One nodded, absorbed in an elaborate game of chess with another as the third checked through small columns posted in simple type on the morning's newspaper, and she paused at the bottom of the stairs, glancing across into the sitting room on the other side. "Ben, you seen my folks?" she called.
The man perusing the newspaper looked up, dark-rimmed eyes showcasing his frequent insomnia and lack of physical attention, and he set his sharpened pencil down, poking a finger toward the swinging door that led to the kitchen. "Your pop is having it out with Nicky," he informed her in a tired voice, lowering his hand and picking the pencil up once more. "It's kinda ugly, no place for you."
"No place for a woman, you mean," she corrected without a trace of meanness, though she did take the time to grant him a particularly unpleasant look, and he paid little heed. Sweeping over the floor in her trailing nightgown and satin slippers, she tipped a few dark strands behind her ear and laid one hand firmly on the swinging door. She pushed it open firmly and, quite effectively, entered the rather tempestuous arguments that often occurred when her father and half-brother were in the same room as one another.
"--an't even write to your old man, tell him you're coming home after, what, three years, four?" her father was currently expounding, pacing in dithering circles like an animal too enraged to even walk normally. Occasionally, he struck his fist into his open palm, gnashing teeth with furious hopelessness, the bottoms of his trousers passing over the wood floor as he gave her mother the kind of look that demanded support or an answer. Dominique simply continued patiently dipping filthy dishes into the bubbles in the sink, scrubbing daintily at stains as she split her attentions between family dysfunctions and the reruns of 'Painted Dreams' pouring from the radio.
"Good morning, Papa," Meryl said pleasantly, knowing better than to get caught in the argument. She offered a kiss to her mother, who smiled in quick welcome and returned to listening anxiously to Irene and Sue's conversation. Her father paused for a few seconds to give her the kind of hand gesture that meant he was aware of her presence, and she pulled out one of the slender-backed chairs settled around the small round table. "Nicholas," she stated in a calm voice laced with sarcasm.
"Hn," he uttered distantly, scouring the surface of a small Luger pistol with a dirtied rag to clean away the streaks of powder dotting the metal tubing. Several firearms in various stages of disarray and assembling were scattered over the honeyed wooden surface, boxes of bullets left haphazardly open and a few shells rocked with slowing motion within the makeshift maze. "Morning," he added after a moment, dropping the rag to the table and locking the Luger back into place. Glancing down its length, he judged the distance between the pistol's mouth and her forehead, and she took it in as normal, pressing a fingertip to her eye.
"You ashamed of your family's own name?" her father resumed ranting, snapping his arms around wildly, his nose twitching with his rage. "First you go off on your own, leave the family, to take some legit job when we doing fine in this city we built from the ground up, and then when we do get word-by-mouth from your cousin - who, by the way, asked for permission to traipse away from our place - we hear you not even keeping the family name! You're Nicholas Wolfwood, boy," he snarled, yanking one of the chairs out and plopping down on it with great anger, "not a Nicolae Chapel, whatever the hell that is." He grabbed one of the exposed weapons and one of the worn rags piled in the table's smooth center, rubbing fiercely at the metal.
"I did what I had to, Papa," Nicholas answered in a carefully neutral tone, locking the butte of a different firearm firmly into place. "And, besides, I can't be your son forever. I do need to make my own decisions, form my own identity." He checked the sights of the rifle he held and frowned, setting it back to the table gently, oiled fingers absently moving to the open collar of his black shirt and thumbing the buttons into their adjoining slits. "And I bust my gut working to keep from getting canned, and I'd like it if you'd stop being sore as hell at me. I came back, didn't I?" His voice slipped out of his control near the end of his reply, twisting into a poisonous bit of sarcasm, and their father swelled up in a way similar to the zeppelins common in the coastal skyline.
"Well," Dominique interjected with a sweet smile, setting down a large silver dish of English toffees she had thoughtfully kept near the sink in case of an emergency such as this, "do keep in mind, Papa, that he didn't marry one of those Chinese girls out there in the west." She smiled at Nicholas, and he offered her a thin-lipped mirror of her expression that was cold and, in general, unresponsive. Her smile faded and she cleared her throat, watching with a careful eye as her husband was derailed by the sweets he loved so. "Meryl," she switched tracks, taking on a reproving tone, "you oughtn't be wearing your nightgown outside of your room."
"Of course, Mama," she replied automatically, gingerly taking one of the toffees and prying off the thin paper twisted around it. Popping it in her mouth, she studied her half-brother's jerking motions and considered the oddity of the weapons currently littering the kitchen, and groaned mentally. "You have a job?" she asked, pushing the toffee with her tongue into the side of her mouth, her words only marginally muffled.
"Yeah," he grunted, dropping the rag a second time and scraping his chair back noisily over the wooden floor, and he winced apologetically to the trio of glares he received. "I won't be using these, though," and he gestured loosely over the arsenal preventing Meryl from her breakfast. "Which reminds me, I'll be using the Thompson." A flicker of amusement took hold of his swarthy features, twitching the corners of his mouth into a faint, ironic grin that caught his younger sister's attention quickly though her father merely persisted in glowering. "And that," he added distinctly, accepting the wettened cloth Dominique passed to him and hurriedly removing the oil stains on his hands, "reminds me in turn: your friend, Miss Melissa Saralee, is at the Southeast Winchester Hotel."
"When did she arrive?" Meryl cried, startled, and the toffee caught in the roll of her tongue, garbling her question and choking her momentarily. "Aw, damn," she muttered, the words lost as she struggled to swallow the half-melted toffee and finally succeeded. Eyes watering, she glared weak fury at his smirking face.
"We happened to meet at one of those diners down in Maryland, and I gave her a ride up," he answered with that damned smirk still on his face. "She mentioned she was visiting a friend by the name of Meryl Wolfwood who was starring in a show, and I thought to myself, why, that just so happens to be the name of my baby sister."
"I'm not a baby, you punk," she retorted. "And, by the way, thanks for telling me earlier." She granted him a particularly dirty look, and he laughed, lifting his jacket from the hook near the door and quickly buttoning it up over his shirt. He habitually undid the cuffs, adjusting the buttons and fixing them over the end of the jacket's sleeved arms.
"Turn that damned Irish crap off," growled their father behind the sanctity of a large revolver, and their mother sighed reluctantly, clipping the radio off and plunging the kitchen into silence as Nicholas reached for his standard fedora. The door was twirled open with a quiet creak, and he exited into the smug dirt of the early morning Winchester air, as a sighing rain drifted silently down.
--
In retrospect, it was probably one of the many foolish things he was prone to doing in the morning before night had given way to the sun's creeping light, and he knew he had no one to blame but himself for the painful knot at the base of his spine. Knowing that did nothing for the sheer uncomfortable feel of it and, having checked out of the cheap motel after only three hours of dozing sleep in the lumpy bed, he tried his best to shift around in the seat. The airy bar was probably one of the better choices he had made, he thought happily while thumbing the sheets of yellowed paper delightfully blank of words and sipped at the mug of beer he had ordered.
He swore mentally it had nothing to do with the chorus line currently on stage, even though he kept glancing at them through the silver white of his glasses, and he tapped the sharpened tip of the pencil he held against the paper. Forcing his attention back to the creative matter at hand, he scraped the lead over the rough paper a few times in aimless lines, and mulled over what to write. Fingers tugged the mug closer to him and he peered into the dark amber depths, consulting his liquor for answers to questions he was still unaware of. He sketched his name a few times in his wisping handwriting, the letters long and thin, curved into narrow arrangements of the words that accompanied him as an eternal label. Rubbing at his eyes under the moon ellipses of his clear glasses, he exhaled and swore at the creative process in general.
The airy blonde set his pencil down beside the small blade used to sharpen it, the hard nub of the grey rubber eraser resting in his jacket a small discomfort against his thigh. "Don't need to erase anything when you can't even figure out how to start," he grumbled, dipping his fingertip in the beer. The froth was popping, the bubbles reluctantly melting into the brown liquid, and he stuck the wettened finger into his mouth. Bitter taste speared the smallest part of his tongue, and he sighed, shaking his hand dismissively and taking a draught of it into his mouth, choking it down with a grimace.
"Uck," he commented, sparing a brief wink at the waitress who looked at him curiously, "wine is so much better." Still, alcohol was alcohol, and he quickly emptied his chalky mug of the bitter drink, letting it drift into his gut and settle there in an ambiguous manner. Plucking the thin shaft of wood up once more, he doodled loose circles meaninglessly for a few seconds, unsure of what to do, what he wanted to impress on the world.
Dropping it again, he shook the rubber lump out of his pocket and wielded it dangerously, attacking the shadows on the paper with a vengeance. Away went the spiraling circles, wiped away by flaked shavings, and he scrubbed his name off with a deep concentration crossing his pale features. The paper was once more made blank, and he smiled.
Metaphorically, it made him blank, too, prepared him for a new start.
With this in mind, he cheerfully dumped the eraser next to the rolling pencil and the warning razor, twisting in the upholstered booth to watch the chorus girls currently flashing their upper thighs to the men. After all, he thought philosophically, if it was there, why not? Thusly, he propped his elbows on the swell of his knees and dropped his chin into his laced hands, the light of the several kerosene lamps catching on the loose threads of his white shirt. He wore little in way of the fancier garb many of the other men in the establishment were sporting, a simple combination of a slightly browned shirt and wrinkled trousers that had seen frequent exercise in the various jobs taken in Nevada.
He scratched idly at his hair, passing lean fingers through the gold yellow strands lining his scalp with their defined length, and he grinned, returning the smile the same waitress flashed in his direction. A rumble in his stomach reminded him of the state of his appetite, and he made a frantic, overreacting gesture for her to come over. The tall dark-haired woman nodded farewell to her customer and picked her careful way between the tables, clutching the pot of coffee like she might an unconscious shield.
"Can I help you?" she asked politely, her delightfully tanned skin contrasting with the crisp folded white of her blouse and skirt.
"Yes," he practically gasped, his chin hovering near the top of the table and his fingers grasping the shined wood as if it was the only thing preventing him from being trickled into nonexistence. "I need something to eat, and lots of it." Hopefully, he suggested, "A baker's dozen of butter rolls and doughnuts, separately, a double order of spaghetti-n-meatballs, something big with chicken in it, and a bottle of wine?"
She blinked her almond eyes, pencil poised over the small notepad she was holding in the crook of her elbow, the nearly empty coffee pot dangling from her fingers. "Are you meeting someone, sir?" she asked politely, trying to connect the order with the slender man beaming cutely at her.
"No," he explained. "I am trying to eat lightly, though." A frown crossed his face, and he straightened his back, pulling his sitting height up, and he asked, "Why, am I ordering the wrong things? The sign said this place has Italian food, and - oh, God, I entered the wrong restaurant!" He looked utterly horrified, the prospect of not being able to eat and therefore atone for his lack of sleep entering his mind with whispered terror, and he glanced at her, green eyes shimmering with comic fear.
"No, no, don't worry, the Silver Bell serves food," she said hastily, waving her hand in a placating manner. He relaxed instantly, the same brightly sunny twist of his lips replacing his worry, and he absently picked his pencil up. "I'll, um, just go tell the chef." She began walking away, looked over her shoulder quickly and noted his longing look, and filched a small woven basket of five butter rolls from the table of a man who was wholly engrossed with the dancing girls. "Here," she paced back hastily and set it abruptly on the table, pinning the corner of his papers with it. "To tithe you over."
He let her leave and sighed, pleased, nimbly selecting the largest one of the slick bits of airy baking and unceremoniously shoving its entirety into his mouth. "Oh, lovely," he sighed again, cheeks curved with his unabated smiling. "Such an aisling, lovely, lovely." He crammed two more into his mouth, swallowing the first and chewing the second dose, before he noticed several men were whispering amongst one another. A few glared at him, and he found he had the oddest feeling of 'run like hell, you dumb bastard.' Working his jaw very slowly, he reviewed what he had just said and the ethnicity that seemed to permeate the establishment he had chosen, and promptly broke into a cold sweat. "Oh, shit," he gulped in a garbled mumble, the rolls suddenly of the same consistency as moldy paste. Forcing them down, he clapped his hands together and reviewed his odds of making it out alive.
Well, of course: he chose the booth furthest from the entrance, though, at the time, it had not seemed quite as potentially fatal. He was in the corner tucked near the bar, given a diagonal view of the one entrance/exit - the kitchen aside - where it was placed strategically near the stage. "Well," he heard his own voice say in a falsely cheerful tone. "How are you fine gentleman doing?" The door swung open, admitting a tall adolescent in, a boy with short cropped hair and a round face shaded like dark sands, and he bit his tongue when he was tempted to call for help.
"You're Irish ain't you," one of the men said in the kind of conversational tone that brooked no argument when discussing whether or not the sky was preparing to rain. "One of those Irish rabbits."
"Irish?" he laughed, his voice squeaking just a bit too high for comfort. "What gave you that impression?"
"You're pale, you're blonde, and you just spoke Gaelic," the man informed him unkindly, as one of his somewhat burly companions cracked his knuckles forebodingly. "The Irish disease has been trying to take over our land for years, and I'll be damned if a grinning idiot takes over the stake we Italians fought for."
The boy that had just entered was watching with hooded eyes, and the lanky blonde mouthed various phrases regarding the sending of help much to his futility. "Um, well, you see," he began when it grew obvious the boy was too shadowed to see his silent pleas, "I, uh, it's quite funny, actually…" Wrong line, he thought with a yelp.
"He's part Sicilian," the boy offered in the back, and he started, as did everyone else in the room, blinking. Apparently the boy had seen him panicking, or he happened to be rather quick - not that it would have taken that Einstein guy to figure out he was in boiling water. The boy did have a remarkably light voice, and he squinted, trying to pierce the dark shadows with his bespectacled eyesight. "He's too tall to be Irish," the boy continued, stepping out of the light and claiming a single-seat table near where he had stood in the shadows. "Everyone knows the Irish are innately short, Mister Rodriguez, and you're Mexican, not Italian." The tone of voice slipped into humorous wry, and the boy shed the glistening, rain-streaked overcoat he was wearing, casting the heavy dust-colored cloth over the back of the small chair.
The boy, he thought it worthy of noticing, was wearing a skirt that brushed peeking knees. The peeking knees of a tall boy who just happened to be a short woman, and he felt his cheeks redden in a mixture of personal embarrassment and relief. Death by angry mob was not one of his favored activities by a long shot, and, to celebrate and calm his anxiety, he quickly stuffed the remaining two rolls into his mouth. The buttery airiness did much for soothing his hastily fraying nerves.
"Well," Mister Rodriguez reluctantly allowed, "he is sort of tall for an Irishman."
As mutters of consent and dissent dispersed throughout the room and the chorus girls picked up their job of serenading the room with flashing skin, the small woman with bobbed midnight hair stomped over the floor. He beamed sunshine happiness at his savior, making sure to gulp the remnants of baking down his throat, and greeted her with, "Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!" The idea of throwing himself at her feet was tempting, but he decided against it, for a variety of reasons, one of which included the very unpleasant look on her face.
Two petite hands slammed on the table with surprising force and he found, to his horror, he immediately shrunk meekly into himself, nearly pulling his knees to his chest for the sheer protection. If the damn table hadn't been in the way, he would have, but the cursed length of his legs caught on the wood.
"What," began the woman in the kind of voice that usually hailed before gruesome homicides, "the /hell/ are you doing in an Italian bar? Are you a complete idiot?"
"I was hungry?" he offered. "I'm part Sicilian?"
He came to the conclusion not much longer that he was not going to like the small woman, soft curves aside, when she gave him the sort of sharp look that questioned his sanity and ability to function in everyday life, much less his ability to breathe.
--
Disclaimer: According to the Surgeon General's best friend's cousin's roommate's ex-boyfriend's father's daughter's kindergarten teacher, this fic is an excellent source of Plutonium. Plutonium: it's radioactive! Unfortunately, no matter how rich in radioactive isotopes this fanfic is, it doesn't mean I own the characters in any form, manner, or way. But are you aware that, if the Internet quiz I took was accurate, I have Vash's personality? Yes, it makes eerie sense (until you consider I'm also a personality match, according to Internet tests, for Xellos Metallium and Spike Seigel, and then it makes no sense at all).
Author's Notes: This is very, very late, partly due to spring break, state testing week (ha! I love state testing, it's always easy), and procrastination. I procrastinate a lot, and I apologize. Forgive me? Anyway, I got halfway through writing this last week, then stopped for some reason. John Mayer's 'Why Georgia' somehow got me to finish this little chappie up. And, yes, I know I rushed the meeting, and, yes, I know it's choppy. Yay? I'll probably edit this later in the week and repost it, because I'm not entirely satisfied with it (but I did feel I had to post something, if only to appease Ryan and his slightly psychotic tendencies). On the other hand, I /did/ write an introspective 'One Piece' fic and four parts to a 'One Piece' parody of 'The Princess Bride,' so there's always that. I think.
Cultural Notes: Historically, especially in the northern part of the east coast, the Irish and Italian people have not had a fun time together. (My mum - who I used for research, bless her soul - says 'Gangs of New York' is an excellent interpretation of it.) As for their recognizing what Vash said (yes, that's Vash, even if I haven't said his name story-wise yet), if you ever hear someone who can speak Gaelic fluently just absently use a word off-handedly, you can tell they're Irish. Trust me. (For those wondering, 'aisling' translates as dream-vision and I used it out of context. So let's say Vash - who is Irish in the fic - speaks Gaelic, but not correctly in a grammar perspective.) On another subject, I referred to Nicholas as 'Nicolae Chapel' (or, rather, had the unnamed father refer to am as that). Back in the day (*grins*), it was easier to use a pseudonym and get away with it, and someone with mob connections would be more likely to use a new name (among many). I've considered the various ethnicities the characters could be in 'real life' (Italian for Wolfwood and Meryl, Irish for Vash, English for Milly, et cetera.), and I do think Wolfwood could pass as Russian (Nicolae is more or less Russian in origin). (By the way...Dominique-the-mother is not meant to be Gung-Ho Gun Dominique - it was just the name I chose. They're completely different people! ;] Or she got a new personality, either way.)
Replies: I know I said I'd do it this chapter, but I don't have time at the moment. I'm really sorry, and I hope you all know each and every review means a great deal to me. :] Especially considering most people don't seem to like alternaverses as a general rule. *winks* Is it still good/decent?
Chapter Three: introspective piece for Nicholas, Meryl and Vash don't get along for about a page, Milly dines with Meryl, and other things happen that I have yet to determine. Goodie! (Second…chapter…moved…too fast!)
Joke: 'Painted Dreams' is considered the first soap opera ever made (it was a radio program from the early 1930's), and the cast was mostly Irish. :]
by Memphis Lupine
--
At precisely eight o'clock in the morning, as the thick rain clouds stoutly refused to allow the sun ample room to stretch fiery fingers out, the Silver Bell opened for the weekend. Dono was by no means a foolish man and he had long discovered that, come the end of a week of work, many men were more than willing to waste a minor portion of their paycheck for drink and women. It was, he supposed as he rapped his knuckles on the dull wood of the door leading to the changing room, an escape from the stress of overtime and such to earn the money needed. When one of the girls yelled an incomprehensibly welcome, he wrapped his hand around the door handle, twisted the knob, and flung it open with a bang.
"Topaz, where's m'brush?" a slight woman in a red dress harkening to the flapper style popular in the twenties demanded, sweeping her naturally red hair over her shoulder and glowering as she swiveled in her heels. "I can't go out lookin' like this, y'know?" The girl in question, a lithe blonde with a flashy gold dress and a yellow hankerchief swathed about her neck, tossed the toiletry and she caught it.
"Hello, girls," Dono rumbled, thumbing his tie and the standard pinstripe suit folded over it. A chorus of greetings came from the ten odd girls, some glancing at him, others smiling, while a few otherwise ignored him. "Are you dolls about ready to go out and wow 'em?" He flashed his infamous grin, a charmingly nasty smirk that he used on most everyone, and the girl in red, stage-named Ruby, straightened from her quick chore. A mass of red curls went to her back once more and she looked at him warily.
"Mister Dono, sir," she began, hands tucking around the curve of her small hips, "you seen Sapphire? We gotta get on stage soon and she ain't here yet."
"Sapphire is always late," a green-coded girl, black hair bundled into a whispery braid, snorted carelessly, fixing the faux necklace wrapped around the stretch of her throat. "It's nothing to be worried about, you know she ain't gonna come unless she manages to kick that sleazebag she been sleepin' with out on his lazy ass." A thick tube of lipstick was quickly stolen from the girl on her left, who made a disgruntled sound and merely plucked a different tube from her beaded purse, and she, obviously known as Emerald, wound it out, putting it to the pout of her lower lip and sweeping it across. "And you know what those picture girls like to say: the show must go on!"
"How very considerate of you, Emmy," said Dono wryly, swiping a hand through his greased hair and nodding acknowledgement to each of the quietly gossiping girls as they filed out in tiptoeing steps behind the stage. "Speaking of the show, it starts in less than a minute," and he checked his golden pocket-watch in a rather pointed manner, "so I'd hurry if I was you."
More than one girl squealed anxiously, to be hushed by unappreciative older dancers, and they bit lips as they all vanished into the lifted wood held dark by closed curtains. Staring at the ticking hands of his watch, he stumped the other hand into his pocket and waited patiently, working his jaw steadily as if a piece of tobacco was clenched between his molars. The last resonant tick as the second hand struck the final note was timed exactly with the explosion of brass instruments and an ironically heavenly chorus of showgirls, and he smiled with satisfaction, snapping the slender lid over the pearl face and stuffing it into the pocket it was kept in. "Enjoy the show, boys," he said to himself, and he abandoned the littered room, closing the door at his back.
--
The sun's trickling light passed through the half-closed curtains sewn together of a filmy cloth reminiscent of glittered mists, and she wrinkled her face into the uneven folds of her pillow, one arm tugging around it to hold it closer to her cheek. As she tried to snatch whatever bits of peaceful warmth were left to her while reality slowly gained on her, she kicked her small legs from under the swathed quilt and prodded the floor with ginger toes. Though it was nearly summer, a bit of cold still managed to drift out of the darkness beneath her bed, and she disliked the smooth feel of polished wood under her bare feet in any case. A pair of satin slippers were found by her wandering feet, and she squirmed her heels into place, pulling eyes open reluctantly and slowly moving into a sitting position.
Adjusting the collar of her nightgown, she rolled her head from one shoulder to the other and cupped her hand over her mouth as a small yawn tipped out her throat. For a moment she remained motionless, fingers playing over her chin and the other hand palmed over the wrinkled sheets, and then she popped her head forward with a defiant snap, yanking the pillow into a nondescript flatness. She stood from the bed and jerked the sheets expertly, folding them and tucking the quilt around, and grasping the lapels of the curtains to pull them fully open. The stream of light that shone instantly over the roof opposing their house caused her to blink and squint a bit in order to fully recover, and she rocked back on her heels in a satisfied manner.
Out the door she went, crossing the carpeting rolled down the upper hall's wide corridor, and slipped a hand over the honey banister as she crept agilely, quietly, down the steps. "Good morning," she called to the few people crowded into the large den, cousins of intimidating presence and swarthy skin much like she. One nodded, absorbed in an elaborate game of chess with another as the third checked through small columns posted in simple type on the morning's newspaper, and she paused at the bottom of the stairs, glancing across into the sitting room on the other side. "Ben, you seen my folks?" she called.
The man perusing the newspaper looked up, dark-rimmed eyes showcasing his frequent insomnia and lack of physical attention, and he set his sharpened pencil down, poking a finger toward the swinging door that led to the kitchen. "Your pop is having it out with Nicky," he informed her in a tired voice, lowering his hand and picking the pencil up once more. "It's kinda ugly, no place for you."
"No place for a woman, you mean," she corrected without a trace of meanness, though she did take the time to grant him a particularly unpleasant look, and he paid little heed. Sweeping over the floor in her trailing nightgown and satin slippers, she tipped a few dark strands behind her ear and laid one hand firmly on the swinging door. She pushed it open firmly and, quite effectively, entered the rather tempestuous arguments that often occurred when her father and half-brother were in the same room as one another.
"--an't even write to your old man, tell him you're coming home after, what, three years, four?" her father was currently expounding, pacing in dithering circles like an animal too enraged to even walk normally. Occasionally, he struck his fist into his open palm, gnashing teeth with furious hopelessness, the bottoms of his trousers passing over the wood floor as he gave her mother the kind of look that demanded support or an answer. Dominique simply continued patiently dipping filthy dishes into the bubbles in the sink, scrubbing daintily at stains as she split her attentions between family dysfunctions and the reruns of 'Painted Dreams' pouring from the radio.
"Good morning, Papa," Meryl said pleasantly, knowing better than to get caught in the argument. She offered a kiss to her mother, who smiled in quick welcome and returned to listening anxiously to Irene and Sue's conversation. Her father paused for a few seconds to give her the kind of hand gesture that meant he was aware of her presence, and she pulled out one of the slender-backed chairs settled around the small round table. "Nicholas," she stated in a calm voice laced with sarcasm.
"Hn," he uttered distantly, scouring the surface of a small Luger pistol with a dirtied rag to clean away the streaks of powder dotting the metal tubing. Several firearms in various stages of disarray and assembling were scattered over the honeyed wooden surface, boxes of bullets left haphazardly open and a few shells rocked with slowing motion within the makeshift maze. "Morning," he added after a moment, dropping the rag to the table and locking the Luger back into place. Glancing down its length, he judged the distance between the pistol's mouth and her forehead, and she took it in as normal, pressing a fingertip to her eye.
"You ashamed of your family's own name?" her father resumed ranting, snapping his arms around wildly, his nose twitching with his rage. "First you go off on your own, leave the family, to take some legit job when we doing fine in this city we built from the ground up, and then when we do get word-by-mouth from your cousin - who, by the way, asked for permission to traipse away from our place - we hear you not even keeping the family name! You're Nicholas Wolfwood, boy," he snarled, yanking one of the chairs out and plopping down on it with great anger, "not a Nicolae Chapel, whatever the hell that is." He grabbed one of the exposed weapons and one of the worn rags piled in the table's smooth center, rubbing fiercely at the metal.
"I did what I had to, Papa," Nicholas answered in a carefully neutral tone, locking the butte of a different firearm firmly into place. "And, besides, I can't be your son forever. I do need to make my own decisions, form my own identity." He checked the sights of the rifle he held and frowned, setting it back to the table gently, oiled fingers absently moving to the open collar of his black shirt and thumbing the buttons into their adjoining slits. "And I bust my gut working to keep from getting canned, and I'd like it if you'd stop being sore as hell at me. I came back, didn't I?" His voice slipped out of his control near the end of his reply, twisting into a poisonous bit of sarcasm, and their father swelled up in a way similar to the zeppelins common in the coastal skyline.
"Well," Dominique interjected with a sweet smile, setting down a large silver dish of English toffees she had thoughtfully kept near the sink in case of an emergency such as this, "do keep in mind, Papa, that he didn't marry one of those Chinese girls out there in the west." She smiled at Nicholas, and he offered her a thin-lipped mirror of her expression that was cold and, in general, unresponsive. Her smile faded and she cleared her throat, watching with a careful eye as her husband was derailed by the sweets he loved so. "Meryl," she switched tracks, taking on a reproving tone, "you oughtn't be wearing your nightgown outside of your room."
"Of course, Mama," she replied automatically, gingerly taking one of the toffees and prying off the thin paper twisted around it. Popping it in her mouth, she studied her half-brother's jerking motions and considered the oddity of the weapons currently littering the kitchen, and groaned mentally. "You have a job?" she asked, pushing the toffee with her tongue into the side of her mouth, her words only marginally muffled.
"Yeah," he grunted, dropping the rag a second time and scraping his chair back noisily over the wooden floor, and he winced apologetically to the trio of glares he received. "I won't be using these, though," and he gestured loosely over the arsenal preventing Meryl from her breakfast. "Which reminds me, I'll be using the Thompson." A flicker of amusement took hold of his swarthy features, twitching the corners of his mouth into a faint, ironic grin that caught his younger sister's attention quickly though her father merely persisted in glowering. "And that," he added distinctly, accepting the wettened cloth Dominique passed to him and hurriedly removing the oil stains on his hands, "reminds me in turn: your friend, Miss Melissa Saralee, is at the Southeast Winchester Hotel."
"When did she arrive?" Meryl cried, startled, and the toffee caught in the roll of her tongue, garbling her question and choking her momentarily. "Aw, damn," she muttered, the words lost as she struggled to swallow the half-melted toffee and finally succeeded. Eyes watering, she glared weak fury at his smirking face.
"We happened to meet at one of those diners down in Maryland, and I gave her a ride up," he answered with that damned smirk still on his face. "She mentioned she was visiting a friend by the name of Meryl Wolfwood who was starring in a show, and I thought to myself, why, that just so happens to be the name of my baby sister."
"I'm not a baby, you punk," she retorted. "And, by the way, thanks for telling me earlier." She granted him a particularly dirty look, and he laughed, lifting his jacket from the hook near the door and quickly buttoning it up over his shirt. He habitually undid the cuffs, adjusting the buttons and fixing them over the end of the jacket's sleeved arms.
"Turn that damned Irish crap off," growled their father behind the sanctity of a large revolver, and their mother sighed reluctantly, clipping the radio off and plunging the kitchen into silence as Nicholas reached for his standard fedora. The door was twirled open with a quiet creak, and he exited into the smug dirt of the early morning Winchester air, as a sighing rain drifted silently down.
--
In retrospect, it was probably one of the many foolish things he was prone to doing in the morning before night had given way to the sun's creeping light, and he knew he had no one to blame but himself for the painful knot at the base of his spine. Knowing that did nothing for the sheer uncomfortable feel of it and, having checked out of the cheap motel after only three hours of dozing sleep in the lumpy bed, he tried his best to shift around in the seat. The airy bar was probably one of the better choices he had made, he thought happily while thumbing the sheets of yellowed paper delightfully blank of words and sipped at the mug of beer he had ordered.
He swore mentally it had nothing to do with the chorus line currently on stage, even though he kept glancing at them through the silver white of his glasses, and he tapped the sharpened tip of the pencil he held against the paper. Forcing his attention back to the creative matter at hand, he scraped the lead over the rough paper a few times in aimless lines, and mulled over what to write. Fingers tugged the mug closer to him and he peered into the dark amber depths, consulting his liquor for answers to questions he was still unaware of. He sketched his name a few times in his wisping handwriting, the letters long and thin, curved into narrow arrangements of the words that accompanied him as an eternal label. Rubbing at his eyes under the moon ellipses of his clear glasses, he exhaled and swore at the creative process in general.
The airy blonde set his pencil down beside the small blade used to sharpen it, the hard nub of the grey rubber eraser resting in his jacket a small discomfort against his thigh. "Don't need to erase anything when you can't even figure out how to start," he grumbled, dipping his fingertip in the beer. The froth was popping, the bubbles reluctantly melting into the brown liquid, and he stuck the wettened finger into his mouth. Bitter taste speared the smallest part of his tongue, and he sighed, shaking his hand dismissively and taking a draught of it into his mouth, choking it down with a grimace.
"Uck," he commented, sparing a brief wink at the waitress who looked at him curiously, "wine is so much better." Still, alcohol was alcohol, and he quickly emptied his chalky mug of the bitter drink, letting it drift into his gut and settle there in an ambiguous manner. Plucking the thin shaft of wood up once more, he doodled loose circles meaninglessly for a few seconds, unsure of what to do, what he wanted to impress on the world.
Dropping it again, he shook the rubber lump out of his pocket and wielded it dangerously, attacking the shadows on the paper with a vengeance. Away went the spiraling circles, wiped away by flaked shavings, and he scrubbed his name off with a deep concentration crossing his pale features. The paper was once more made blank, and he smiled.
Metaphorically, it made him blank, too, prepared him for a new start.
With this in mind, he cheerfully dumped the eraser next to the rolling pencil and the warning razor, twisting in the upholstered booth to watch the chorus girls currently flashing their upper thighs to the men. After all, he thought philosophically, if it was there, why not? Thusly, he propped his elbows on the swell of his knees and dropped his chin into his laced hands, the light of the several kerosene lamps catching on the loose threads of his white shirt. He wore little in way of the fancier garb many of the other men in the establishment were sporting, a simple combination of a slightly browned shirt and wrinkled trousers that had seen frequent exercise in the various jobs taken in Nevada.
He scratched idly at his hair, passing lean fingers through the gold yellow strands lining his scalp with their defined length, and he grinned, returning the smile the same waitress flashed in his direction. A rumble in his stomach reminded him of the state of his appetite, and he made a frantic, overreacting gesture for her to come over. The tall dark-haired woman nodded farewell to her customer and picked her careful way between the tables, clutching the pot of coffee like she might an unconscious shield.
"Can I help you?" she asked politely, her delightfully tanned skin contrasting with the crisp folded white of her blouse and skirt.
"Yes," he practically gasped, his chin hovering near the top of the table and his fingers grasping the shined wood as if it was the only thing preventing him from being trickled into nonexistence. "I need something to eat, and lots of it." Hopefully, he suggested, "A baker's dozen of butter rolls and doughnuts, separately, a double order of spaghetti-n-meatballs, something big with chicken in it, and a bottle of wine?"
She blinked her almond eyes, pencil poised over the small notepad she was holding in the crook of her elbow, the nearly empty coffee pot dangling from her fingers. "Are you meeting someone, sir?" she asked politely, trying to connect the order with the slender man beaming cutely at her.
"No," he explained. "I am trying to eat lightly, though." A frown crossed his face, and he straightened his back, pulling his sitting height up, and he asked, "Why, am I ordering the wrong things? The sign said this place has Italian food, and - oh, God, I entered the wrong restaurant!" He looked utterly horrified, the prospect of not being able to eat and therefore atone for his lack of sleep entering his mind with whispered terror, and he glanced at her, green eyes shimmering with comic fear.
"No, no, don't worry, the Silver Bell serves food," she said hastily, waving her hand in a placating manner. He relaxed instantly, the same brightly sunny twist of his lips replacing his worry, and he absently picked his pencil up. "I'll, um, just go tell the chef." She began walking away, looked over her shoulder quickly and noted his longing look, and filched a small woven basket of five butter rolls from the table of a man who was wholly engrossed with the dancing girls. "Here," she paced back hastily and set it abruptly on the table, pinning the corner of his papers with it. "To tithe you over."
He let her leave and sighed, pleased, nimbly selecting the largest one of the slick bits of airy baking and unceremoniously shoving its entirety into his mouth. "Oh, lovely," he sighed again, cheeks curved with his unabated smiling. "Such an aisling, lovely, lovely." He crammed two more into his mouth, swallowing the first and chewing the second dose, before he noticed several men were whispering amongst one another. A few glared at him, and he found he had the oddest feeling of 'run like hell, you dumb bastard.' Working his jaw very slowly, he reviewed what he had just said and the ethnicity that seemed to permeate the establishment he had chosen, and promptly broke into a cold sweat. "Oh, shit," he gulped in a garbled mumble, the rolls suddenly of the same consistency as moldy paste. Forcing them down, he clapped his hands together and reviewed his odds of making it out alive.
Well, of course: he chose the booth furthest from the entrance, though, at the time, it had not seemed quite as potentially fatal. He was in the corner tucked near the bar, given a diagonal view of the one entrance/exit - the kitchen aside - where it was placed strategically near the stage. "Well," he heard his own voice say in a falsely cheerful tone. "How are you fine gentleman doing?" The door swung open, admitting a tall adolescent in, a boy with short cropped hair and a round face shaded like dark sands, and he bit his tongue when he was tempted to call for help.
"You're Irish ain't you," one of the men said in the kind of conversational tone that brooked no argument when discussing whether or not the sky was preparing to rain. "One of those Irish rabbits."
"Irish?" he laughed, his voice squeaking just a bit too high for comfort. "What gave you that impression?"
"You're pale, you're blonde, and you just spoke Gaelic," the man informed him unkindly, as one of his somewhat burly companions cracked his knuckles forebodingly. "The Irish disease has been trying to take over our land for years, and I'll be damned if a grinning idiot takes over the stake we Italians fought for."
The boy that had just entered was watching with hooded eyes, and the lanky blonde mouthed various phrases regarding the sending of help much to his futility. "Um, well, you see," he began when it grew obvious the boy was too shadowed to see his silent pleas, "I, uh, it's quite funny, actually…" Wrong line, he thought with a yelp.
"He's part Sicilian," the boy offered in the back, and he started, as did everyone else in the room, blinking. Apparently the boy had seen him panicking, or he happened to be rather quick - not that it would have taken that Einstein guy to figure out he was in boiling water. The boy did have a remarkably light voice, and he squinted, trying to pierce the dark shadows with his bespectacled eyesight. "He's too tall to be Irish," the boy continued, stepping out of the light and claiming a single-seat table near where he had stood in the shadows. "Everyone knows the Irish are innately short, Mister Rodriguez, and you're Mexican, not Italian." The tone of voice slipped into humorous wry, and the boy shed the glistening, rain-streaked overcoat he was wearing, casting the heavy dust-colored cloth over the back of the small chair.
The boy, he thought it worthy of noticing, was wearing a skirt that brushed peeking knees. The peeking knees of a tall boy who just happened to be a short woman, and he felt his cheeks redden in a mixture of personal embarrassment and relief. Death by angry mob was not one of his favored activities by a long shot, and, to celebrate and calm his anxiety, he quickly stuffed the remaining two rolls into his mouth. The buttery airiness did much for soothing his hastily fraying nerves.
"Well," Mister Rodriguez reluctantly allowed, "he is sort of tall for an Irishman."
As mutters of consent and dissent dispersed throughout the room and the chorus girls picked up their job of serenading the room with flashing skin, the small woman with bobbed midnight hair stomped over the floor. He beamed sunshine happiness at his savior, making sure to gulp the remnants of baking down his throat, and greeted her with, "Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!" The idea of throwing himself at her feet was tempting, but he decided against it, for a variety of reasons, one of which included the very unpleasant look on her face.
Two petite hands slammed on the table with surprising force and he found, to his horror, he immediately shrunk meekly into himself, nearly pulling his knees to his chest for the sheer protection. If the damn table hadn't been in the way, he would have, but the cursed length of his legs caught on the wood.
"What," began the woman in the kind of voice that usually hailed before gruesome homicides, "the /hell/ are you doing in an Italian bar? Are you a complete idiot?"
"I was hungry?" he offered. "I'm part Sicilian?"
He came to the conclusion not much longer that he was not going to like the small woman, soft curves aside, when she gave him the sort of sharp look that questioned his sanity and ability to function in everyday life, much less his ability to breathe.
--
Disclaimer: According to the Surgeon General's best friend's cousin's roommate's ex-boyfriend's father's daughter's kindergarten teacher, this fic is an excellent source of Plutonium. Plutonium: it's radioactive! Unfortunately, no matter how rich in radioactive isotopes this fanfic is, it doesn't mean I own the characters in any form, manner, or way. But are you aware that, if the Internet quiz I took was accurate, I have Vash's personality? Yes, it makes eerie sense (until you consider I'm also a personality match, according to Internet tests, for Xellos Metallium and Spike Seigel, and then it makes no sense at all).
Author's Notes: This is very, very late, partly due to spring break, state testing week (ha! I love state testing, it's always easy), and procrastination. I procrastinate a lot, and I apologize. Forgive me? Anyway, I got halfway through writing this last week, then stopped for some reason. John Mayer's 'Why Georgia' somehow got me to finish this little chappie up. And, yes, I know I rushed the meeting, and, yes, I know it's choppy. Yay? I'll probably edit this later in the week and repost it, because I'm not entirely satisfied with it (but I did feel I had to post something, if only to appease Ryan and his slightly psychotic tendencies). On the other hand, I /did/ write an introspective 'One Piece' fic and four parts to a 'One Piece' parody of 'The Princess Bride,' so there's always that. I think.
Cultural Notes: Historically, especially in the northern part of the east coast, the Irish and Italian people have not had a fun time together. (My mum - who I used for research, bless her soul - says 'Gangs of New York' is an excellent interpretation of it.) As for their recognizing what Vash said (yes, that's Vash, even if I haven't said his name story-wise yet), if you ever hear someone who can speak Gaelic fluently just absently use a word off-handedly, you can tell they're Irish. Trust me. (For those wondering, 'aisling' translates as dream-vision and I used it out of context. So let's say Vash - who is Irish in the fic - speaks Gaelic, but not correctly in a grammar perspective.) On another subject, I referred to Nicholas as 'Nicolae Chapel' (or, rather, had the unnamed father refer to am as that). Back in the day (*grins*), it was easier to use a pseudonym and get away with it, and someone with mob connections would be more likely to use a new name (among many). I've considered the various ethnicities the characters could be in 'real life' (Italian for Wolfwood and Meryl, Irish for Vash, English for Milly, et cetera.), and I do think Wolfwood could pass as Russian (Nicolae is more or less Russian in origin). (By the way...Dominique-the-mother is not meant to be Gung-Ho Gun Dominique - it was just the name I chose. They're completely different people! ;] Or she got a new personality, either way.)
Replies: I know I said I'd do it this chapter, but I don't have time at the moment. I'm really sorry, and I hope you all know each and every review means a great deal to me. :] Especially considering most people don't seem to like alternaverses as a general rule. *winks* Is it still good/decent?
Chapter Three: introspective piece for Nicholas, Meryl and Vash don't get along for about a page, Milly dines with Meryl, and other things happen that I have yet to determine. Goodie! (Second…chapter…moved…too fast!)
Joke: 'Painted Dreams' is considered the first soap opera ever made (it was a radio program from the early 1930's), and the cast was mostly Irish. :]