Chapter 9: Red

So many times had Roxie run her pale fingers over the old photograph that it curled feebly around them, its black and white surface pulsing with a strange energy, but she wasn't looking at the picture anymore. What would be the point when the young smiling faces in it were tattooed into her mind, smiles turned garish by time and tragedy, when the name Vera Ryan danced across her consciousness like the ghostly tinkling of a long-gone bell?

Even if the fierce green laughter of mirth-narrowed eyes did not still ring in her head, Roxie's own blue ones wouldn't be staring at the picture any longer. She was too busy staring at Velma.

Velma, in a strange way, was not much different from the black and white photograph. Both were as mysterious and vague as the dark side of the moon and neither seemed exactly real. Both were like heroes of a wild myth, the idols of a dreamer strong enough to pave their stories with her words. But neither seemed realistic enough to reach out and touch, only to imagine and worship from a far. But tonight, the darkness was pealed from the moon, and the mysterious light now danced unveiled. Tonight, Velma Kelly was real. Roxie reached out and touched her arm.

"I guess you could say me and Vera had a lot in common from the start," said that voice from a distance. "Both the daughters of dirt-poor immigrants who were both good-for-nothing bums who drank gin like it was water and couldn't give a shit about us. We never knew our mothers. Vera's died in childbirth, and mine left my dick of a father like I'd always wanted to when I was three. Apparently, she'd been sleeping around for a year or two and the lucky vamp got knocked up and ran for it. I heard him yelling at her when he found out, but I ignored it. I've always known that big girls don't cry, and when you do, you're just asking for someone else to come around and break your heart. I've hated her all my life for leaving me behind with him, but I never really could hate the damn slut. Sometimes I remember her singing me to sleep and smiling at me like I was all that mattered."

Velma's voice broke as the strains of a raspy lullaby filled her ears. She looked at Roxie, who comforted her with eyes, then plunged defiantly on.

"All I know about her is what I was told, and my dear father never failed to mention how much I looked like her. He always hated me for it, too, and he never gave a half-cocked damn about hiding it. He was never even sure I was his child, but he did know that I was exactly like my old lady. Sometimes when he got really drunk, he'd think I was her, and nothing I said could make him think otherwise."

Her words hung in the air like moonlight, throwing the still angry scars and bruises into sharp relief before Roxie's eyes.

"Oh Velma," she murmured softly, reaching for her in the darkness, as if she could pull it all away with her fingers. But she couldn't say much more.

Velma was real now, no longer the girl from the black and white picture and the yellowing playbills, but the one akin to the truth. Roxie was seeing Velma in Technicolor now. She knew she had to open her eyes for both of their sakes, but she still wasn't sure she liked it.

"Veronica was always my father's favorite," Velma went on bitterly, saying the words father and Veronica like they stung her lips. "She was just like him, brainless, egotistical, and mean as a bearcat. She was always a little bitch, but she still made everyone sure how perfect and wonderful she was. The little brownnoser could get away with everything, and still pin it all on me. The louse could never keep her mitts off my business, so when I got pregnant, she knew about it."

Roxie gasped, unable to stop herself. "You, what?"

Velma smiled despite herself. "C'mon, Roxie. It can't come as that much of a shock to you! I never knew who the lucky Johnny who got me knocked up was, because I'd screwed every man from there to Lansing by then, but I was sure as hell I was pregnant. And she caught me throwing up right after Vera and I got back from the hospital. And since she could never keep that honking nose of hers out of my business, right after that she caught us performing in a local nightclub. So, like the damn snitch she always was, she went running to my father. She told him everything. And that night, he came home from work drunk."

Roxie's eyes went wide, and she stuffed down the exclamation fighting to get out, eager yet frightened to hear what Velma would say next. She could tell from the increasing hardness of the woman's face that she was drawing closer to a road that pained her to walk.

"Vera was there when he came home. I didn't think he'd be back until later, so we were both there, having a good laugh over all the socks we'd blown off at our latest act. He was more drunk than I'd ever seen him before, and he was mad as hell. He kept thinking I was my mother, because now that I was pregnant, he saw more of her in me than ever. He would occasionally realize it was me and yell at me about singing in the speakeasies and getting pregnant. He kept calling me a slut, calling me by my mother's name," Velma's voice wavered like the light of a dying candle, curling into smoke, lifeless.

"He always kept a gun in the house, for protection he said. And he was just so angry that night..." Her voice trailed off, sending shivers down Roxie's spine. "He wanted to kill me that night. He wanted me to die. And he tried. I kept telling Vera to leave. It wasn't her problem, but we were always more of a double act than was good for us."

Roxie felt herself shaking. She wished vividly now she had never looked at that picture, because she could see the story unrolling now before her eyes, knew what had happened before Velma told her, saw their faces all too clearly.

"I don't know if the bastard blamed Vera too, or if he was just so damn drunk it didn't matter to him which one of us he shot." Velma's voice was shaking with anger, and Roxie could feel it pulsating through her like fire. "I can still see him, eyes mad, advancing upon us with his gun, screaming like the damned." The words came out shaky now too, somehow stuck in her throat.

"What happened?" Roxie whispered in horror, even though they both knew she was asking a question she already knew the answer to.

Velma shook her head as if trying to clear it. Her amber eyes shone in the dim light like river stones, saturated by its eternal flow, except even stones never looked this dead. A rock could not look haunted.

"He killed her." The words dropped like stones into the current. Roxie saw the cat's face of Vera Ryan, all the laughter drained from it, standing tall and defiant then falling, falling down, fierce green eyes closed forever.

"I wanted to kill him! I wanted to watch him die! I wanted the goddamn bastard to burn in hell!" Her anger roared up like fire in a bellows. It was beyond screaming, beyond shaking, beyond swearing, beyond it all. It blazed in Roxie, too, then curled itself into the ashes of sorrow as quickly as it had roared up.

"I ran away before the trial against my father. I didn't even stay for her funeral. I just couldn't. I ran away through the rain, got as far away as I could. I thought if I ignored it, it would go away, but now I know what a damn fool I was to think I could hide from myself. I never even cried for her."

The grief in her eyes was unbearable.

"I thought I could be strong, that nobody ever had to know. I swore to myself I was tough, that I didn't cry. I didn't know anything, because you can't be strong all the time. You just can't."

Velma turned away. Roxie drew her closer, not about to let her slip away again. She held her firm and soft with her arms and her voice.

"It's not too late to cry."

The hotel room was quiet then, apart from the long overdue sobs of Velma Kelly and Roxie's gentle whispering. Yet the air buzzed with the rouge-red weight of the truth until morning found them fast asleep, blond on black, heads resting against each other, dappled by the scarlet rays of dawn.

Long, long one, I know! I apologize now for any possible repetitive metaphors. Two in the morning, need I say more? This may be the end, but I might write a final chapter just to tie up the loose ends. What do ya'll think? And many thanks to VKCF for betaing this one, because to go with whole two in the morning thing, me posting something without having someone edit it is pretty dangerous! And if you're nice and review...Evil grin I might write a companion or two... It's all up to you!