The old family cuckoo clock ticked along the hall, hiccuping out moments in time rapidly transforming the present into the past. Interrupting the vivid silence like little jabs of a needle poked through fabric in search of a buttonhole.
The small kitchen of the brownstone had an even smaller kitchen table, accompanied by just two rickety chairs. Mab shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the creaking irritating but also grounding.
Across from her, David tapped his fingers nervously on the table and Mab felt a flash of an impulse to swat at his hands, but instead curled her hands together into a woven net. Restrained, composed, she mulled over the brief conversation in her head as she still tried to grasp the implications.
Somewhere above their heads, Christine jumped down from a high surface with a skittering of claws on hardwood. David looked up but Mab did not.
Mab looked down at her cold cup of tea, mostly abandoned since she had sat down at the table some thirty minutes prior. "Okay." Mab steepled her fingers under her chin, giving her uncle an appraising stare. "Okay. Let me make sure I've got this straight."
She paused a long time, running the situation through her head like trying to do a puzzle in her head without touching the pieces. "So, when you told me about the Poet Laureate program and I told you I wasn't interested, you went to apply for just yourself."
David nodded. "That's right."
She rubbed at her face, hand covering her mouth for a moment as she turned her gaze down to the table. "But at some point you decided I should also be applying, so you tried to do it for me. And," Mab took a long-suffering breath, releasing it slowly in an attempt to calm herself before continuing, "in doing that you accidentally submitted my poem… with your name."
"...right," David confirmed.
Mab nodded slowly. "And it won."
"And it won."
It should have been an exciting feeling.
But Mab reigned herself in. She pulled in the quick thrill of joy at the briefest confirmation of the music of her soul.
"When do they want to hear back?"
"Today. There's supposed to be a reception next Friday so they need time to get everything printed, and…" David trailed off, picking up again with a swift breath and heightened energy; "I'm sure if I just let them know there was a mistake-"
Mab cut him off with a sharp raise of her hand. "They don't care, David. They're just going to see plagiarism and revoke the offer." She tapped her fingers against the table. "You should take the offer."
David looked aghast. "But it's your poem!"
"I'm not a poet anymore, remember? I'm an editor. And as an editor that frequently reviews your work I'm telling you to take the job, and take the money, because you need it." She stood quickly, the legs of her chair scraping against the tile floor. She paused in the doorway, fingers trailing long the woodgrain. "Which one was it?"
"Which one… ?"
Mab nodded her head. "My poem - which one won the contest?"
"Oh - Prayer for Parity." David grimaced.
"Of course." She laughed harshly, sweeping from the room with a bitter taste in her mouth. "Ten pounds more." She needed to retreat, to process the strange feeling that felt so much like grief but carried the absolute weight of crushing disappointment in its arms.
Mab paused halfway up the stairs, panting heavily as she fought for meaningful air. Rather than waiting until she properly caught her breath she forged onwards, forcing her way up the stairs. The world spun a bit as she reached the top and she was forced to press a hand to the walls to make sure she didn't tip backward down the stairs again.
She made it to her crowded room without incident, narrowly avoiding tripping over a still yet unopened box from her move into the brownstone to unceremoniously flop over onto her bed.
Her comforter had lost the smell of home. It had smelled like the expensive detergent her mother had loved - a little luxury in the pile of bills - and the sun-dried crispness that she'd savored. Now it smelled like the dust that collected in the corners and a bit of Christine's fur.
She lay face-down on her bed for an indeterminate length of time, liens from her poem ringing hollowly in her ears. Ten pounds more. Her whole body felt heavy; overburdened, overtaxed, overdrawn.
A weight settled on the bed next to her. "I really am very sorry, Mab," David offered his condolences.
"I know," she mumbled into her comforter. She turned her head to look at her uncle. "I just don't think there's a better representation of irony in my life."
David held out a glass of water and a handful of pills - she must have lain in bed for hours if he was offering her evening medications. "They want a draft of my remarks by tonight. Do you think… you could... help me?"
"Of course," Mab reassured, sitting up and downing her pills with a quick swig of water. "What do you have so far?" she asked.
David handed her a lined notepad with a single line remaining among many that had been crossed out: Ladies and Gentlemen of the September Foundation…
Mab looked up, amusement scrawled on her face. "That's all you have?"
He snatched the pad of paper from her hands, spluttering in embarrassment. "You of all people should know that I can't write under pressure!"
Laughable, but in a way that lightened her burden, Mab wondered how different certain parts of her upbringing would have been if she hadn't lived so far away from her uncle. He was just this stereotypical writer; slightly overweight, sporting a respectably bushy moustache and beard, holed up in an old brownstone surrounded by his books and his grouchy, unlovable pet.
"I'm sorry," Mab said gently, holding out a gentle hand for the pad of paper, "I shouldn't have made fun. May I?"
David surrendered the paper slowly, but quickly handed Mab a pen from across the room when she asked.
"Did you have a good morning, at least?" he asked, smoothing his beard in what she was learning was his most common nervous tic.
"Yeah. I did." Mab smiled, clicking her green pen a few times. "Okay. Let's get to work."
Another day, another gray autumn day that lingered on the edge of brutal New York winters, Mab swept through her bedroom in search of the right set of earrings to match her purple gown.
Excitement and anticipation yielded a frenetic set of movements, Mab throwing papers left and right until she could open the right box and find her mother's amethyst drop earrings. "Found you, bastards!" Mab declared.
She stepped into her dress shoes, hidden under the long cascade of beaded silk, and gave an experimental twirl to make sure she wouldn't trip on the hem. Her bedroom tilted slightly and Mab held out an arm for extra balance. She didn't want to trip and crack her head on something right before attending David's Poet Laureate reception.
"Mab!" David yelled from the kitchen, "the car is here, have you seen my glasses?"
The aforementioned car honked from the street, the driver evidently not willing to come up the stoop and ring the doorbell in the light rain painting the street in watercolor.
"Check the mantle!" Mab called from the upstairs landing, trying to get the earrings properly seated in her ear without falling down the stairs.
"Found them!" David called, lowering his voice as Mab descended the stairs. "Oh, don't you look lovely!"
Mab curtsied on the bottom step, more of a bob than anything, enjoying the clicker-clack of beads on the wood floor as her dress skimmed the floor. "Thank you; it was mom's but it fits me pretty well."
"Purple was her favorite," David sighed wistfully. He pressed a hand to his heart. "You look so much like Andrea."
Mab coughed to clear the tightness from her chest, but David putting a hand on his heart seemed to draw attention to the item he was missing. "You forgot a tie, David!" Mab laughed. "Hang on, I'll get one from upstairs."
She jogged up the steps, the heavy beading of her dress whispering around her legs. As she reached the top of the stairs the floor began pitching slightly side to side, and her skin prickled with cold.
She stumbled, her feet tripping over the memory of how to navigate stairs, and she crashed down on the upper landing. THe beading of her dress dug into her knees like crouching down on a bed of rice.
Mab could hear her uncle calling her, and could only vaguely see the concern in his eyes as he helped her to her world made more sense close to the ground, but she was overly aware of the gasping breaths she was trying to take and the burning ache in her chest.
David guided her back to her bedroom, his arm a protective railing as she eased down to sit on her bed. He waved a hand in front of her face, made her count fingers as he held them up.
Mab was struck with an odd sense of deja vu mixed with painful longing. Another day in the rain, another day between narrow stacks of books, another concerned face close to hers and a warmth of spirit too genuine to deny.
She pushed David's hand away from her face, declaring with some difficulty "I'm fine; we need to get into the car or it'll leave without us."
But David caught her arm as she sat up and immediately pitched to one side. She was panting from the exertion, screwing her eyes shut as nausea bubbled up with vertigo. "Mab, I think you need to stay home."
She knew he was right, of course, but that didn't make it hurt any less to hear. A burden, again. Something that needed to be left at the side of the road to make sure that David, at least, could reach the finish line. "You have to promise to tell me all about it," she insisted, frustrated tears welling up in her eyes.
The car honked from the street, the driver hired by the September Foundation clearly growing impatient.
"I'll be right back." David squeezed her hand as he helped her lean back again. "I'll tell the driver I'll be out just as soon as I get some medicine for you."
Mab rubbed at her face, wiping away the beginnings of her tears of self-pity, taking deep breaths to steady herself as David trotted down the stairs. She was going to have to be the strong one here; her uncle wasn't the type to make hard choices like this was about to demand.
Deep breaths calmed her churning stomach as David returned with the overflowing plastic box of medications, some older than her tenancy in New York, some newly filled.
David looked back and forth between the collection of bottles, distress growing in his face with every passing moment as he tried to consult Mab's dense medical guidelines and seemingly found no clarity.
"How did Andrea keep this all straight…?" he mumbled.
Mab shrugged. "I'm pretty sure she followed her gut. Every doctor I've ever had gave a different opinion, so she just sort of merged them into her version of best practice."
That didn't seem to give him any comfort, and her uncle seemed hesitant to give her anything.
The car honked; longer and more insistent this time. Mab patted David's hands, still trying to decide between medications. "I'm sure it's just the end of the Cipro," Mab reassured. "It did this last time, too. Just leave the box and I'll take something if it gets worse."
"Are you sure?" David asked, already moving to stand, "because I can cancel if you need me to stay."
"Don't you dare!" Mab cried, startling him. "We worked hard on that speech, and you had better not give them any reason to ask any questions!"
"You're right." David gulped, clearly following the train of thought. "Call me if you need anything, okay?"
"Go, go!" Mab replied, swatting him away.
He chuckled at her enthusiasm, likely taking it as a sign that all was truly well, and bid her goodbye from the stairs. She made sure to listen for the jingle of keys as he left, and the rattle of the deadbolt turning.
The townhouse fell quiet save for the light rumble of rain on the roof above.
Mab rolled onto her left side, trying to keep the nausea from bubbling up higher in her chest. The narrow window looked out into a slim alley; her view restricted to the neighbor's brick wall and a little fall of rain.
All that I can carry, ten pounds more.
The storm grew stronger, painting the barely-dotted bricks a deeper red and running long rivers down the window. Mab stared blankly out the window, waiting for the water to pour through the window, to fill the room, to swallow her in ice-cold ripples of liquified time.
Mab rolled onto her back and rubbed at her face. She could feel the lingering marks of her pitiful tears. This was nothing new, she'd missed out on things before because she couldn't keep up; she shouldn't have let it upset her this much.
Mab reached blindly for her phone on her bedside table and checked the time, only to find that she'd been staring out the window for over an hour. David would have started his acceptance speech already.
Mab swiped through her short list of apps, not really settling anywhere in an idle disinterest. Her eyes flickered to the window, wondering to herself. She tapped on the screen like she might tap on a table, and accidentally pressed the name of the contact twice, commanding the phone to dial while she was distracted.
"Shit!" she swore, rushing to end the call before it connected.
Too late, the receiving end of the call picked up, answering with a brusque, "Yeah."
Mab stared at the screen, confused. She had accidentally called Steve, and the voice was definitely not Steve. "Uh, is this Steve's phone?"
The smooth female voice answered again. "It is." The line sat silent, and while whoever answered the phone didn't speak any more or clarify anything at all, Mab could hear distant and muffled conversation.
"Can… can I talk to him?" she mumbled.
"Sure," the woman purred. "What's your name?"
"Mab. Mab Dumont." She nearly stumbled over her own name.
"Mab," the woman repeated slowly, turning the name over like an insect to be examined. "Do you know, Mab Dumont?"
"Do I know… what?" She frowned.
"Do you know?" the woman repeated.
It took her a minute, but Mab finally realized who she was talking to. She'd heard the voice only once, during Congressional hearings about two years ago.
The Black Widow.
Mab gulped, screwing up the remnants of courage inside her. "Yes. I know." It would be useless to lie.
"How long?" the Widow asked.
"Since we met. I'm not blind." That made the widow chuckle for a moment and Mab felt quite proud of that.
"If I see anything in the news about secrets or scandals do you know whose door I'll be knocking on?" The threat wasn't even veiled.
"Mine. And I wouldn't - I won't!" Mab declared.
The Widow seemed interested. "Why not? You can make a lot of money that way."
"Because…" Mab searched for the right words to express the utter horror and self-loathing the mere concept inspired. "Because then he'd never get to be just Steve ever again."
The answering side was silent. Mab chewed on her lip, wondering if she had said the right thing.
"Steve!" the Widow called faintly on her end. "Call for you."
Mab let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding in a big rush, relieved that she'd passed whatever test the Widow had been applying.
The phone made a distressed sound as it changed hands on the other end of the connection, and Mab's heart raced instantly as Steve finally spoke. "Mab?"
"Hi," she said with a wan smile, not that he could see it. "Am I interrupting something?"
"Just some hand-to-hand practice ." He wasn't even breathing fast. "Everything okay?"
"It's stupid, but…" How could she begin to describe the reason for her call? A terrible few days had led to an even worse one, and she was all but confined to her bed in a sea of self-pity.
But Steve had the perfect answer. "It's raining."
It was raining, and she was laying on her bed in a dress her mom had once worn to a party back when things had been more normal. It was raining, and Mab couldn't begin to describe the Herculean effort it would take for her to sit up and change into anything else. It was raining, and the universe seemed to be laughing at her pain. "Yeah."
"You know," the background noise faded, "you can call when it's not raining."
"I don't want to bother you. You're doing important stuff - secret military contractor stuff."
"Trust me, you're not." Mab could hear a gentle click of a door closing on Steve's end. "It's been a long day."
Mab could only imagine. "It's going around, then."
"What happened?" he asked gently.
"I…" Mab choked a bit on her words. "Have you ever had anything happen that just perfectly illustrates that God has a terrible sense of humor?"
"Yes." He chuckled, and Mab remembered who she was talking to and felt immediately horrible. Of course he would understand; he was the man out of time, and here she was feeling sorry for herself over missing a party.
Mab set her head down on the table and inwardly groaned. "Can we talk about something else?"
"Sure," Steve said, "read any good books lately?"
Mab chuffed. "You joke, but the answer is no - I'm proofreading this terrible, uh… there's no good description for it except that a few pages in I half expected it to be written in crayon."
"Is that... bad?"
"Hang on, let me find it." Mab switched the phone to her other ear so she could hold it in place with her shoulder.
She rolled over, using her free hand to blindly rifle around through a stack of manuscripts on the floor next to her bed until she found the aforementioned disaster. "Alright - so this book is supposed to be an in-depth analysis of the Russian Revolution, but listen to this."
Mab cleared her throat and began to read. "Although many Russians wanted a revolution, no one expected it to happen when and how it did. On Thursday, February 23, 1917, women left work in their Petrograd factories - Petrograd is misspelled, by the way - and flooded the street in protest. The following day, more than 150,000 men and women took to the street. Numbers increased the following days until by Saturday no one was working. Czar Nicholas II - which is somehow also misspelled - was not in Petrograd at the time but heard reports of protests, which he did not take seriously even as incidents of police and soldiers firing into the crowds soon became reports of mutiny. By March, it was obvious that the Czar's rule was over."
Mab tossed the manuscript down and rubbed at her eyes. "Typos aside, did that stunning and moving paragraph give you any idea why people were revolting, or why it was so clear that Czar Nicholas was forced to abdicate?"
There was an odd sound on Steve's end, but it cut short fairly quickly as Steve spoke. "Not a clue."
"Exactly. That… vague nonsense," she sighed, "is supposed to be the crux of whatever point he was waffling toward."
He hummed. "Sounds like you've got a lot of work ahead of you to try and help fix it."
"Tell me about it. It's never-ending." Mab rested her head against the headboard of her bed, watching as Christine skulked past her open bedroom door, yowling faintly around a toy in her mouth that she carried around the empty hall. "This must sound painfully banal; oh crocodile tears, the editor is upset that she has to edit. But enough about me," Mab pivoted, "what did you think of The Martian Chronicles?"
A static-like sound indicated a rough sigh. "Kind of grim, actually. Like… we keep making the same mistakes over and over, and we can't see it until it's too late."
Mab bobbed her head and regretted it as a bit of vertigo came screaming back. She bit her tongue to distract from the rising nausea, which made for an unpleasant pause before she could safely speak without fear of throwing up. "Yes, well; welcome to Science Fiction. That's pretty much the running theme."
Having picked up on a sour peeve in her mind, she continued, rambling; "I think all reading should devastate us a little. Whether it's by making us yearn for the better parts of a life we can't have, or a desperate appreciation for the little pieces we do. It's the music and the art that pick up other pieces of our souls. I wish…" Mab stopped herself, realizing she had gone on a bit of a tangent.
"What?" Steve asked.
Mab shook her head. "It's beyond silly and doesn't warrant mentioning, and besides; I should let you go."
"Tell me what you were going to say first," he insisted.
Even though he had no way of seeing her flushed face, Mab worried it was somehow translated into her voice. "I wish we were just a little closer to California, because then I could make you go to this museum by the sea. I've never been there, but I've seen enough pictures and read about it, and… it would be so amazing. They have this pipe organ built into the structure of the foyer, so when you step into the museum you can walk inside the music."
He didn't say anything as she trailed off and Mab grew self-conscious. "Steve? Are you there?" She checked the phone to make sure she hadn't been accidentally disconnected, and nearly missed his reply.
"It sounds beautiful."
Mab's face was too warm. "I should let you go. I've used up enough time waxing poetic about the arts. I'm sure you need to go show someone how not to break their hand on someone's face."
"We've got that part pretty well covered. Before you go, can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"About this million dollars…"
Mab had to laugh. "Okay, what about it? Have you figured out what you would do?"
Steve's tone changed a little, like someone leaning into conversation with interest. "I need a little help. Why can't I just buy things and leave it at that? I could definitely give away a million dollars-"
"Absolutely not!" Mab ordered. "You have to make something - something for yourself. Figure out how to be selfish, Steve."
"I'll be honest - that's a little out of my wheelhouse." He didn't sound deterred, even as he said otherwise.
Mab smirked. "Then a thought exercise is the perfect place to start."
"How'd you do it?"
"Me? I'm a perfect human being with no flaws whatsoever. It was entirely easy for me," she snarked.
"Yeah, your modesty puts all others to shame," he sarcastically agreed.
"Exactly. I'm glad you understand." The odd sound from before repeated on Steve's end. "What is that sound?"
"That would be a few very nosy coworkers continually checking on why I'm not at training," Steve said. "They kept trying to interrupt so I locked the door. So… they're picking the lock."
"Oh my god, that's too much!" Mab laughed heartily, the image of a cluster of Avengers crouched in front of a door, spying through a peephole too hilarious to forget. "I'll let you go now, for real. Please tell them I said 'hello' even though we've never met."
"Absolutely not," Steve said, "that would only encourage them."
Mab laughed harder, fighting hard against it turning into a cough. "Go, Steve! God only knows what they'll do if I don't let you go."
"Fine, but promise me something." The seriousness of his tone had her heart skipping dangerously.
"O-okay," Mab stammered.
"Don't wait until it's raining to call me again."
"Okay," Mab agreed, her cheeks warming further.
"Good. Bye, then."
"Bye, then," Mab repeated.
She hung up and let the phone slip from her fingers and bounce against the bed. Mab pressed her hands to her face, giggling like a much younger girl as she tried to pat the heat away with her cold hands.
She rolled onto her side to look at the rain falling against her bedroom window. The storm was showing no signs of letting up and Mab couldn't care less. The beading of her mother's dress pressed uncomfortably into her hip, and Mab couldn't care less. The room grew dark as evening drew long, and the only light coming into the room came from a streetlamp at the end of the alley, casting fluctuating shadows through the ripples of water on her window, and Mab couldn't care less.
Rain had become this huge barrier in her life - the curbs and gutters both literal and metaphorical always grew swampy when it rained. Too difficult to manage around, she had learned to avoid the tough times when it rained.
But today, she was happy it had rained.
A/N: And that's ten! Ten chapters in is usually my first "turning point" for stories. So what foreshadowing have you caught so far? I think I've just about foreshadowed about three-quarters of the major plot twists, and the other quarter will come before the next turning point. Tell me in your review what you think you've spotted!
To jump ahead of one question I'm sure is coming: yes, Prayer for Parity is a "real" poem for this story. It's fully written, and I'll be dropping bits here and there before you get it in its full context in a future chapter.
I love my reviewers! LisaPark, Xanderseye1, cHoCoLaTe-RuM, Flours, K Lynx, LucyBlue, huffle bibin, inperfection, cameron1812, and nekokairi!
PLEASE REVIEW!