15. The Suit
suit n.&v.
-n. 1 a set of outer clothes of matching material
-v. tr. 1 go well with (a person's figure, features, character)
A limousine in Harlan County is not a usual occurrence and it most definitely is not something that Ava has ever seen pulling up outside of her house. The only people with that sort of money are the big shots at the mining company and-
Oh God.
Because everything official she connects with bad news and he's working for the company again and she's not sure how and there's a big black shiny car and she feels it, the roil in the pit of her stomach, and ohGodohGodohGodohGod-
The figure that gets out of the limousine is familiar by its walk, a silhouette against the flare of the headlights. They light up the stretch of ground rolling away from her house, sending the rabbits that had been feeding in the cool night air into a confused frenzy, running around each other before stopping, freezing in the white glare. The limousine turns, tyres crunching the rough covering of dirt and stone, passes into the night and he walks up the steps onto the porch, still that same way of moving, the quiet control, ever since she's known him.
She sags against the door-frame, relief and fury buckling her legs. He has no right to scare her like that, none at all and only after that does she think that, really, she has no right to be afraid and mad for him, at him. She pulls herself up.
It's a nice suit, she thinks, when she looks at him properly, and he should look good in it but somehow it doesn't quite work. He seems ... diminished. Shoulders hunched. It hangs on him like it belongs to somebody else.
'I ain't never seen a car so big in Harlan before,' she says when he reaches the top of the porch steps. 'Don't think I've ever seen one that big anywhere. I thought the President himself was coming to visit me.'
He remains just beyond the circle of light from the porch-lamp. 'It is a sight.'
Ava folds her arms, her weight settling on one jutting hip. He is restless and it courses off him, spiking on the night air. She tosses the hair away from her shoulders. 'Riding around all day in a big old limousine... I could do that for a job. Some girls have all the luck.'
'I cannot imagine that Ms Carol Johnson would agree to anything she deemed less befitting.'
Less befitting what? she wonders but keeps the smile in place. Of all the things he is, or has been, and in all the ways she has thought of him, she has never thought him bad-tempered. This is new. It feels like if he twists the wrong way, or any way, he'll break.
For her he has always smiled, or at least - for the most part, anyway - found a gentleness. She relies on that. Maybe that's why, she thinks - later - that she tries to tease him out of this humour.
'Maybe you'll be like one of those security consultant, y'know, like on all those TV shows.'
His head tilts back and there is a sort of smile around his lips: something wry and bitter and defeated and he looks too tired, tired right down to the bone, to do anything about any of it. 'Well, Ava, it is true that Ms Johnson has hired me because of my past.'
If she had not become so attuned to the cadences of his speech she would have missed that slight emphasis.
Because of, not in spite of.
He walks past her into the house and she decides that she hates Carol Johnson.
She takes a few moments out on the porch, taking in the air deep until its cool sweetness flows through her like a current, then she follows him into the house.
He's taken off the necktie and he stands, winding it, a noose tight around his fingers. She thinks longingly of the bottle of bourbon in the cupboard and the glorious numbing prickle against her lips, sliding down her throat, spreading through until everything is blotted out, or at least softened by a warm haze that takes the edge off the unbearable. But she's keeping it for emergencies, and there will be emergencies, she knows, and they aren't really there with this, not quite. He puts the roll of dark fabric down on the table and it unspools slightly, a dull gleam under the lamplight.
She wishes he'd taken more of their money, enough so that he wouldn't have to go back there, enough so that they could close the door on the world and let it all just slide by.
They.
The word hammers in her head and she tries to ignore it.
Without the tie but with the shirt collar still buttoned up he seems more himself again, shoulders loosened, straightening, the still centre of the thing she's trying to pretend she doesn't carry around with her all of the time. He takes in a breath and it shakes through him; when he turns and finds her watchful eyes there is a moment where nothing happens and then he pulls up a smile, just for her.