Jude held his breath as he knocked on Pepper's door.

She answered awkwardly, looking at his feet, then his eyes. Like a helpless child. There was a lot of dark makeup on her face, but her lips were bright red.

She was wearing a black dress, tight around the waist but loose around her legs. She was wearing high heel shoes that matched.

Jude noticed all this in about three seconds.

"Uh, hey." He waved pathetically. "I was wondering if you were going to the gig tonight."

She looked at him, up and down, feeling kind of ashamed that he had found her like this. "No." She answered finally. "I cant, I'm…"She looked away. "Busy." She said finally.

"Oh." He looked away. "Work?" he joked.

She blushed underneath the makeup. "Yes." She said shiftly and quietly.

"Well, if you get back in time for the gig, or something, I'll be there, and Max, and… Prudence. And Jojo. Obviously. Uh… It would be a good opportunity to meet everyone…"

She looked away. "I don't think so. I was against the whole 'new tenant' thing. I try not to get too attached to people."

He looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Oh, uhm, okay."

"You're sweet, though." She said, her voice softer. Jude looked up. "I really have to get going." She kissed his cheek and walked past him, not grabbing a jacket to cover her bare shoulders as she walked out the door.

Jude brought a hand up to his face, feeling where she had kissed him. It felt like his cheek was on fire, he was so red. He sighed shortly then walked quickly to his room to prepare for the gig.

----

"Fifty."

"Fifty??" The man yelled. "Is this a joke?"

"Fifty for a throw, One-fifty for the whole night."

Pepper looks down, ashamed. She felt humiliated in this dress. She felt humiliated being bargained over.

"I'll give you 75 for the whole night."

Jared put a hand under Pepper's chin. She looked up.

"Is that okay?" he asked her quietly.

Jared was a large man. He had dark, curly hair that fell around his face and his blue eyes. He might have been handsome before, but now he looked quite strange, like he wasn't meant to be inside of that body.

Pepper blushed at his touch, then turned away. "Fine." She hated all-nighters.

"Do I pay you?"

"You pay her." Jared instructed, putting a hand on Pepper's shoulder and pushing her slightly forward to the man, almost hungry with lust.

"In advance." Jared added before the man could lay a hand on her.

The man groaned loudly and then reached in his pockets for the money.

Soon after midnight, Pepper left with Kelsey, which was the man's name.

His apartment was messy, littered with cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. He obviously had a lot of issues, so Pepper tried to make her way without messing anything up.

"Take off your dress." Kelsey instructed her.

She sat on the edge, slowing slipping off the black strap, wondering where Jude was. She wanted to be in his arms so badly right now. She wanted to feel his touch, breathe in his scent, hear his voice.

It was kind of ridiculous, because she barely knew him. But she was drawn to him, she felt fine around him where everywhere else felt horrible.

And ironically, he wasn't very far away. He was actually on the street below the apartment room that Pepper was trapped inside for the night, talking to a girl known only by the name of Lucy Carrigan.

"Could you turn on the radio?" Pepper asked quietly, pulling the rest of her dress off her fragile body. "I, uh… I saw someone outside. I don't want… I don't want to go to jail or anything."

Kelsey walked over to the bed and pressed it on. A song played throughout the tiny apartment, tinkering.

Roxanne

You don't have to put on that dress tonight… those days are over…

Pepper blushed at the song and then changed it quickly. She couldn't stand it.

A small, tinkering, rock and roll song bared through the tiny speakers, but it couldn't play over the squealing of the bed, begging to stop, pleading to leave it alone.

But the night kept on, until the early sunrise that set the room on fire.

----

"Here's fifty." Kelsey shoved a bill in her face. "A tip. You can keep it if you stay for one more."

Pepper, feeling the tears well up in her eyes, pushed the dollar bill back at him.

"Good night, sir."

Then she walked out as quickly as she could, avoiding anyone who might see her. There were life sentences for prostitutes at the time.

----

"Shouldn't have dropped out of college, Max." Lucy stated obnoxiously. But her voice still shook all over the place. She held her chin in her hand and watched him read it.

"Damn. You had that whole… Ivy League thing going for you. And your father's a lawyer and shit…"

"Max," Jude interrupted their new-found-friend to ask him, "What exactly does it say?"

"It says I have to report to an induction centre on the seventh." Max placed the paper on the table like it was a joke.

"Bummer." One of her friends reacted, avoiding awkward silence.

Max sat back in his chair, secretly trying to hold back tears. When he spoke, he was afraid the fear in his voice would shine through. He didn't let anything his friends say get into him. He heard what they were saying, but it couldn't convert into his mind… he was gone.

He felt himself fill with anger. Anger with stupid decisions, with the government, with his unsympathetic friends. He grabbed the paper and a lighter sitting nearby, and lit it on fire.

Suddenly things got very serious. Jude laughed, but Lucy nudged him, warning him.

Jojo, the oldest out of all of them, spoke in next to a hum. "You can burn that paper, boy, but you still gotta show."

----

"You're in late." Jude commented lazily, leaning over a piece of work, only pausing to look up at Pepper, walking through the door.

Her makeup was washed off, and she was wearing her purple jacket again.

She stared at him, awkwardly and shocked. "It's nine."

Jude twisted his lip, biting it to stay in place. "Is it?"

"Have you been up all night?"

He finished a few lines, than looked up. "More or less. It's been a troubled night, the Carrigan's were up."

"Carrigan's?"

"Max." He explained. "And his sister, Lucy."

Pepper paused for a moment before hanging up her jacket on her usual chair. "She's not moving in here, is she?"

"'Fraid so."

Pepper looked down, feeling hate rise up in her throat.

"People aren't too bad." Jude said, shrugging, putting his charcoal at the edge of the table, watching it roll back towards him. "This table is fucking crooked…" He muttered to himself, putting the charcoal back on the edge, watching it roll back.

He leaned under the table, trying to find out what was making it so slanted.

"What the…" He mumbled, not focused on the table, but now on the purple jacket. Bills spilt out of the pockets. They were stuffed with money.

He brought his head up immediately, hitting the table.

Slowly, holding his head in pain, he brought it around the table and back to where it belonged. "Where did you…"

She blushed, again, and grabbed her jacket. "It's nothing, I just…" She sighed. "Work."

"What's your job?" He asked, his eyes wide, partly from the shock of the impact, partly from the shock of seeing so much money when he could barely afford to feed himself.

She turned away. "Family business." She replied bitterly. Then she walked into her room, with less difficulty then before. The door still slammed, however, and Jude felt hurt even though he knew it was the clothes pushing the door shut, pushing him away.

He looked at her one last moment before taking his hand off his head and grabbing the charcoal from in front of him.

He tore a new sheet and began sketching. Not Lucy, or the docks, or anything, but the mysterious roommate he aquired in New York. Who would never let him in, no matter how many times he stepped inside, no matter how many times he paid the rent.

He drew her in her black dress, the invisible, shy, exposed child who wasn't sure who she was.

Once he was tired of that, he crumpled it up and tossed it in the corner. Then he began drawing her when they met. Her purple jacket. The blue pants. The high heeled shoes. The girl who seemed to be so confident in everything, sure that she was the boss, she was in charge.

What had changed when she slipped on the black dress? What was different?

He decided that she needed to be a different person, sometimes. He left it at that.