June 2007, Three Weeks

[ellectrical]

After three weeks, everything had finally come into place. It had rained until late into the previous night, but the sky was clear by morning, and Elle had packed her bag (a large black purse) with what she'd borrowed from X, her map, her gun, even another plastic bag of Girl Scout cookies, before locking the door to her room and heading out to the street.

She gets an early start, making her way to the alley a couple hours before she thinks he'll show up. After double-checking that the employees of the club have really cleared out, Elle checks her surroundings, then moves to the double doors, and sets her purse down on the wet pavement.

About ten minutes later, with the aid of a torsion wrench and bump key, the padlock on the door has slid open. She leaves it hanging on the chain, puts her tools back into her purse, and moves away.

There's a space on the other side of the alley - it gives her cover in the form of the hair salon's dumpster and is kept dry by a short, striped awning that juts out from the wall, over the dumpster and the door on the other side. Elle positions herself, and waits.

Patience is not one of her virtues.

But sometimes, when she wants something bad enough, it doesn't really matter.

Comments

[walksthebounds]

It's Jamie's day off; he's on his way to pick up some groceries when he catches a flash of a face that looks familiar headed down an alley.

She's already past him when he realizes it's Elle's double, the girl he saw at the game a few days ago. He turns his head to watch her walk by. It's funny - she even moves like Elle.

He shrugs it off and keeps going towards the bus stop. An hour or so later, he's on his way back with a plastic bag full of bread and peanut butter and biscuits.

It's just an impulse that makes him detour back past the alley.

[ellectrical]

Elle has wandered from the alley a couple of times - never very far or for very long, but enough so that any passersby won't pick up on the fact that she seems to be hanging around for no reason. By now, she's returned to her position near the dumpster - she's short enough that she only has to lean back against the wall of the salon to be entirely hidden from view from the other side.

At this point, she's checking her watch every few minutes. It does look like she's waiting for someone, but that's not really a problem.

It's not like many could guess what that means, for her.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie doesn't stop as he walks by the alley - he wants to get home before he bruises the apples in his bag - but he looks back again once or twice as he walks on. Does that alley even go anywhere?

It's after one of those glances that he slows, eyebrows lifting under his baseball cap. It's not a windy day at all . . . and he could swear those old newspapers near the entrance to the alley just shifted over by a half a foot.

It's sort of Jamie's job, in a way, he tells himself, to notice things that are out of place in the worlds. (He also tells himself it was curiosity killed the cat, but, as usual, that voice gets drowned out.)

Quietly, he starts to head back towards the mouth of the alleyway.

[ellectrical]

The street was mostly clear the last time Elle turned to look. And if she does this right, it's not like there should be much to see. Not anything that wouldn't be easy to explain away, in any case.

Something shuffles on the other side of the alley. She edges closer to the front of the dumpster - of course, there's nothing in view.

And then, a nearby puddle splashes up, as though someone's shoe had stomped right through it. She's been waiting for that sound for weeks now - Elle whips forward, and a bright white electric bolt shoots out of her hand, and toward the standing water.

The electricity crackles up out of the shallow pool, at first what appears to be through thin air, before the figure of an unkempt man in a long black coat appears from nowhere, and tumbles forward onto the pavement.

[walksthebounds]

. . . bloody hell, it is Elle.

[ellectrical]

She steps out from behind the dumpster, looking to both ends of the alley. Her eyes pass over Jamie, lingering for only a moment before she looks back to the man now lying flat, face down on the concrete.

No one calls out, or even stops - Rains already looks extremely scruffy, and as Elle seems to be approaching him, it doesn't look like anyone else is very interested in getting involved.

Elle kneels down next to the man, putting her hand over his wrist.

[walksthebounds]

. . . . well.

Jamie was never one to look a gift mark in the mouth.

"Oi, Elle, do you need everything in his wallet," he asks, stepping forward into the alley, "or do you mind if I grab the cash?"

[ellectrical]

Her back stiffens, and she freezes in place.

Elle looks up, meeting Jamie's eyes with a blank expression. That she recognizes him is clear, but this seems to dissipate after a moment, and she shakes her head.

In a low voice, "Kid, you should get out of here."

[walksthebounds]

"- something dangerous coming?"

If she says yes, he'll get gone; Elle can take care of herself, and he's got no call to lay his life on the line over one of her missions.

[ellectrical]

Elle pushes herself up from the pavement.

"Who are you?"

[walksthebounds]

"Don't pull that," Jamie says, and glances over his shoulder to see if anyone else is wandering by the street. "I know you recognized me. And I wouldn't know who you were if I wasn't the right one, would I?"

He looks back at her and offers a shrug and a guileless grin. "I wandered into these parts a few months back. Didn't realize they were yours."

[ellectrical]

Jamie's reasoning doesn't entirely work, but it's enough that Elle puts a hand to her forehead, and with honest exasperation she mutters to herself, "Fuck."

It looks briefly like she might actually grab his shirt and shove him up against the alley wall. But after a few moments during which her frustration doesn't seem to let up at all, it's -

"Fine. Whatever. You're helping me."

[walksthebounds]

"All right," says Jamie amiably, who considers himself a go-with-the-flow type of fellow. "What do you need?"

She never did answer him about the cash - but maybe he'd better ask her again later.

[walksthebounds]

The pub they end up at is more than a little overpriced - but hey, Elle's paying. And it does a lovely ploughman's lunch, with cheddar that exactly suits Jamie's idea of what cheese ought to taste like.

"All right," he says, once their food's finally arrived. "Now are you going to tell me what all that was about?" The question's fairly genial; food does a lot to mellow Jamie. All the same, he would like some expository dialogue, please!

[ellectrical]

Meanwhile, Elle is dimly glad that she didn't learn whatever haggis was that time she was in Ireland.

"You can ask about something."

She doesn't sound evasive. But she's not that great with overly broad questions.

As though to reinforce this point, "I won't lie this time."

[walksthebounds]

"All right -"

Jamie lifts a pickle spear, but seems content to use it mostly for gesturing at the moment.

"So this fellow, this Claude - he knew you when you were young, right? That's what you were after hearing about?"

[ellectrical]

"He used to work where I used to work."

Elle isn't really touching her food, instead mostly focusing on the soda she'd ordered.

"I went there when I was six."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie shakes his head.

"Well, I know you didn't ask me - but if you ask me, I don't know if I'd say going out and poking at all that's the best thing. It's like scratching a scab."

[ellectrical]

(what I don't understand is how you could want it
even if I could return it
because if your life sucks that bad

did I ever ask for it to stopIt's mine.)

It's because they're in such a public place that the obvious spark of anger his comment has caused doesn't become any more literal.

In a very low tone, "No, I didn't ask you."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie holds up his hands instantly, a gesture of surrender.

"Then ignore me."

He shouldn't say anything else, but after a moment, he does anyway. "I just - don't get what you're trying to get from this."

[ellectrical]

Elle looks away, but the tension in her stance remains.

"Didn't you hear what he said."

[walksthebounds]

"I've got ears," Jamie says, with a small shrug. "Missing some context, I expect."

Claude spoke in half-sentences - broken-off prepositions, ending in nouns that Elle knows how to fill in, presumably. Jamie doesn't.

"I heard - he said you were hiding, and they took you away. Of course it didn't sound pleasant. But was it news?"

[ellectrical]

"Yes," she murmurs.

She looks back to Jamie. "Seems like something I'd remember, right?"

[walksthebounds]

". . . I don't know if I'd be the one to ask," Jamie says, after a moment.

He's starting to forget more things about his life than he remembers. It's not something he's too sorry about.

"You think - what, you've got amnesia? You've been blocking out things that happened when you were younger?"

[ellectrical]

She shakes her head.

"I didn't do anything." Her voice is flat, and brittle - it sounds less like an explanation, and more like a confession.