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]

"And now you know."

And are you happier? he wants to ask, but he doesn't. He puts his bread and cheese together, instead, and takes a large bite.

[ellectrical]

Elle actually laughs - it's nearly a shriek, and she even covers her mouth, and glances around to see if it attracted any attention.

Once she's satisfied that anyone else's interest has been lost, "You think that was it?"

[walksthebounds]

Jamie gives a small shrug, a little stung.

"How should I know? If you got something useful to you out of it, I'm glad. If you're planning to go around and drag up everybody who ever saw you when you were little and pound information out of them too until you've got a full picture, I suppose that's fine too. I don't know how much you'll need before you think you've heard enough."

[ellectrical]

It certainly does tone her down. A lot. She slumps down in her chair, her eyes falling to the floor.

(And it's very easy to think it's wrong, that she's doing it all wrong - that she can't even help but -)



Without looking up, "Do you remember your Dad?"

[walksthebounds]

". . . yeah. He wasn't like yours, though. I mean - sorry," says Jamie, awkwardly.

Seeing Elle slump like that is making him feel a bit guilty.

"What I mean is, he was an ordinary fellow, you know? I don't - all that I remember, from when I was ordinary, awfully well. More than I'd like sometimes. Lots of the things that came after I've forgotten. I'm not all that sorry for it, either. Lots of things aren't worth remembering. That's how I see it.

"But I can see how it's hard to know what's worth it when you don't even know what it is."

[ellectrical]

She doesn't look up from the floor.

"He's part of it."

There's one quick glance up, enough for her to say, "Kind of all of it."

Elle pulls her arms a little tighter, and gives a very small shrug. "I don't know who he was."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie hesitates for more than a moment before asking, "What about your mum?"

He doesn't think he's ever heard Elle talk about her mother.

[ellectrical]

"She died."

And that's about all that's mattered for the last eighteen years.

"Right after I - started."

[walksthebounds]

". . . then you don't know who she was either, do you?"

Maybe that's besides the point. Jamie doesn't know.

[ellectrical]

Elle shrugs one shoulder. She does remember some of her life before, but it's a lot like the way someone else would remember a dream - like it just as easily could have never happened. She doesn't know what to think of it.

"My Dad said she couldn't deal with it. When I changed."

Looking back up to Jamie, "I don't know that either."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie thinks briefly about Helen, and her story about her mum pleading with her dad to give the deformed child just six more months to see if it would grow up all right.

But of course Helen's is just one story. It's just as likely that Elle's mum really couldn't deal with her as that it was a lie.

"I reckon I can see why you'd want to know," he says, lamely.

"But you know, who your parents were, it doesn't change - well, I don't reckon my mum or my dad would see much of themselves in how I've turned out."

[ellectrical]

She's not entirely sure what to say to that.

After a moment, "You haven't - been with them. For a while."

The hesitation is all the kindness that comes with it.

[walksthebounds]

"Ah, well - you know, they were well on the path to being disappointed with me even before then," Jamie says, shifting back in his seat, his voice light.

"I only mean - right, your parents are important, and you ought to find what you want to know. If it'll make you, you know, feel better about it." The way he says it this time is different from the way he said it before. "But what you know about them, it's not like it'll change much about you."

[ellectrical]

Elle's looking at the floor again.

"Who do you think told me that."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie blinks, and holds up his hands in front of him, with a slightly helpless shrug - he can't guess.

[ellectrical]

"I -"

She's not entirely sure what she means. Elle lifts her hand to brush back her hair.

"I didn't know. That I'd - forgotten anything."

Her uncertainty is back when she looks up. "He told me what I was like then."

[walksthebounds]

". . . right, but that doesn't have to have much to do with who you are now, does it?"

(Jamie's the boy who reinvents himself every day, to fit the world, the people, the circumstance.

Jamie doesn't have much understanding anymore of continuity of identity.)

[ellectrical]

Elle's starting to feel that it kind of sucks that even in her own world, she can't zap Jamie. But she doesn't yell, or snap. Her voice is weak when she speaks again.

"I'm his daughter.

"And I don't know how to be anything else and I think -"

She stops, glancing once around the pub.

"I think he took that. When he made me forget."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie raises a hand and scratches the back of his neck, uncertainly. It's a young gesture.

"Well - who do you want to be instead?"

It's not a flippant question.

[ellectrical]

(I won't let you hurt me)

"Someone who didn't let that happen."

[walksthebounds]

"I can't see you letting that happen now."

But maybe that's not enough?

[ellectrical]

"I think I am."

She is starting to sound a little more certain now. "If I don't try to take it back."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie's still not sure he understands it - not intuitively, anyway, not on any kind of gut level. But maybe he can halfway follow, and that's good enough, he supposes.

"So what's your next step? D'you have a list you're running down?"

[ellectrical]

... well, that does remind her.

Elle leans over, shifting under the table for a moment to tug over her bag, and pull something out of it.

In what's probably been the most benign result of this today so far, she reemerges with a piece of paper and a pen. Elle flattens the paper over an open spot on the table, easily in Jamie's line of sight, and marks off London.

[walksthebounds]

. . . well, it's not a long list, which Jamie supposes is something of a comfort.

"At least you're getting a chance to see the world while you're at it," he remarks.