HERE I GO AGAIN

When the chaos erupts and the guns are drawn, it takes a long moment for the thought to surface, like it has to fight its way to sunlight from deep water. But, when it comes, it’s something familiar: 

Run.

But when she finds her way out of the ballroom, it’s only into halls that she hasn’t had the chance to learn yet. Ones that Charlie’s enemies probably know better than she does. (Angels? More like sitting ducks.) 

Her legs are slow, her feet clumsy, and she doesn’t get very far before she’s tangled up in herself, falling forward until her shoulder’s colliding with a wood paneled wall. The bloom of pain is sharp, but resting there seems all-too-appealing when everything inside of her feels so dampened, so heavy, like no matter how hard she thinks about panicking, the thought just can’t make it through. 

“Ouch,” she says, and then even more belatedly: “Shit.”

She had expected nothing when a black car had appeared at the end of the road and followed her like an apparition, and still, she’s stunned. There was nothing she could have prepared for this: emerging from the saltwater and out of the muck and the mire to golden gowns and gold-rimmed champagne flutes gold, gold, gold. She would never chose it for herself: if anything, she’s more of an uncut, pewter-coloured rock of ruby than gold. But then, if she’s managed to understand the reasons she’s been brought here, the point must be that she doesn’t get to choose anymore.

She can’t remember the last time she wore heels like this, if ever, and they’re damn near impossible to walk in. A suit-jacketed server hovering gently overhead gives her another glass of champagne—it’s practically forced into her hand, but she doesn’t let it slip from her fingers and shatter, shallows it all at once, can feel it going to her head just as quickly.

Keep calm. Keep moving. There you go. 

She’s spent too much time being cautious, but she supposes that could kill her here. She needs to dare more, even surrounded by a golden cage purpose built to keep her in. She moves second, fluidly, reaching out to accepted the offered glass, taking the first hand she’s given and setting her cards on the table face-up. “I think they’re trying to kill us, so—if we’re going down, then better for me to die in the arms of someone instead of alone, thank you.”

Everything here is so carefully staged, strings pulled by an invisible hand. The only uncertainty is the agents themselves, let loose like wild things into this golden tableau. They were picked, and here they are. It’s hard not to wonder if this is some kind of test—if she’s being watched and measured now by some unknown criteria, the same way she must have been for who knows how long before she was made aware. For someone so used to her own independence, just her and the open road, it’s an unsettling thought. She wants to think that she stepped into this mansion of her own free will, instead of walking into a trap that had been closing around her without her ever seeing it encroaching. 

There’s no one here who will answer her questions, and so she thinks that she might have the most to learn from the agents themselves: how alike and unlike they all are; what they have that she does not, what they have that she also has. And so she gives the woman in front of her her full attention, smiling at her when she accepts Josie’s proffered glass. Part of her thinks she shouldn’t be so free with her facial expressions—should put on the serious faces of her left-behind crew of bank robbers when they looked at safes they needed to crack. But it would be a losing effort—she’s never guarded herself by drawing inward, but by becoming more wild, more alive instead. Something no one can keep up with, and no one can tame. 

“Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through just to kill us. But, if they are, then I wouldn’t mind the company either. So—bottoms up.” She drinks again, feels it creeping up on her: it’s not the second, or even the third. “You got a name?” She prefers a real one, something more than whatever newly-minted moniker they all donned alongside their gold threads for the evening, but wonders if that’s a certain kind of naivete talking, if she’s a blunt instrument in a room full of blades. 

He took his sweet time getting ready, showered and shaved, shined and  for all this—from head to toe, top to bottom—took time to perfect. Each detail carefully planned not from the moment the man in black had told him to be ready in two hours but from the second he’d shut the door of the SUV. Matthew was born in this life, living lavish day to luxurious night and if this so-called Charlie was anything like the rumors he’d heard—whisperings of the Gatsby in the mansion on the hill—it’d be an affair to remember. 

And so donned in his golden tux, he’d ventured out. He’d made his way to the ballroom and attempted to blend in, to gather intel. The quirks, the ticks, the motivations. Each one collected and stored; they would all be useful at a later date, at a later time for no factoid was too small, too tiny to use against someone, too insignificant that Matthew couldn’t use it to make them sing like a canary. 

“I suppose you’re right,” he let out a light chuckle, taking the offered glass and stealthily slipping the one he’d already had in hand behind his back and onto a table. Nothing like a little alcohol to make the masses pliable, limber and docile and all the more interesting. “I’d much prefer scotch, though,” but he sipped the sweet champagne anyway, careful not to offend and instead, entice. 

It’s hard not to feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop—like she shouldn’t touch anything, lest she leave grubby grease-stained fingerprints on everything that’s glittering and pristine. This whole tableau had never been her scene: she’d raised to believe in an honest day’s work, and even if somewhere along the way she’d left the honesty by the wayside, the work ethic had remained—only with added grit. 

If she plays this game by its rules—(which seem to be: murmured voices, daintily sipped champagne, soft small steps to soft jazz)—then she’s handicapped herself from the start. And so the only thing to do is to refuse to play, or to do so by her own rules. If this welcome party, such as it is, is their new benefactor’s way of saying this is who I am and this is what I expect, then the only thing for her to do is show her hand in turn: you invited me here, and this is what you’re getting. 

And right now, what the stranger in front of her is getting is a healthy swallow of champagne and an indelicate snort. “And I’d prefer tequila, but I don’t think they’re taking orders." If Josie is rough edges, the man in front of her seems to be all smoothness. She can’t detect any of her own out-of-place feelings in him, even though she’s willing to bet that he knows as much—(or maybe, more accurately, as little)—as she does. 

“Though,” she says after a pause, her smile turning slightly more mischievous, “they must be hiding the good stuff around here somewhere.”

She teeters slightly on heels she hasn’t had occasion to wear in months, at the very least. A waiter presses a glass of champagne into her hand—it isn’t the first one, but she accepts it all the same, drinks it all at once, feels it fizzing all the way down. 

No hesitation. No fear. Here we go.

There’s cause to be cautious, but caution has never gotten her anywhere. She dares most, she dares first, and even in this strange gilded welcome party, she doesn’t hold back from being the one to lay down an opening gambit. As if on cue, a waiter replaces her empty glass with a full one, and so she snags a second, an overture in an outstretched hand for the nearest agent. “I think they’re trying to get us drunk—if I’m going down, I’d rather take someone down with me.”