lost in translation,

     ‘It’s Balenciaga’, says the stockbroker to the blonde nymph he sits across, thirty years her senior, ‘Do you like it?’

            Not even an hour later, Shaughnessy made her way from her cab to the front doors of The White Lion, the lone silhouette of Holden Walsh in the window just the beacon she came for. A fur coat adorned her lissome frame, one she hadn’t left the house in, and with her loose blonde curls and faraway expression, she looked like Penny Lane–– felt like her, too.

            Heels clicked as she made her way in, watching him turn to her, finding mute recognition in his pretty eyes, “Jack didn’t ‘send me’,” Shaggy chimed back, “I’m my own woman, my dear Holden,” She spoke with her chin up, nose in the air, all to guise the sickening weight in her stomach. They both knew that was a lie. Jack owned her; had control creative control over her like she was a product, he the manufacturer, and rich men with boring marriages the hungry consumers. The two of them could look at each other and try to say different, but just standing in the The White Lion contradicted any individuality either of them hoped to have–– they were Jack’s property, and there was no changing that.

           Perhaps that was why she couldn’t leave Holden alone. To not feel just that; alone. The underground, nefarious world they were pawns in was an ugly one, shoaled in cheap veneer and an easy penny, and full of men who dismissed her as worthless; an object; trash to be reused and recycled. But she felt that Holden was different from them. That was all she could hold onto–– the feeling that he was. He was quiet and stoic and hard to read, but her gut told her she could trust him. Just how much was hard to gage.

          Her eyes found her reflection in one of the eastern facing windows, and suddenly she was enervated with how she looked; tousled her hair some, pouted plump lips. She was checking herself out, shamelessly so, as it was hard not to. The girl was a magpie at its rawest form, a lover of pretty things, no matter the cost. That included herself–– and the tall male beside her, closing bar, found himself high in that lump sum, “It’s Balenciaga. Do you like it?” A coy, flirtatious smile coveted her mouth as she repeated the words said to her, to him. Was it her own, sick game? The desire to spark jealousy? Or was it the way she wanted to impress him, the way the married man wanted to impress her? 

                         She was a sight for sore eyes as always, standing there in the middle of an empty place that was usually so full of life, now suddenly paralyzed and gladly giving way to a slender silhouette in a fur coat. Expensive. Holden could tell from over there, even in the dim lighting. He knew people that could afford to buy her those kinds of things— people that gladly would. He could’ve been one of them, easily, but he’d made his own choices to only be just exactly as involved in Jack’s business as he needed him to be. No more, no less. It awarded him a certain kind of freedom, but only to some extent. There was only so many things he could say no to, and he knew that if shit hit the fan and Jack asked him to do something; he’d have no choice not to obey.

                        Looking at her now— at Shaughnessy, he wondered how she came to work for someone like Jack. Did he have dirt on her? Did he pull her out of a bad place and substitute it with this life? There was no way of knowing; no one in Jack White’s circle talked about themselves or their pasts… it felt like a silent, unwritten code almost, but Holden understood why it was necessary. The less you know, the better.

               “Okay,” he said and nodded softly, no trace of insincerity in his voice as he accepted her rebuttal, word for word, as if they both didn’t too well know there were very few places they could actually go without feeling a string tugging them there. Jackson White was many things; a puppet master one of them. “Then why’re you here?” He liked the idea of her coming there of her own free will, and it carried in his voice— a genuine sort of curiosity, mild and tender in comparison to everything and everyone else in their joint world, but that was Holden in many ways. He wasn’t cut for the world he occupied, yet later molded to fit it anyway.

                          He watched her, knowing she was used to being watched by men like him— or maybe mostly men unlike him, but he didn’t have the confidence or clarity to believe she saw him any differently at this point. Maybe she did, maybe she saw no reason to, and either way, Holden couldn’t blame her…

                    The way she spoke to him next though, those words, as if they weren’t really hers, nor meant for him, it served as a small reminder once again, that they were pawns in someone else’s game more than anything else, and for a moment, defeat touched his chest and his gaze faltered. “Sure,” he answered her and offered a smile that never really touched his eyes before he went back behind the counter to secure the register. “I got to lock up. I have some documents upstairs for Jack. You’ll probably see him before me…”