#fssa

“I’m done now,” she announces.

“Oh, thank fuck. Riles!”

Riley skids over to them, dirty shoes slipping on the glossy floor, eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” David confirms. “Now let’s get the hell out here. I can’t believe we’re going through this much trouble for a bloody wight.”

“Don’t call her that,” Angélique says.

Riley sighs and opens the door at the end of the hall, gesturing the both of them outside. Angélique tugs her bandana down from her hair and over her mouth. Her eyes water as she gets used to the heavy air and the ever-strong heat, but she blinks and follows David and Riley as they dash to the fence and clamber over it, careful not to touch its electric parts. It’s routine. They’ve done this before, though they have never actually gotten into the control building itself. The security has always been poor. No one expects those living here to be capable of even coming up with the idea of getting in here.

Joke’s on them, Angélique thinks, even if that’s far from the truth, if the ‘bloody wight’ hasn’t been telling lies.

Riley goes up front through narrow, dark streets. People scuttle away as they pass, watching from behind dirt-caked windows but never asking questions. You don’t ask questions. Questions only lead to answers, and that’s the last thing anyone here needs. Plausible deniability is where it’s at.

The tiny house the three of them share sits crammed between two other just like it, all unappealing angles and time-blackened walls. Angélique knows the neighbors actually tried to clean their house once, unveiling a surprising red color, but it had gotten just as bad again a week later. They haven’t bothered since. It’s like that most of the time.

All the city’s filth accumulates here. David would probably say that that is true in a figurative way as well. He has his cynical moments.

Mei is sitting where they left her two hours  ago, back straight and knees pressed tight together. David scoffs at her and disappears upstairs. Riley sighs again, and when Mei’s eyebrows knit together, they shake their head, brown curls flopping from side to side.

“Don’t worry about Dave. We got what you need.”

She presses her lips together. The glossy pink lipstick she was wearing when they found her has long since worn off from all the worrying at it.

“He doesn’t like me.”

“He doesn’t need to like you,” Angélique replies, sitting down on the edge of the low table, facing the other woman. “We’ll get you back where you belong and you can both forget about each other.”

Mei’s perfectly symmetrical dark brown eyes search Angélique’s grimy face, and a slender, slightly tanned hand reaches out to tug the bandana down from her nose and mouth. Angélique forgot she was still wearing it; it’s become second nature over her life. She casts her own gaze down, letting her dark curls fall in front of her face.

David’s return is heralded by his heavy boots clunking down the stairs. Mei quickly drops her hand back into her lap, and all three of them turn to David when he steps into the room. He squares his jaw and fixes his gaze on Mei, who bites her lips again but looks back steadily.

“We’ll get you out,” he says, “but don’t expect anything beyond that.”

Angélique clenches her hands into fists and rises, but Mei only nods, stands up, brushes off her pleated pink skirt, and tosses her glossy black hair over a shoulder.

“What are we waiting for?” she asks. “Obviously, you want me gone.”

David opens his mouth, eyes narrowing, but Riley forestalls him.

“It’s still daytime. We’re going to have to get you to transport station when it’s dark.”

At this, Mei’s eyes widen. “It’s day still? But – it’s…”

Riley and Angélique exchange a confused glance. Riley shrugs.

“Well, never mind that,” she continues. “Thank you, whatever the case. You could have just as easily left me when you found me.”

A sharp look at David prevents him from making a snide comment. Angélique doesn’t understand what his problem with Mei is. Sure, she might be a… A ‘bloody wight’, but she by herself doesn’t pose any danger to them. Then again, for all her years of friendship with David – and Riley – there are still a lot of things she doesn’t know about either of their pasts.

She also still isn’t sure what they are to each other, exactly, but there are more important things in life than her friends’ relationship. And really, contrary to popular belief, Angélique does know when to leave stuff alone.

“We should get some sleep,” Riley says. “I’m sure we’re all pretty tired anyway.”

“Are you all coming along?” Mei looks up at David, who sighs, but nods.

“To get in there, we’re gonna need all three of our areas of expertise. So yeah, we’re gonna have to put up with each other for a while longer.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Mei says, perfect lips pursed in exasperation. It’s nice to see some emotion on her face, Angélique thinks. Usually, in the four days she’s been here, she has been unreadable, somehow perfectly serene. Her skin is flawless, and so is everything else about her. Her fingers are long and elegant. She works as well with her left hand as her right. She has perfectly straight white teeth set in a mouth with full lips and the slightest hint of dimples in her cheeks when she smiles.

Angélique didn’t understand why all this concerned David so much, unless he was jealous, which he’s never been the type for. He started glowering as soon as they got Mei cleaned up. It only started making some semblance of sense when she saw the real tipoff that Mei wasn’t human, at least not entirely. A barcode-like brand on her right hip, one of the only asymmetrical features of her body.

It hasn’t become entirely clear to Angélique what exactly sets Mei apart from people like herself, but Riley managed to tell her some vague speculation about a combination of genetic enhancement or manipulation and high-tech, before David began muttering about ‘wights’ again. He’s usually so chill about everything. There has to be something more there, but… Questions, answers. She might be better off not knowing.

Still, Mei has been nothing but an excellent guest despite his hostility. Angélique has wondered if all those David would call ‘wights’ would be like that, never complaining or asking unnecessary questions, or if that is something that is uniquely hers. It’s an admirable trait.

“Of course,” says David, and he stomps off again. Riley rolls their eyes, shoots Angélique and Mei an apologetic look, and goes after him.

“Well,” Angélique starts, “as I’ve said before; he’s really a good guy, usually.”

At this, Mei actually smiles, steepling her fingers absently.

“I will take your word for it, Angélique.” She folds her hands together, sitting back down and clasping them between her knees. “I wonder if they miss me back home.”

Angélique leans her hip against the wall, pushes her bandana back up into her hair.

“Why wouldn’t they? You said you have a brother, right, and you’re pretty close? He must be worried.” She scratches at her nose, catches some dust flaking off on her fingers. “And I think I’ll miss you when you go.”

“I suppose. Thank you. It’s just…” She furrows her thin eyebrows. “Now that I know all this…” A gesture at the gloomy room, the dirty air outside and the old furniture that’s nearly falling apart. She starts chewing on her lower lip.

“Now that I know that you live here like this, not only you three but so many people, I can’t help but feel that it’s unfair to just – return to how I was before. It was an accident that I ended up in the lower town, but I want it to be good for something. Like a lesson learned. I’m sure my brother would help me.”

“Help you with what?” Angélique asks, intrigued. She’s never thought of herself or her friends as a possible charity case – as far as life in this town goes, they have it quite well. They’ve got a house, and none of them have caught any of the nasty diseases that circle the population from time to time. But the stories Mei has told about life in the upper districts were fascinating. Some sounded made-up, but Mei swore high and low that she told nothing but the truth.

All around town, the upper districts are considered a nearly mythical area; no one ever goes there, no one ever comes out of them. Yet Mei is about to become possibly the first person who does both. Vaguely, Angélique is proud to be a part of it.

“I just mean that there must be something we can do to make life here better,” Mei is explaining. “More comfortable, you understand? This is simply inhumane. I can’t allow any friend of mine to live in all this dirt and outdated… Everything. I know people who have pull. And people will listen to me as well.” She smiles a suspiciously asymmetrical smile that has Angélique’s heart jumping. “David might not like it, but I was conceived to be trustworthy.”

Angélique grins back, then says, “But we really should get some sleep before dark, I think.”

Mei nods, and so they do.

Night has long since fallen by the time all four of them are awake and ready to go. It’s not a long trip to the transport station, an although there is some danger of being caught in the last leg, the real tricky part is getting Mei back to the upper district of Aintza Town, where she lives, preferably without anyone noticing until morning. That part is, nerve-wrackingly, also the part Angélique is responsible for; she’s the only one of them any good with computers beyond basic skill. But she’s never smuggled something out of town before, let alone a person.

It’ll be a challenge.

Getting to the station is easy. Mei has dressed in some of Angélique’s clothes, which are a little big on her but stand out less than her – supposedly fashionable – light skirt and blouse, stained as they are after her week here. No one asks where they’re going. Mei doesn’t lag behind to gawp at people and buildings and whatever else she finds extraordinary like she did when she first passed through here.

David, who is second behind Riley, seems to have calmed down some, and he is concentrated when they reach the station and he has to open the gate.

It doesn’t matter if someone sees them slipping in under the meager light of a street lantern, so long as it isn’t someone who works at the transport station. For all the people out on the streets at this hour care, they might as well be invisible.

“Here we are, then,” David announces, gesturing them into the dark, looming shadows of the brick building that houses the control room. Or so they assume, at least. Riley said it would be logical, and Riley has a good eye for things like that.

They get inside without trouble, and to Angélique’s relief, there are signs pointing towards the different parts of the building and indicating where they can find central control. Mei just looks baffled by the very existence of the signs, calling them ‘quaint’ under her breath so only Angélique can hear. She snickers, just as softly. It must be a bit of a cultural shock if even half of her stories about the upper districts are true.

No one seems to be around at this time of night. It would be, Angélique thinks, extremely easy to take over control of the lower town, but then who’d want to do that? There’s nothing of value here. The only thing the people here are good for is manning the factories, putting things together without even knowing what it all accumulates to.

Mei seems fascinated by the computers they find in the control room, letting her fingers ghost over the keys without pressing them and tapping at screens expectantly.

“I haven’t seen anything with buttons since history class,” she marvels when David has left the room to be lookout, Riley trailing behind. “And screens, really.”

Angélique hums noncommittally, focused on the buttons and screens in question. The directories are different than the ones at the control building, but she manages to wade through the layers of timetables and security measures to find what she’s looking for, and gestures Mei over. The woman hovers close to her back, which makes her shiver despite the dry heat. She somehow still smells sweet. Angélique has to stop herself from inhaling it deeply just because she knows it’ll be gone in a few short minutes, if all goes well.

“Look, if you can get on this carrier…” She points, and Mei nods, hair brushing Angélique’s cheek. “I can start it, and it’ll take you to the Aintza transport station more-or-less directly.”

It’s strange how many other stations there are; it’s never really occurred to any of them that the world is so much bigger than the lower town.

“More-or-less directly sounds good enough. I don’t know how to thank you, Angélique.”

“You’re not there yet,” she mumbles, standing up a little straighter, breath catching when Mei doesn’t move back, pressing them  together.

“I can’t thank you when I’m there.”

Well, she supposes that’s true, yes.

“I can come back,” Mei whispers. Angélique closes her eyes and swallows. “And I will, if you want me to. I need to do something.”

“I’m not a charity case,” Angélique protests, fingers clenching over the keyboard. She shivers when she feels Mei’s long fingers slide down to her wrists. They spread over her hands, contrasting sharply against her own dark skin in the flickering light from the monitor.

“I know you’re not. It’s not because of that. It’s because I trust you, and I like you, Angélique.” She puts her chin on her shoulder. “And maybe it’s selfish, but I want to see you again.”

Angélique huffs, and Mei laughs softly, as if in wonder about something.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been selfish before. I didn’t think that was part of my makeup.” She strokes small circles on Angélique’s knuckles. “Guess you learn something new every day.”

“Lique!” David urges from outside in the hall, and Angélique snaps out of the Mei-induced reverie. Mei herself snaps back as well.

“Yeah!” she shouts back. “Sorry, Mei. I got… I got caught up.”

Her eyes have widened, as if she feels the same. “Yes. Of course. Sorry. Should I go now, are you… Are you ready?”

“Yes. I am. You should.” Angélique runs a hand through her dark curls, biting the inside of her cheeks. “But I do hope – selfishly – that I’ll see you again.”

“Selfishly,” Mei repeats, smiling. “I think that’s a very good motivation for both of us. I think we have more in common than it would seem, Angélique.”

Angélique nods, and Mei turns to the door, walking towards it briskly.

“Wait,” Angélique says. She glances at the screen, just to check, then hurries over to the other woman, who stills and turns back, and reaches up when Angélique catches her shoulders to tug her towards herself. The skin of her cheek is smooth and warm underneath Angélique’s lips. She smiling lopsidedly when they pull apart, then reaches up to kiss Angélique’s cheek as well, a thumb stroking her cheekbone.

“See you,” she says. “Take care.”

And she’s gone.

David enters the control room soon after she’s left, with Riley being the one in charge of getting her out to the right carrier. He hovers behind Angélique in a familiar, reassuring way, his steady presence returning now that the unknown factor is well on her way to gone. Angélique isn’t sure how to feel about it.

The icon for the carrier lights up, and all she has to is press start to let it go. She takes a deep breath and does it. Maybe Mei will come back. Maybe she won’t. It’s nothing she won’t get over, she tells herself. You don’t get this far in life in this town if you let things get to you.

“I hope she makes it home safe,” she does tell David.

He sighs a little. “Because you’re in love with her.”

She looks up at him. He seems resigned.

“Because I think she’s a good person, who deserves the life she’s told us about.” And, when David’s thick eyebrows rise and the familiar spark of humor lights in his green gaze, “The fact that I’m in love with her is secondary.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Lique. Keep telling yourself that.”

She laughs and pushes at his shoulder affectionately, and then they’re off into the lower town once more. They’ll see where they end up, same as always.

She flitted from role to role without pause, without consideration for much else. She always had been a hard worker; sometimes, she could feel the blisters on her fingers from the factory work she had done during the war still, as clear as she could see the scar on her elder brother’s face or the guarded closeness on her younger one’s.

She had only been 21 when she’d done her first movie, and sometimes Manon felt like she hadn’t sat down since. Like, maybe, she had forgotten to build something of her own in-between the lives of Lady Jane and Detective Michelle and her series of sequels.

Her brothers, bless them, spread out across the world, but wrote often of their amazing travels. Martin, the oldest of them, sent pictures and short poems. Noah sent souvenirs and foreign words. Manon read their scribbly handwritings on film sets in America, Iceland, Spain and Japan and had the feeling they were taking her more places than she was taking herself. She loved acting, didn’t doubt that she always would, but sometimes she thought that her entire life had become a movie, and not a particularly exciting one to watch.

In the late fifties, as her roles grew more prolific, she acquired a co-star in this strange movie. Well, Antonio liked to call himself her right-hand man. Or her friend. It took her a while to come around to that one.

The first full feature in color she did was with him, and the audience had been enamored with his bright green eyes. Manon liked him, and recognized that he was very handsome, but felt as though she was missing the real appeal.

People assumed they were together. They never were. It was strange even to them sometimes, that something that seemed so natural was not, in fact, the case, but they could laugh about it.

Manon was offered her first role as a mother in 1961, when she was 35. Antonio laughed at her. She accepted the part. Critics were loving. She stuck her tongue out at Antonio when she finished her Oscar acceptance speech. He swung her off the ground afterwards and probably started a whole slew of new rumors. She didn’t really care, even if Martin ranted in his letters that Antonio wasn’t good enough for her and she should watch her back.

Manon grew older, and her roles grew, but she wasn’t sure that she did so herself. Even on her fortieth birthday, she still felt like the country girl coming into the big city she’d been at 21, albeit with dyed hair and crow’s feet around her eyes. She watched Antonio and Martin snipe at each other affectionately, Noah trying to defend his beard by saying it was fashionable. There was still so much life stretched out before her, god willing, and she was happy but wanted something more.

Over the years, Manon had been with a few men. Because they were nice, and it was what was expected of her. It wasn’t until 1972 that everything fell into place.

Her name was Erzsébet Héderváry, but almost everyone called her Liz. She was from Hungary and told the most interesting stories about life on the other side of the Curtain, and even if some of them seemed completely unbelievable, Manon kept listening to the woman’s accented voice, enraptured. Familiar words took on new shapes on her tongue and smiling lips. She worked on the photography for Manon’s latest movie and didn’t seem to grasp how big Manon was around here.

It was refreshing.

Erzsébet had green eyes too, and Manon finally saw the appeal, though it wasn’t because of the color. It was because they crinkled and lit up with sparkles when she smiled, sometimes shone with repressed longing for her distant home country. They seemed to see Manon for who she was, which was as confusing as it was thrilling, because who was that, anyway?

Manon Leclercq, 47 years old, properly in love for the first time in her life. With a woman.

She wondered if Erzsébet saw that, too, and what she thought of it.

She told Antonio, because god knew Antonio was enjoying the sexual revolution as if he were 26 again and being proclaimed the country’s most eligible bachelor. He laughed, but quickly turned serious when he realized that Manon was.

He said, as he almost always did, to let everything flow its natural course, which sounded hippie-ish enough that Manon hung up on him in a huff.

Still, she took the advice.

It led to a friendship with Erzsébet, who was, so it turned out, two years older than Manon, and gladly taught her Hungarian words, had a habit of dropping by whenever she was around and calling at odd times when she wasn’t. She was as dedicated to her art as Manon was to hers, which Manon admired immensely.

And, as Antonio miraculously settled down and started doing musicals – playing a surprising amount of villain roles before moving on to directing –, Martin published his poems and Noah fell in love with a woman on a faraway island, Manon passed fifty and only fell deeper for Erzsébet with every laugh, every flick of brown hair and every word about her performances, positive or negative. Erzsébet was never afraid to tell Manon what she truly thought, which was just another good thing about her.

Manon’s roles slowly dwindled down, and she decided to take some time off – take some time off! – when she had been offered three witch parts in a row.

Erzsébet laughed, told her that she was far too beautiful to be a witch, and came with her without her having to ask. They went to see Antonio and Manon’s brothers and travelled through as much of Europe as they could.

When Manon came back home in 1980, she found that the press didn’t wonder en masse where she’d been like they once would have. Thing were coming to an end, apparently. There were new faces to wear the masks she’d donned, and even if red lipstick and petticoats had long since gone out of style and it was all jeans and neon now, she was certain much remained the same, and was happy to give advice to younger actors playing her children, or even her grandchildren, when she got back to her job.

Still, there was more free time now. Time to sit back and reflect on life. Time to drink wine with Erzsébet and Antonio and listen to them banter about the latest musicals or the cinematography of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which Manon still hadn’t seen after eight years despite Antonio trying to drag her to special showings every year.

She finally watched it on VHS with running commentary from Erzsébet. The commentary was the best part – she wasn’t sure about the movie itself. It was strange. Erzsébet had a lot to say about the camera work but also sang along to all the songs, horribly.

When it was 1983, and Erzsébet had not stopped singing Africa in months, Manon won an Oscar for Best Actress. It wasn’t her first, but she knew with certainty it would be the last. She wasn’t old, but she was old enough, and that year off with Erzsébet had shown her what she wanted for the rest of her life.

Erzsébet followed her into retirement, no questions asked, and with a minimum of protests about Manon covering most of their expenses.

They saw the country together. Erzsébet followed the situation in Hungary with apparent anxiety. Manon learned to play the guitar and went to see a musical Antonio was directing that had songs written by Martin. Noah came back from his island with two daughters, and dressed in all black.

Erzsébet kissed Manon on her fifty-ninth birthday. It was so surreal that she forgot to kiss back, leading to Erzsébet pulling away, face stony but beautiful green eyes panicked. They flitted around the garden nervously. There was a smudge of Manon’s red lipstick on her lips.

Manon touched her own mouth, then pulled Erzsébet down when she tried to stand up.

Her hair was soft between Manon’s fingers, her lips dry beneath hers, and the soft sound she made when she kissed back would be seared into Manon’s memory for the rest of her life.

Antonio screamed at her in excitement when she told him. Martin just hummed as he tended to do, but he looked pleased. Noah and Manon’s nieces were quietly happy. It was more than she possibly could have hoped for.

The press staunchly refused to acknowledge the mere possibility of Manon and Erzsébet being anything beyond very good friends. While Manon scathingly thought they probably didn’t want their precious piece of movie history sullied by the fact that she happened to be in love with a woman, it also suited them quite well like that.

They traveled to Hungary in 1990, and Erzsébet cried for the first time in all those years Manon had known her. Her shoulders shook when she sank to her knees in the place where she had grown up, love and hate and sadness and bliss spilling out while her grey-streaked hair curtained her off from the rest of the world.

Yet, she had never been more beautiful to Manon. She loved this woman.

1995 marked the first time Manon’s relationship with Erzsébet was acknowledged without a hint of malice or underlying criticism.

Manon, who had by then earned the status of ‘icon’, which she loved and hated – it made her feel very old, but it was an honor – took her to a gala, and who said no to an icon of the film industry when she said the woman by her side was her life partner, right?

The press were mostly neutral on them. Manon attributed it to the fact that she really wasn’t that interesting anymore, no matter what Erzsébet told her with that gorgeous, familiar face of hers.

Manon was often told that she’d aged with grace, but she dyed her hair still, and her hands were quickly becoming alarmingly unsteady. Erzsébet, even with grey hair, looked every bit as youthful as the day Manon had first met her. And that wasn’t Manon’s prejudice talking, no matter what she said about that.

Noah disappeared in the spring of 1997, on one of his aimless trips around the world. His last postcard was sent from Slovenia, saying he was traveling east and sending much love to his grandchildren, and then there was nothing. Manon reckoned that was probably the way Noah preferred things. He’d always been fond of the mysterious.

Antonio forgot who Erzsébet was, but never Manon, not once. He recited a line from their first movie together with his last breath.

Martin did a surprisingly heartfelt poem at his memorial. Erzsébet held Manon’s hand, stroking the frail skin wordlessly. She didn’t cry. Erzsébet Héderváry didn’t cry, except for that one time in Hungary.

The second exception to that rule happened in December 2005. Manon told her to stop it, then. She didn’t want the last thing she saw to be her teary face. Erzsébet laughed through her tears and complained that Martin had taken way too long with her. Manon told her he’d been writing a poem as quickly as he could, which wasn’t very quick when his fingers never stopped shaking and the words could take minutes to find. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful poem.

Wasn’t it cruel, that Martin was the last one of them left, when he was the oldest?

Rather than telling her he wasn’t the last one left yet, Erzsébet told stories about her childhood and about their life together, some heavily embellished as always. It made Manon smile.

Manon Leclercq, iconic movie star, passed away aged 79, in the company of her life partner, Erzsébet Héderváry.

No one but them ever knew that she opened her eyes a last time, felt time slipping away as Erzsébet grasped her fingers, and whispered to her.