One word prompt: ānewā :) x
the headline reads: richie tozier, up and coming comedian, announces heās ātaking a breakā. when he posted on his social media that he was going to be on hiatus, he hadnāt given a reason or said when heād be back, so the article has little to work with but the commentsāsuffice to say, his fans arenāt happy about it.Ā
but richie doesnāt care. the moment he came back to chicago after derry, he told his manager to cancel whatever he had lined up, to put everything on hold and to keep it under wraps that heād been back to his hometown. he fires the team writing his material and buys a ticket to new york.Ā
he doesnāt tell anyone heās going. his teamās pissed, but he turned his phone off before getting on the plane and hasnāt turned it back on since landing. he stays in a low rated hotel in the city, near the address he managed to get out of mike after a lot of cajoling and a (very brief) bit of begging. he swore to mike he wouldnāt show up at the womanās door, which he wonāt, really, but the first thing richie does the morning he arrives is go for a walk, and maybe the path he chooses takes him down that street, past that building he swore he wouldnāt go to. and he doesnāt do anything crazy like knock on the door and ask to come in, claiming to be a friend of his or anything, but he slows to a stop in front of it. he imagines eddie opening the door. he imagines him walking down the street, dressed for work, and passing richie by on the sidewalk.Ā
richie keeps walking through town, wondering if eddie had ever walked this way, or gone to the coffee shop he passes, or to that little restaurant. he wonders how many times eddieās waited at the same crosswalk heās waiting at or if heās ever hailed the same cab richie does. the cab takes him back to the hotel and richie has no fucking clue what else to do. he didnāt know eddie for twenty seven years. heād never seen eddie in new york, didnāt even know he lived here. he has nothing to base it on, no frame of reference, yet the city feels like him all the same. he wishes he knew him here. he wishes he came here on tour and ran into eddie on the corner of 45th st and 8th. even if just for a moment, he wishes they brushed shoulders, moving through the crowd. he wishes they turned around and everything was okay again.Ā
there was no body to bury. nothing to send back to his ex wife except a few belongings (minus one red jacket). but if there was, it would have come back here. richie felt like he had nowhere else to go but here.Ā
he lays on the bed and doesnāt sleep. he listens to the sounds of traffic outside, people talking and horns honking and sirens flying by. he listens to the sound of eddieās city without him until he falls asleep.Ā
he stays in new york for three weeks. while heās there, he writes a whole new show, one completely his own. when he finally turns his phone back on, he lets his team know heās headed back to chicago and he sends them the new material, telling them to go ahead and start booking a comeback tour, or what fucking ever they want to call it. the day before his flight, he takes another walk around the city until he finds one last stop heād like to makeāhe asks the artist not to post about it on their social media until after richieās done his first show.Ā
he doesnāt have much time between returning to chicago and his first new show. after his team reviews the material and the edits are finalized heās booked a theater and, even though his fans were not pleased with the break, it sells out.Ā
the show goes well. the material gets the laughs heād hoped for, but itās also more personal than heād ever done, and heās proud of himself for being able to get up there and do it, even though he was scared. after the show he takes to twitter, even though he always tried not to look, and one of the first tweets he sees is a picture someone, who must have been sitting in the front row, posted. theyāve zoomed in on his right wrist where his suit jacket had ridden up.Ā
does richie tozier have a new fucking tattoo? the tweet reads. below it, one of the replies says R + E? what the fuck does that mean?Ā
heās sure within the next few days, after the artist from new york posts it on his instagram, people will start conspiring, trying to connect dots without much evidence. heās sure heāll be asked about it in interviews.Ā
heās not ready to tell them. not yet. but someday, maybe during a show in new york, heāll tell them all about R + E, and richie can pretend heās in the audience, smiling back at him.
