City of Strays

I wanted to re-post this without my other introduction. This is what I have so far. I have started adapting it into a screenplay even though it's not finished, which is giving me so many ideas for the story.

I

She took the cigarette like water, sucking down the smoke in gulps. The dim blue glow of the moon lit her face with shadows, her red lips puckering to blow then swirls of smoke danced circles before her. She dropped the butt beneath her pivoting foot and began to walk toward home, her high heels clicked on the concrete. Jean’s only solace was her lonely stride home through streets littered with the trash of the world in a city built for strays. Sidestepping past bums was just part of the path and turning a deaf ear to the whistles and calls from dirty old men became routine. Jean was the prettiest thing about that part of town, a diamond in the mud and the mud was drowning.

In the night there in the City of Strays things tended to change, buildings would twist and stretch and some would sink into the sand-soft pavement. Jean loved watching this happen, it seemed like she was the only one who noticed anymore, at times she questioned whether anyone else could see it at all. By morning everything would look the way it always had, dull gray buildings covered in filth, but the night, yes, the night was magic.

Jean slid the key into the lock on her front door, she felt the pins move beneath the grooves a twist and a sigh and she was home. She knelt to retrieve the mail finding only one unmarked envelope which she opened with one of her long red nails. Pulling out the folded paper hidden inside, she found a single sentence typed.

“Wednesday 7:00 p.m. Gravel Pier”

Jean tossed the note into the fireplace and followed with a match. She went to her bedroom, flipping off her shiny black heels along the way, and began unbuttoning her dress; the neck stretched to just below the chin and the hem to just below the knees, little black buttons swirled their way down the length of the blue satin fabric embroidered with pink cherry blossoms, following lines of black piping. Eventually managing to free herself of the garment, she unclipped her stockings, rolled them down her statuesque legs and placed them in a drawer. She pulled the pins from her auburn hair and let it fall free onto her slender back. And there she stood nearly bare at the floor to ceiling one-way mirror which was her window to the ever changing city, ten stories above the trash and filth and scum of the world in that muddy little part of town. She stood watching the buildings sway and bend and wondered why this was, why the city could change at night and show no signs of its dance by dawn. She sauntered to the kitchen and poured herself a drink. Moving back to the window in her bedroom, she sat on the floor before it, drink in hand, and let herself get lost.

***

The bright warm orange sun woke her in the morning. Jean had finished the drink and fallen asleep where she sat. She lay awake on the floor soaking in the sun’s embracing rays hoping the new day would be better than the previous, she hoped the night’s meeting would bring a good assignment, and she hoped that Cliff would catch her hints of disinterest. Leaving her glass on the floor, she propped herself up, stumbled to the bathroom and filled the tub. After a lengthy soak, she slipped out of the towel and into a silky blood-red floor-length dress, a slit from toe to hip let flash her long leg, a white leather holster attached to the thigh cradling an elaborately decorated six-shooter with a gleaming white mother-of-pearl handle. She climbed into her black heels and pinned up one side of her hair, leaving the other to rest on her shoulder and back. She dripped dangling pearls from her ears and painted her lips scarlet.

It was noon.

Jean locked up and walked to the Tea Tin, a tiny diner a few blocks away from her apartment, it was a small one-story building that had streams of a rust-colored grime running down its once sky blue exterior walls, the interior looked like a typical roadside/airport diner from some forgotten time that had been left to devour itself. There were tears in the fabric of the booths, gum beneath the tables and bar, the walls of the restroom were layered with thousands of markings from girls with pens, and the teal and once-white checkered floor was ever-sticky with syrup and soda. The place was run by a sweet old lady named Dot who tried her best to do what she could to keep that diner going, and to keep it from going to the Rats, a band of transients who stayed in the Strays to terrorize the town into submission.

“You want your usual, hon?”

Jean nodded while giving a friendly sort of smile. If there was only one person Jean could truly trust in the Strays, it was Dot.

II

Five-forty-five and Jean started toward Gravel Pier, two miles east. She tossed her leg over the seat, thrust her foot down the kick-start and the bike sputtered alive. Roaring and raring to go, she situated a pair of silver framed goggles on her face and curled the throttle back, speeding forward, she rode. The sun began to set over the crumbling old city just outside of the Strays. Rebar and beams were skeletal silhouettes against the orange pink sky with a few reflective panes of glass clinging to the bits of concrete and brick still attached to the once grand skyscrapers. Gullville used to be a great city booming with suits and stocks and bonds and ties, polished shoes and gallons of hair gel, a yuppie paradise built for trade. People moved like clockwork in straight lines like drones, work, lunch, home, work, lunch, home, day in, day out, no weekends, non-stop. You could almost hear the ticking of their synchronized wrist watches echoing from the shiny buildings.

Jean looked like a ruby speeding through the smokey bleak city, the side of her hair that wasn’t pinned up waved behind her. She reached the edge of the Strays and found the road she had always used to be nothing but rubble in the desert sand. Fucking Rats, she thought. She had to hope her junk-yard bike would make it across rough terrain, the tread on her tires was nearly non-existent and the sand spray not caught by the fenders would certainly leave some sort of rash on her legs and arms. This better be a damn good assignment. She rolled onto the sand slowly, it was hot, she could smell the rubber begin to melt and knew she would have to go as fast as the bike would let her. She backed up onto the remaining road, revved the engine, and bolted forward. The sand swirled around her like a hurricane, she kept her mouth shut tight and her face down. Weaving around chunks of road and rubble, she rode toward Gullville with determination. After what felt like an hour, she felt the front tire bump up and onto pavement. Jean took a moment to brush some sand from her hair and face and wipe clean her goggles before she continued on to Gravel Pier.

Six-forty-two. Jean pulled up to a rusty gate chained shut to an even rustier fence that crumbled at the slightest touch. She went to the largest hole and pushed her bike through. She climbed back onto her bike and rode along side the murky littered shore to Gravel Pier.

Jean saw two shadowed figures before her as she approached the pier wearing trench coats and hats they spoke to each other with intensity, she was unnoticed. She popped down the kick-stand, removed her goggles, and dismounted her bike. Wanting to listen in, Jean stayed back silently. She couldn’t hear anything more than undecipherable whispers, she saw a gun pass between silhouetted hands. Being two minutes to seven, she decided to join them. As she walked up to them, they kept their faces down, shadowed. The figure who passed the gun handed Jean a manila envelope and walked away without a word. She turned to the other figure, a face lifted enough for the setting sun to light the eyes.

“Hello Jean.”

“Cliff.”

“Are you gonna open it or what?”

“You know I won’t until I get home.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“You seem to be.”

“You know, this light makes you glow.”

“Is that right.”

“You really are beautiful, Jean.”

“So they say.”

Jean left Cliff beneath Gravel Pier and walked unturning to her bike knowing Cliff’s wanting eyes were solely on her. She zipped the envelope into a pouch on the rear fender, fit her goggles on, kicked up the stand and down the start and rode toward the hole in the fence.

***

Jean locked the door behind her and sat on the couch opposite the fireplace, which she lit on the way. She lifted the little prongs holding the envelope shut and raised the flap. Reaching inside, she pulled out and eight-by-ten photo of her assignment. Her lungs emptied with a shocked sigh and her shoulders dropped. Flipping the photo, she found the explanation as to why. This is what it said:

He has been found to be the Pin of the Rats.

He can not be trusted.

We have enough evidence to prove so.

You have one week.

Though she had a dislike of him, she would have never wished his death. A single tear flowed down her soft cheek as she started contemplating how his life would end.

The next morning, Jean walked to the Tea Tin as she had everyday for the past year. To her surprise, when Jean arrived at the corner of Dent and Forty-Second, all she saw was the faint shape of the Tea Tin's roof in the ground and a few of the tiles peeking through the dirt. It had sank and failed to emerge during the night's swaying sinking stretching dance. She had never seen a building stay the way it had been at night, they always had gone back to normal by dawn. Things were changing. It couldn't be good.