[Danny Jones]
Chicago has not been kind to Danny Jones, and some times it seems like it will never get better. She has begun she is destined to be alone that she will never find a pack where she will truly belong, where they will not leave her, or disappear, or die.
She has lost so much, she wonders if she will ever be able to carry on. It is the sad eyes of that little girl, it is the soft crying of a steadfast Mama, it is the pain etched in the eyes of the Durente family, a family she loves as much as if she were born to them, a family she could. not. save… that is what drives her here tonight. That is what drives her to find some safety in a crowd, some way to mourn her loses away from those who tell her simply that they will be reborn to fight again.
She is tired of fighting.
So, so, so tired of losing.
Of crying.
Of mourning.
Yet some things, some cannot be helped. And that is why we are here. Where is here? Here is a club where the dark gothic industrial sounds can be heard on the street, and felt through the thick soles of the clunky boots most of the goth kids wear. Here is where it matters not who you are, it only matters that you are, and that you can dance. Here is where everyone is unique, where everyone has their own style, yet somehow they are all together in some sort of group, so cohesive unit of movement.
There is the girl with the new boots – can’t figure out what to do with them, exactly – sticking with the box step, counting out the beat in her head. There is the other girl, in a school uniform, who has mastered step together step together and has stuck with that for HOURS, no matter the song, the pulsating beat. There is Miami Vice Guy, dressed all in white with his collar popped, doing a very dramatic form of thai chi. There is Morpheous, who has lost his coat, but is working the dance floor like NO one’s business. There is Yoga Guy, who is doing slow poses – from downward facing dog to headstands to everything in between – and not caring that folks are looking at him.
And there, in the center, where the area has been cleared so people can simply watch, there is Danny. She has her boots on, a pair of camoflage pants with multi pockets, and a tattered tank top. Her hair is spiked to the height of 2-toned glory, and there is a thin sheen of sweat soaking through her clothing, making the white tanktop (with gold glitter that declares her a Diva) near transparent. She has been here for a while – a very long while. So long that it is nearing closing, and the bartender, upon her saying she wasn’t DONE she was going to KEEP ON DANCING, has called her a cab. Fortunately for her (and everyone else) Santiago answers the call.
And Danny, Danny keeps on Dancing.
[Santiago Durante]
The Durantes are no strangers to loss. They were once a family of seven. Seven is what embarked from Piedras Negras together, with little more than the clothes on their backsides and an aching hunger in their bellies, a thrum of slow churning Rage in the pit of one of them driving them onward, and five is what arrived in Corpus Christi, Texas nearly ten years ago. They had lost along the way, and yet they continued on.
They kept living.
They kept fighting.
In the week following his brother’s death, Santiago Durante has been quiet. He has not wept in private like their mother, he has not wandered around in a confused haze like his niece. Their mother has done as she always has, preparing large meals as if there will be some large crowd coming through the door, as if at some point there will be a massive gathering in the living room. Perhaps in another town, another life, there would have been. It was not always a pack of three that she kept watch over, the three that survived having been part of something larger, something fiercer, during their days in Tulsa. Tulsa destroyed that which was most important to her son, took from him his packmates and his mate. Rafael had survived, Brodie had survived, Jon had survived. And that was all.
There was not the large gathering that had come to her house in the days following the Gathering of the Departed. There were no more packmates to attend the wake. There were three siblings from Tulsa who arrived at the end of the week, Julieta and Augosto and Marisol, a musician and a fast food restaurant manager and a waitress between the ages of 21 and 25. They did not bring their mates, they did not bring their children–the point of the exercise was not to extend a stay in a city not their own, but to gather in one sense of the word. They packed up what little Mama Isabel and Carolina had left, and within days, they, too, were gone. It would take the entire family to raise Rafael and Veronica’s child; there was no pack left. There was no family left in this city.
Santiago is the only one left.
It is late. Very late. He is sitting in the driver seat of his Ford Escort, white and covered in decals, company name and phone number and a geometric light at the top of the vehicle turned off to indicate he is not taking passengers. Ranchera music comes out of the speakers, the mariachi band tearing through a familiar song, the singer enunciating precisely and arrogantly. He has the heat on, and he sits waiting for his fare to exit the building.
It is a long wait.
[Danny Jones]
It is a long wait.
Mama is gone. Carolina too. It will take a whole family to raise the little girl, and that is probably what broke Danny’s heart the most. She could not save them. She did not hear the call, as it could not reach her until it was too late, she could not save them, and now her ties to them are gone. Except for Santiago. He has stayed.
She hasn’t asked why he stayed, if it was for her, if he wanted to go and she was the driving force to stay. She can’t bring herself to ask, though part of her desparately wants to know. She is afraid of the truth, whichever direction that takes her in.
He waits outside, and she is still inside, still in the center of the floor, still moving with the pounding pulsating beat. Her body moves with the sensuous glide of a reptile emerging from a basket, her belly undulates to the beat and carries her hips with it, her arms glide and slide through the air, hitting on the beat and shimmering into motion once again. She bends back, and holds impossible angles, and pulls up again all without missing a beat. She has been the main attraction tonight – and she is oblivious to it all.
There is nothing here for her, nothing but the beat, nothing but the music, nothing but the movement of a body that could. not. save. them.
[“Danny!” Carolina cried before she left “I tried to call daddy with the Twister Bottle you made… he didn’t come. You promised… but he didn’t come…”]
The beat pounds on, and after some time, the bouncer waves to get Santiago’s attention, waves to bring him inside. When he opens the window, or the door, he’ll be told “…we think we seen her with you before. She’s been here all night – and well.. no one wants to interrupt, but we DO gotta close soon. Can ya talk her down?”
Talk her down is mild… for surrounding her is a wall of Rage that keeps them at bay, a wall of emotion that all but smacks them in the face the moment they come too close, and they back away without knowing exactly why. As for Danny – she is still lost.
There is nothing but the music.
Nothing but the pain.
Nothing….
[Santiago Durante]
He isn’t supposed to leave the car unattended, isn’t supposed to go inside after fares–they either come within a timely fashion, or he pulls away, leaving them to call up another ride or start hoofing it. He isn’t supposed to leave the car, and yet when the bouncer is waving through the window, prompting him to crank on the door handle and kill the ranchera, he knows. It’s Danny. He’s been in this city so short a time, knows so few people he could have possibly been seen with, and his gut is telling him the truth.
So he sighs, pulls the car into the club’s emptying parking lot, and kills the engine.
There is no carding for him, no cover fee or braceletting or anything that would indicate that he is here to do anything more than pick up the girl that refuses to leave, that everyone refuses to go anywhere near. They cannot identify what it is that makes them not want to approach the girl, but she radiates dangerous energy, the sense that she could rip out their spines if they so much as touched her, and Santiago is the only one who dares to breach that wall of air between the undulating body and the safe perch by the door.
“I got her,” Santiago says, and pushes his keys into the pocket of his black wind breaker.
There comes beneath what is left of the music a thumping of boots, a swishing of one denimed thigh against the other, and a strong hand wraps itself around the tense upper arm of the Gnawer girl.
“Danny,” his voice comes. “They’re closing, cariña, we gotta go.”
[Danny Jones]
Danny, he says, and calls her by Spanish pet name… but it is not that which gets her attention right away, it’s that someone DARES touch her, that someone has breached the invisible barrier, that someone has laid a hand on her and it all comes together in a move so fast, so unconscious, that it seems like it cannot be stopped. He grabs her, she spins, and her fist – with all the graceful danger and power behind it, stops just a hairs breath away from his chin. It is a blow that would have sent him reeling if she had not stopped it, though even she can’t say how she recognized him fast enough.
She is just glad she did.
But for a moment, an eternal moment, her muscles strain, her body is completely tensed, so hard that she is quaking with the repressed fury she’s been trying for hours to ease on the dance floor… she has not even paused for water, for anything, there has been nothing but beat and movement and body punished for the minds inability to process it all in a constructive manner.
For a moment, it seems as if even he won’t be enough to talk her down this time.
For a moment, it seems that she no longer cares…
and then, at long last, her body recoils, her hand drops, then her skinny frame does the same, sinking to a crouch, head down, her chest heaving with the prolonged effort hoping to lead her toward exhaustion. Sweat drips on the floor, she watches it fall, and she slowly sinks back into this time and this moment from wherever her mind had sought refuge for the evening. Her breath is harsh, and her body still trembles.
But she’s not gonna hit anyone, now. Hopefully.
[Santiago Durante]
That fist comes flying towards his jaw, and he does not think to move, does not think to do anything but tense up and prepare for the blow to strike his body. Santiago flinches, blinks when her trembling little fist is but centimeters from his skin, and huffs out a breath, removing his own hand from her arm and dropping it by his side. Taller than her, bigger than her, he is still no match for her: in a fight, Danny would win without a moment’s doubt.
There is a breath, a glance into her eyes, eyes he has gazed into in the most intimate of moments and been utterly helpless in the face of, and he has the gall to stare at her, to look Rage right in the eye.
“Danny,” he says, voice firm yet wavering. The boy is tired, and though he sleeps at night, his dreams are restless. There are slight bags beneath his normally strong brown eyes, a tell of mental exhaustion.
She drops as if her strings have been cut, falls into a crouch that brings her closer to the source of gravity, and he watches her chest heave, watches a pool of sweat slowly form on the dance floor beneath her shadow. In the stillness of the air he listens to her breath swelter, watches her tiny body shake in the wake of near exhaustion, and the sight of it is too much for him to bear.
She has lost two packmates, two people who she had held as her last hope at salvation, at solidity. He has lost his brother. Despite this, he does not understand her reaction. He cannot. Their brains do not work the same. They are wired differently: hers is not human.
A sigh courses past chapped lips, and he does not move.
“We gotta go,” he says, desperately quiet.
[Danny Jones]
We gotta go, he says again, and she nods, slightly, so that he knows she understands, that she is back, that she knows where she is once again. She can’t stand just yet, she cannot will her muscles that have moved in musical concert for hours to stop trembling long enough to pull her aching body to a stand, not yet.
And it is not only sweat that falls, but the salt filled tears that seep from her eyes, slide down her nose, to fall to their death on the sweat- soaked floor beneath her feet. Her strings have been cut, her mental clarity and ability to process things in the blink of the eye all in good order.
And they’re still dead.
It kills her to look in Santiago’s eyes, knowing she could have saved his brother, that had she just known she could have fought with him, along side them, and saved both packmates from leaving them too soon. It kills her, it eats away at her, it brings her to this point, this point right here, where all she can do is nod.
He has lost another brother. He has lost someone he’s loved since birth. She understands that she has no right to grieve as deeply as she does, though it is not something that she can help. She understands his loss, she cannot equate her own to his – but she cannot stop the feelings either.
She is spiraling downwards.
She cannot breathe.
Around her, since she has stopped, the muscle has trailed off into a silence that is almost painful in the ringing of her ears, where every little breath, every swish of material in movement, every little thing sounds like a thunderclouds crash to her senses. A moment. Two. Then she lifts her hand – the same she would have hit him with – and slides it into his, suddenly unable to even pull herself upwards without his help. When she regains her feet, her eyes do not lift, she simply lays her head against his shoulder and takes a shuddering breath.
“Ok.”
She says. It’s all she needs to say.
[Santiago Durante]
Tension in the caught arm has the girl rising to her feet, Santiago using his strength to help his girlfriend to her feet. There is no way to ignore the salt water coursing down her cheeks, to ignore the pain in her eyes… nor is there any way for this kid to weather looking at them, to see the pain she feels, to see the guilt, the sorrow, the helplessness. She is so young, is living in a world where she could die at any moment, where her friends and packmates are taken away without warning, the reason lost underneath all the bloodshed; none of them deserve this fate, and yet many of them are glad to die in the service of Gaia, have long since reconciled the fact that they will not grow old, will not live to see their children become adults, will be sung about in tales devoted to the fallen and not to those about living heroes.
It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What is most tragic is that Rafael was one of the ones who thought he would be around to watch his daughter grow up. That is what hurts the most, is knowing that his brother just wanted to get back to Carolina, to make up for the huge hole that existed where her mother once was. He was just going to the scrap yard, he’d said, he would be back later that night to tuck in Carolina. He went to the scrap yard looking for a fan belt, not a fight, and now he is dead.
In the hours following the return of Rafael and Santiago’s bodies, Santiago had stormed out of the house, had punched the window of his Ford and bruised his hand while cracking the safety glass, had walked as far as he could go before he felt he would collapse, and then he turned around and came back. That anger has not left him. It is nowhere near the feral Rage that bubbles within his cousins, his girlfriend, as had roiled within his brother, and yet it is undeniable. There are five stages of grieving, and Santiago’s first stage is not denial, but anger.
When she is off the floor, when she is laying against him, there is no anger. There is simply an arm about her shoulder, a chin upon her skull, and a tightening of fingers about a terribly bony shoulder.
“Let’s go, girl.”
They walk away, bouncers and bartenders unable to comprehend out it is that young man can stand to touch the girl whose body has not stopped since she entered the doors.
[Danny Jones]
There is no tab to pay, there is nothing to reconcile, nothing to help the bartenders put more then an idea to the face they’ve watched all night, and that idea horribly wrong. She’s a tweeker, probably. It’s clearly drugs, and she’s probably anorexic too, and likely won’t live long no matter how much that boy loves her. And he’d have to love her to be able to bring her down that quickly, right? Right. Whatever idea makes it easier for them to sleep at night, that is what they will decide, what they will use to categorize the girl they’ve been stunned by all night long.
She doesn’t fight him, she doesn’t pull away, she simply walks with Santiago toward the door. She is drenched, but she has no coat, and wouldn’t pull it on anyway. She left all her things in the bedroom at the foot of the bed, whereas she normally carries them all with her. She is so at a loss that she does not even have enough senses to bring her pack on these excursions. She is grieving.
She is lost.
She slides her arm around Santiago, and moves with him to the car, and waits for himto unlock i and grant her entrance. While she waits, she finally speaks. Her voice is small, shaken, very much an indication of how she feels. “…sorry they pulled you away from work…”
[Santiago Durante]
Santiago glances at her out of the corner of his eye, nimble fingers making short work of the passenger side lock before hauling it open to let her in. Once her tiny body is folded inside, he eases the door shut and lets himself in on the other side, his own bulk causing the car to irk down and up again. He doesn’t speak as he turns the engine on, as the lights flicker to life and he reaches out to grab up the radio.
“32 in route,” he says.
“Bout time,” comes a Chicagoan voice made harsh by too many cigarettes, too much time spent speaking.
Out of the parking lot, onto the street, Santiago eases them through a left-hand turn and finally speaks.
“Didn’t pull me away from anything.”
[Danny Jones]
Normally she would smile at the voice through the radio, at how official Santiago sounds when he calls in, but there is little enough for her to tap in order to keep speaking, amusement is a million miles away. She is unsure she’ll ever find it.
She curls up on the seat, and then furthers her lean to lay her head on his shoulder, so strong, in holding both of them up, so willing to take whatever she may lash out with in order to grieve for his brother her own way. Just as she is there for him, for all he keeps it all inside, anger boiling out only when it leaks and cannot be caught quickly enough. She takes a deep breath, and then another, having finally come completely back into herself from wherever the hours on the dance floor had taken her.
“Maybe.” she says, though her amusement is just barely there, just the tiniest bit heard because he knows her so well. It wasn’t anything, nothing but his job.
“Y…you talk to her today?” the question shows her hesitation, her worry, her fear that the little girl they both love (though he has loved for so very much longer) will hate her forever, will not be able to forgive her for not saving Rafi, for his not coming when she called…
[Santiago Durante]
“Talked to Mama on the phone earlier today.”
The city is sleeping for the most part, not many bodies still up and alert at the times the clubs tend to close down. There are few cars on the road; none pass them by as they sneak down city streets and move towards the Near North Side, towards the half house that had been vacated last week, that was empty but for what was in Santiago’s room and the kitchen. At some point he will have to make a decision as to whether to return to Tulsa or not. That point is not tonight.
“Carolina was sleeping. She says that’s all she’s been doing lately.”
[Danny Jones]
“oh” she says. That’s all she can bring herself to say, all that she can use to voice the emotions tangled in that single syllable.
They wind toward the house, the house that is empty, that echoes without Rafi’s cussing in Spanish, without Mama’s chiding, without Carolina’s sweet laughter. A house that is empty but for her things, his things, and a looming decision of what to do, where to go, what will happen next. The house breathes with their pain, and dims with their grief.
She lifts a hand and sweeps them under her eyes, gathering the moisture there where sweat is drying to a saltlaced sheen. “How late you workin?”
[Santiago Durante]
Oh.
That isn’t what he had wanted to hear, either. He didn’t want to hear that his oldest niece is in pain, is suffering something no child should ever have to endure, is yet another orphan of the War. One day, she will find herself undergoing the same change that had gripped her father almost ten years ago. One day, she will learn that she is a Theurge of the Gnawer Nation, that she is one in a long line of warriors, that she has a duty to fulfill. And she will do so without question, as her father before her, his grandmother before him.
These are the End Times, yet the War will never be over. At least, not so far as any of its soldiers can tell.
For now, Carolina is just a little girl, is an orphan entrusted in the care of her grandmother and her aunts and uncles, is grieving the loss of her father and her Uncle Brodie. And her suffering is nearly too much for any of her family to bear.
How late you workin, Danny wants to know, and Santiago dares sneak a glance away from the road to answer.
“I go off at four,” he says.
[Danny Jones]
She nods, at the timeframe given. Perhaps another time, another life, if she were not who she is what she is, she would ask to ride along with him, to have some semblance of company, of shared emotion, even if it’s essentially an excuse not to be alone. But on a good day, her presence scares away the customers, and on a day like today, where her control is stripped to the barest of threads, there is no asking the question that would be a bad idea all around.
They have a decision to make, and stay or go, Santiago and Danny cannot afford the house the had been living in on their own. Danny has nothing, and Santiago would work himself to death. Danny is still unsure why he stayed, when all he cares about is gone home, but she is eternally grateful he has – for however long it lasts. She seems to be waiting for that final shoe to fall, for that final slice to slide along her jugular vein and take away the rest of her life with it.
But none of that is said. None of that is even suggested. She just nods again. “I’ll make sure ya have somethin to eat waitin..”
Mundane, the topics, to save themselves the agony they both swim in.
[Santiago Durante]
That gives him something to smile about, even if it is a horribly sad smile, a horribly agonized smile. It hurts for his face to pull its muscles into that configuration, as if it is wrong for it to do so, and it goes away after a scant second of showing itself.
“You’re too good to me.”
A light, and he guns it through the yellow, no one around to compete for time in the intersection.
“I want you sleeping when I get home. Alright?”
[Danny Jones]
She hasn’t slept, any more then he has. They are both running on empty, they are both exhausted by so much more then simple physical reasons. His sleep has nightmares, hers does as well. There is little either can do about it, but survive.
She nods, slightly, an agreement of what is a far more monumental task then either will admit. “Ok.”
She’ll try, at any rate, but most likely will end up sleeping in the couch, and waking at the first sound of his key in the door. She simply can’t lose him too, and she knows full well that the simple act of driving a cab for the wrong person can get him killed too, and then she would be well and truly alone, with no escaping the inevitable. She has a precarious hold on sanity at this point, and it hinges solely on his remaining alive, and making it home to yell at her for sleeping in the chair, for waking up, and helping her up to the small bed they’ve shared for the past few months.
He’s holding her afloat, and it’s horribly unfair to him, and part of her knows that. But none of her can stop it. “You’ll… be careful…” It’s not a question, or a statement, but some oddity of unsurity in between.
[Santiago Durante]
One day, they will have to have the What Now conversation. He will have to decide if he will do what is expected of him and return to Tulsa, or if he will take a step into the unknown and remain in Chicago with his girlfriend, if they will make some sort of Nation-sanctioned formality out of their time together.
Their wounds are still too fresh, too deep, to think about anything out of surviving through today. Tomorrow, What Now, is out of the question. It won’t be, some day. And that some day will occur sooner than they think. But for tonight, it is not the issue.
The issue is Danny. The issue is Santi.
“I’ll be careful,” he assures her, reaching out his warm right hand to take her left.
[Danny Jones]
She relaxes against him, her hand swallowed by his, fingers lacing together easily. He is bigger then she is, he looks stronger, he looks like what every girl wants their man to be – and he is, though only they know she is the physically more capable of the two of them. It’s an odd thing, but something those of their ilk are used too. And now, right now, he is far stronger then she is, and dealing with things so much better then she…
it may not be that way later tonight, and it may switch again in the light of a new day, but for now, it is what it is.
She sighs, softly, and lifts his fingers to her lips, pressing a soft kiss against the back of his knuckles. It says everything, without her voicing a word. All the things she never says, all the things she wants too, all the things she cannot. It’s all there, in the press of warm lips, across cooler skin.
[Santiago Durante]
They have sex in the cab.
[Fade out]