The Half Killed

Chapter Two

The juice trickles over Marta's plump fingers, settling beneath her fingernails as she tears off another strip of orange peel and quite unceremoniously tosses it over her shoulder.

"Are you sure you won't have some?"

I glance at the mangled fruit in her hands, the section of orange, squashed from her ministrations, dripping from her fingertips. But even with the unnatural heat of the sun beating down on the back of my neck, I'm not tempted by this morsel of refreshment.

"Never mind," she says, and pops the disassembled fruit into her mouth. A dribble of juice rolls down her chin, but it's gone in a second, a quick flick of her tongue lapping it up. "Oh, it is a right steam bath today, isn't it? Sure I can't get you something to drink?"

"I assure you, I am fine."

"Hmmph."

Another section of orange disappears, another chunk of peel thrown to the ground. All around us, the most stalwart of the city's pedestrians brave the midday sun. Men in swallow-tail coats and collars that refuse to wilt. Mothers leading herds of smartly dressed children from one shop to another. Pigeons fluttering around gutters that contain only the most distinguished forms of refuse. Even Marta shines in this part of the city, her shrewd eyes inspecting every hansom that rumbles past us, as if another business opportunity might be hidden away inside the noble equipage.

And look at how my dear Marta is dressed! I've never seen her broad shoulders decorated with such finery. Bronze silk trimmed with velvet, over a blouse edged with lace. It's a wonder she's not succumbed to the heat, wearing so many layers, but there's not a bead of perspiration on her upper lip that isn't wiped away with an embroidered handkerchief before the light has a chance to reflect off the moisture's surface.

"It's a shame," she says, once the fruit is demolished, a faint glistening at the corners of her mouth the only proof of its prior existence. "A real shame to see what's become of you."

She has seen me once in the last five weeks, and before that, it was a span of two years between meetings. I cannot but wonder which of my remembered selves she's taken to using as a comparison.

"You're wasting your youth, Thea, hiding away like you are."

"Ah." I look away from her in order to cover the subtle twitch at the corner of my mouth. "I wasn't aware matters had gone so far."

She pushes out her bottom lip and blows out a breath that bothers the dyed feathers poking out of her hat. "You're doing it right now, you know. Trying not to be seen. It's in the way you stand. I don't remember you standing like that when you were a girl." A dark look settles over her brow. "You need to go back to the stage, d'you hear?"

My fingers tangle together and break apart before she's able to read something more into my brief hesitation. "No," I say, at last. "I shouldn't have ever been there in the first place."

"Oh, really?" Her eyebrows, plucked into an unnaturally high arch, rise even further. "You were disposed enough towards it back then, or have I gotten it all mixed up in my head? Mind you, my memory isn't as reliable as it used to be."

Ah, the advantage of having someone like Marta among my acquaintance. I'm never without someone to remind me of my former mistakes.

"I was so young." And I wince at this poor excuse, as if every sin can be readily forgiven so long as it was committed well before the last of a person's molars have broken through. So I continue talking, offering up justifications that sound increasingly false to my ears. "It was different then. I thought it would help. I thought it would make me stronger. And it did, for a time."