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I was too wary of the angel to leave him in my apartment all day--the fallen had the wrong kind of reputation for that. A couple of years ago, there was this big news story about this woman in Texas who found a fallen hitchhiking and took him home with her; she came back the following evening to find her two children ripped limb from bloody limb, and the fallen nowhere in sight. Hadn't even left the cat alive. Not that there was anything to kill in my apartment, unless he knew some secret way of making my fiendishly hardy cactus plant wilt. I hadn't watered it since I received it for Christmas, two years ago, and probably would've paid someone to do it in. The guy from across the hall was sleeping outside his door again; I guessed his girlfriend had found out about the sixteen-year-old he'd been seeing on the sly. (Yeah, I know I shouldn't take pleasure in other people's suffering, but c'mon, the guy was a sleaze.) The twenty-minute drive to the gallery seemed like it took hours. I'm not used to long silences, and I was kinda scared to put in a CD. I hadn't pegged it--him--for a rock fan. (I didn't know if angels even listened to music. But--in my defense--the entire mythos of the fallen is pretty iffy--until about thirty to forty years ago, the white coats weren't even certain they existed.)


A boy once saw my scars, when I rolled up my sleeves thoughtlessly, and his eyes widened in shock and horror. I remember, perfectly, the way he recoiled from me with a hiss of sympathy. I didn't understand why. Perhaps it was the memory of pain, brought about by those marks. But I thought--I still do--that they were beautiful; thin dark lines across my forearms, sharp and aching, tenaciously clinging to my skin out of loving spite. I'll have them for the rest of my life. And the pain was worth it--not that it was a harsh price. I've always had a high tolerance for pain, at least of the physical kind. But psychological warfare will bring me down every time.

I canceled all my appointments for the afternoon. When someone puts a price on your life--even if the assassination is unsuccessful--it's a fairly good idea to find out whom. It was just brisk enough that I felt justified in wearing my furs; the kind of cool autumn day that makes noblemen with any kind of conceivable literary talent (and many with none at all) wax poetic for several dozen stanzas. I hailed a hansom upon the Kilkenny Boulevard, and directed the driver towards the Mews. He gave me a very funny look at that, and I suppose he was right in doing so. It doesn't seem the sort of place a 'lady of my calibur' would care to visit. Not the right sort of scenery, as he put it, but I assured him--smiling--that it would be a very brief visit, thank you for your concern, and tipped him lavishly afterwards. I hadn't visited the Gilded Swan in years--in hindsight, I shouldn't have expected my memory to have decieved me. It was still the ugly little place it had always been, all chipped gold leaf and petty kohl-eyed tyrants, holding court among their adoring worshippers. The bouncer was new--I'd heard they'd replaced Jean-Charlott several months ago--but little else had changed. I had to bribe him to get in to see Vincent; I crossed his palm twice over with silver and he let me through. Cheap as they come--Vincent deserved better. The only one in this wretched hole that I could say that of.

Completely Unrelated OOC Shoutout:
It makes me sad because I can't touch you.
And I want to touch you.
But that's an entirely different story...