[Sodium_noir] Saturday Morning

[Hope Zagorski]

  Hope Zagorski Mortal

  As Hope drives toward Cardboard City in silence, she hears a buzzing
  sound. She looks around and sees her cell phone practically jumping
  off the dashboard. She opens it, not bothering to glance at the
  caller id on its display, and places the tiny hands-free earpiece
  into her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hope, it’s Grace.”

  Hope rolls her eyes. Grace was the sluttiest of her three sisters,
  and always the quickest to offer her free advice on guys. Given that
  she’d been married and divorced twice, her advice wasn’t even worth
  that much. What did she want? She tries to modulate her tone, making
  it seem friendlier. She forces herself to smile, hoping that it would
  be conveyed over the phone lines. “Hi, Grace.”

  “I talked to Anthony today. He told me what happened.”

  Hope rolls her eyes, listening to her sister’s heavily accented
  voice. Crap, this was all she needed today, another fight about her
  ex fiancée. What was it with the women in her family? Her brothers
  had accepted her announcement without complaint. Her mother and
  sisters, however, were still trying to convince her to get back
  together with him. But he’d told her, so maybe they’ll shut up now.
  “And?”

  “You’re an idiot for dumping him. That was so sweet of him, waiting
  for you to come home.”

  So he hadn’t told Grace what really happened. She wasn’t surprised.
  Hope finds her Chicago accent “He had no right to ask ma to borrow my
  spare key."  And she had no right to give it to him.  Hope thinks. "He
  coulda waited for me outside.”

  Grace opts to change the subject. “He’s a union dockworker and he’s
  from the neighborhood.” She explains, even though Hope was well aware
  of both facts. “You’d be set for life if ya married him. Lots of
  girls would jump at the chance to marry him.”

  She was tired of being held to the double standard. Her brothers
  could have a career on the force, she had to get married. To want
  anything else made her a rebellious black sheep, if one considered
  joining the police academy an act of rebellion. “Then he won’t have a
  problem finding someone else.” Hope replies. But if that was the
  truth, why was Anthony still chasing after her?

  “Hope, he wants you back. Why won’t you agree to marry him again?”

  That was it. She wasn't in the mood to make nice with her sister
  about this.  “Damn it, Grace, I don’t want to. Shouldn’t that be
  enough of a fucking answer? Tell you what though, since you slept
  with him in high school, and you like him so much, why don’t you
  marry him?”

  Grace’s tone becomes more shrill. Hope smiles, knowing she’d hit a
  sore spot. “I’m already seeing someone.”

  Putting out for them was closer to the truth. Grace’s five kids came
  from different fathers. To their credit, they were all paying child
  support. To her sister’s discredit, she slept with any cute guy that
  had a pulse, but at least she couldn’t have kids anymore. She decides
  to go for the jugular. “And you’re letting that stop you?”

  “Let me tell you something, bitch.” Grace replies. “If you want to
  ever catch a husband, you’d better get off your high horse and lose
  the fake morality. You’re not a damn virgin, and you haven’t been
  since you started seeing Tony Morgan in high school.”

  Normally, Hope didn’t care about getting in the last word. It just
  wasn’t worth it, but today she gives it a shot anyways. “At least I'm
  not the slut that slept with every guy in school.  Or the hussy that
  broke up four marriages.” With that, she hits end. Bitch. A few
  minutes later, the phone rings a second time. Again, a Chicago area
  code. Her mother’s number. Damn Grace, she ratted her out. She lets
  it ring three times, and then smiles as it goes to voicemail. She
  wasn’t about to talk to her mother right now. Those sorts of
  conversations never ended well, and she wasn’t in the mood for
  another fight.

  Arriving at the steps of St. Bridget’s, Hope realizes that she had
  arrived a bit too early. The homeless were just beginning to rise
  from their sleep and shuffle off into the unforgiving city. Walking
  up the steps, she feels rather like a fish swimming upstream. Or
  maybe just a lone black sheep in a field of white ones. She looks
  across the way to the Chaste Dragon. A Bordello, but despite its
  illegal nature, it operated openly in Gotham. Gotham’s finest at
  work, it seemed, but even Brannigan looked to its operator, Peter
  Faun, for advice. What was she to make of that?

  Shaking her head, Hope continues to the doors of the church, ignoring
  the people shuffling past her, just as they were ignoring her.

  [To tag or not to tag..]

-- 
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