Away down the length of the viaduct, one of the pillars there, and on the face of it an owlish figure sketched in chalk gone ghostly in the shadows, feathery shapes about the wide round eyes a phantasmagoria of patterning, one scribbled claw about an afterthought of a perch, the other gripping a great dip pen. Four of them have gathered on the other side of it, and a fifth, arms folded, bared chest darkly freckled, twists of her dark hair strung with clacking beads, she looks down, the gravel-strewn pavement before them, between the railroad tracks laid to either side, and one by one they reach into the pockets of their trousers, jacket, waistcoat, gilet, from upturned cuff, from sock unrolled, from under a hat they pluck and pull and fish and toss clatter-clack white-shelled prongs not quite as thick as a finger, but almost as long, the one end of each a shiny, bare-metal screw, the other narrowed to a scorched black tip.

“Spark plugs?” the shout, up by the excavators. “Fucking spark plugs?”

“Leave us.”

She gets to her feet, bent over as she does to reach for this and that piece of discarded clothing, “Dress, in the hall,” says the woman in the tub. “We would be alone.”

“Majesty,” she says, gathering up her skirt with her underwear, as well as the brush she’d set down, and with her ungainly bundle slips away out the door. When the latch clicks quietly home, Queen Annisa lifts up her head, and more of her long hair dipped in the water about her, her expression fiercely blank, her cheeks wetly sheened. Lurching back suddenly, legs folding hips slid forward to submerge herself with a mighty splash, and all her black hair flung to floatingly up through the water above and about her, dragged by its slowly soaking weight into sagging curtains to collapse around her, all that water wallowing slopping settling reluctantly above, and only when the surface has once more stilled, and not even a bubble rising to trouble its tranquility, only then do her eyes blink open, under all those tendrils stilling and curled.

She sits up, water crashing away, all that coiled and wanton hair of a sudden clung a sleekly slenderly wetly shining rope a-dangle down her dripping back as gathering her feet beneath her, gripping the rim of the tub, she steps herself out.

“There’s a, workroom, loading dock, storage space thingie out back,” says Jo, sat behind the counter, pointing over a shoulder with a cheap ballpoint pen, her hair colorless, her polo shirt periwinkle, “but otherwise,” she says, and shrugs.

“You are a fucking Duchess!” he shouts, spinning about again, his matted pompadour, his goggles pushed up on his forehead. “You’re gonna sit here and play fucking shopkeeper?” He shoves at the counter between them, hard enough to rattle the postcards in their spinner rack. “I’m pretty sure,” she says, “the shopkeeper is whoever owns the shop. Keeps it, you know? I’m just a, a clerk, which, wow. Dickensian.”

“So you’re just gonna fucking what, sit there?”

Out on the deck, under all that color, Sweetloaf’s shadow turns, shoulders slightening, crown of his hair a-waver. “Not a big fucking deal,” he says, through the opened glass door.

“You were followed,” says Jo. “Last time. One of those guys in black suits. Tried to kidnap her last year for some rich assholes. How did you find me?”

“What, it was just the first place I looked,” he’s stepped into the bedroom, details struggling to reveal themselves against the brilliant backlight, “hard to miss this fucking pile.”

“How is she,” says Jo, but then, “who,” she says, lifting the letter, “who is it she’s seeing.”

“Lady?” he says, and she sighs, exasperated, “I know about Marfisa,” she says, “of course I know about Marfisa. This isn’t Marfisa. Who,” she shakes her head, lowering the letter, “she’s turned more, hasn’t she.”

“Lady,” he says, “I’m sure I don’t have the slightest fucking idea, and if I did?” A shrug. “I mean, if herself didn’t fucking tell you.”

“At least she can still do it, I guess?” says Jo, but he’s kneeling there before her, where she’s sat at the foot of the bed, those goggles of his pushed up on his forehead over eyes that brim with concern. “How’s your grace doing, that’s the question.”

Of course I love you. How could I not love you.

I am not angry. I am

disappointed

I do not like this pen that I have borrowed from Sam, whom you do not know, whose family name I do not recall at the moment. She is a perfectly pleasant enough person who has been assigned by whom I’m not entirely certain to assist me with a thoroughly unnecessary process that has been imposed without my assent or, frankly, understanding, but that is neither here nor there, at the moment, this pen, this pen this blaste

THIS PEN

will always turn of a sudden in my fingers and decide quite suddenly to scrath scratchily impede the flow of its ink

It is frustrating.

I sit here.

I sit here, writing, I am writing, to you, with a borrowed pen on a stolen pad, outdoors, in a park, and the sun is shining, the air is pleasantly hot, I am neither hungry, nor especially thirsty, and I slept very well last night indeed, and yet. I took this pad of paper and Sam’s disappointing pen and came out here because I was suddenly seized by the desire to write, to you, but now that I am here and doing precisely that, I find I do not want to write, to you: I want to speak with you, to laugh with you, even to argue and fight with you, I want to seize your hand in my own and draw you close, I want to kiss your cheek even as you turn away, embarrassed, I want you to put your arms about me

I want you to hold me

I want to wake from sleeping very well indeed and hear and feel your sleeping, dreaming breath beside me, and all I have is this paper and this pen. Nor did I not bring the letter you wrote, and oh my heart I thank you so much for even such a meagre scrap of you, that I did not bring with me on this utterly unnecessary errand, and so I do not have it with me now, to read, once more, in the sun. I shall answer my memory of your questions, instead.

And then, “Is it you?” Leaned forward, elbow on the board, handset against his ear. “It is you, isn’t it.”

And then, “You got the box,” he says. “I didn’t,” but then he takes in a deep breath, blows it out, a sigh, “you,” he says, “you want to talk. You call, you must want to talk. If you just, wanted to hear me say something, talk, I mean, all you’d have to do is turn on the radio. So. What is it? What’s up? How have you,” but he lifts the handset from his ear, looks at it in his hand. Drops it with a rattle back in its cradle. He snags the headphones from the hook, that sneering, bouncing guitar, presses a can to his ear, listening for a moment, looking to the turntables, the middle one, the disk unmoving on the platter, the angle of the tonearm, the needle set and waiting in a groove, his other hand now hovering over a switch there, waiting, waiting.