𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐬 | ʙᴏᴀʀᴅᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴇᴍᴘɪʀᴇ x ғᴀʀɢᴏ s4

FIFTEEN- "BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"

"You're only standing there 'cause somebody once did somebody wrong"

—Billy Joel in "Sleeping with the Television On"

✉

The thing no one knows about crime is that it bleeds. One doesn't amputate it right away and it's gone, Before and After. Nothing seemed so evenly cut, nothing seemed to clunk so neatly together, like those wafer candies one snapped apart (Gangsters slipped into the space allotted by the United States government and its mistakes, the space between the lawmakers and the law-followers, and they did not move: they adapted and positioned themselves properly as laws and borders and towns changed). But with this necessity came the winding of guns and rainwater and bread dough. One was not a gangster by night and a kindly leader by day: the two blended, they broke and flaked like polished-over rust.

The government, in particular, was great at the negotiation and the slides of cards. One would wish for that confidence, that glamor, that unyielding power. 'You can't drink. The Klan's knocking at your door, but don't have a beer.' 'Can't move prostitutes across state lines, unless they're showing up here.' With the snap of pale fingers, 'Look here.' like commanding a dog, 'allowed this but not this.' Richard could snap his fingers at a dog but it was never something with a real, flat command. It was 'Here, easy, as you wish'.

Photographs were dusted off, addresses remembered. The past tripped its way into the wrong hands, and was rolled like warm wax between fingers before being rolled away, another stray bead under the furniture of a great, dark room.

January 6, 1945

"Is Daddy there?" Emily said into the phone. She didn't want him to hear about it. The time that flickered in memories like silver slivers of the falling-away moon in which it was only Margaret and her siblings, Emily and Teddy, did not go unspoken of. It was simply a time in which two people were married and did not speak. It was a time in which Emily had grown used to the idea of never really seeing her father again. Never really because he sent them things on their birthdays or Christmas, wrote sometimes with newspaper clippings of things they might like. It wasn't like he was gone, quite. But the notes that came with newspaper folded around them were always sparse, because he didn't know what to say besides a short explanation. Which was understandable. Emily had hardly ever written back. Maybe he'd be in Cuba when it came (because she'd inherited in addition to her flat 3s his insatiable desire for every fact ["Actually there were four, but let's not quibble over that little detail."], and knowing just who he was fucking and just what he was shipping was part of that. There was probably a point where she and her brother knew more about which heroin went where than their father did).

Emily and Teddy would sometimes lay on her floor casting out random theories, for their father was close to a faulted enigma.

Y' think he's moved outta the hotel?

Nah, Em. You don't live in a damn hotel that long and leave for no reason.

So...So you think when we left...

Jesus, did I say anything about us? He would get defensive for no reason, or none that was clear to her. He always got too dramatic too fast.

Listen, you don' think he changed something after we left?

Yeah, he fucks more bitches, that's what.

That's crass.

(But so was relating a suicide in the roughest tone imaginable, framing it in a daring 'You heard this yet? Because it's fucked!')