The Ditches

Chapter Six

My room is only marginally less depressing than the view outside. I shrug my jacket off. Heat tickles my skin as a warm breeze flows from vents in the wall, vaguely masking the smell of damp. I wipe my finger over an ancient chest of drawers, and it returns caked in dust. Better than home.

Wind rattles the building as snow deposits on the triple glazed window. I sit on the bed. I unpack. I stare out the window, have a shower, change my clothes and sit on the bed. The wait is painful and watching the clock only makes it worse.

The hands on the clock tick through time too slow. When living on spaceship, time was a different beast. I never much thought about it, time just happened, quietly every day. But it's louder here, on Arrah. Here time is a slow walker, and I can't overtake.

I'm outside Hara's door in exactly two hours and I knock gently. Flakes of old paint stick to my fist and I brush them off, watching as they float to a carpet covered in animal hairs and who knows what else.

"Come in," Hara shouts.

I open the door and click it shut behind me. Hara's room is identical to mine. The same thin curtains and worn carpet. The same furniture that leans too much to the left and looks like it's given up on life just as much as I have. Hara is in the bathroom, I assume, or hiding in the wardrobe. Unlikely, but not impossible. So, I sit on a bed that groans under my weight.

The bathroom door creaks open, and Hara stands in the doorway with a tube of black mascara in her hand. Long golden hair falls in neatly curated waves, past her shoulders. But it's not her hair that catches my breath and renders me speechless. It's her long legs and rounded stomach. It's the stockings and suspenders and voluptuous breasts in nothing but a barely-there bra.

"I bet you're wondering why we're here?" Hara says, and she returns to inside the bathroom, but this time leaves the door open. No, nope. That's currently not what I'm thinking.

I stand and lean against the doorframe. Fully aware I'm only doing this to get a better view. I like to torture myself, remember? I like to hate myself and feel shame about my sexual attraction to women. All good fun.

"Actually, right now, I'm wondering why you asked me to knock on your door in two hours and you answer like ... this?" I smile easily, like I'm perfectly comfortable with the situation. Like I'm not shriveling up and dying on the inside. God, I need a drink.

Hara pauses coating her eyelashes in black. She looks from the mirror. "Sorry, time is a little tight. I'm meeting a guy here; I got a message saying he'd be early. I didn't even get my nap, I just had to jump in the shower."

"You've spent two hours in the shower?" Don't think of her in the shower. Don't think of the water rolling down her naked ... oh shit. I adjust my gaze to the towels draped over a bar, each one multiple shades of beige. Disgusting, I bet they're swarming with bacteria.

"I've showered, I've shaved. I've done my hair and most of my make up. This guy is fussy, he wants perfection." She returns the black tube to a case and grabs a lipstick and pencil.

"You were perfect before all that." Permission to bang my head against the wall, or to run outside and scream into the abys of white? No. Okay. I'll just backpedal. "I mean, you caught quite a few eyes on the plane."

Hara simply laughs, her cheeks redden slightly under her make up. Here she isn't quite so brazen about her opinion of herself. Maybe in the club she was playing a part just as much as I. Or maybe she thinks I'm lying. Or maybe she's uncomfortable because she has an eight-foot fucking entra staring at her whilst she's semi-naked. I return to the bed and sit amidst more groans from beneath.

"Anyway," Hara says, "the man I'm meeting is kinda high-profile. He once worked with my father. But he cut all ties with his mob background ... wanted to start again or something."

"So, you're fucking this guy tonight?"

"Yeah, probably. My father wants him dead, that's where you come in." Hara leans closer to the mirror and coats her lips blood red. "People don't just decide to leave Whyan if they want to live."

"I'm guessing he doesn't know Whyan is your father?"

"He has no idea. He thinks we had a chance meeting at an awards ceremony, we've been meeting here weekly for the past few weeks ..."

"Why kill him now?" I ask as I fixate on the white flakes falling from the darkening sky. "Why not the first time you met him here?"

"I've been squeezing him for information."

"So, if I'm killing him tonight, what's the point of all this ..." I indicate Hara, and what she's wearing. "Why not kill him when he gets in his room?"

"Tonight, he's supposed to be bringing a newly manufactured drug." She blots her lips with a tissue and pencils red around the outline. "It's one I've hinted at wanting to try, my father needs to know who he's buying these from, then he can hit them hard and takeover manufacture."

"Doesn't sound like your guy has turned over much of a new leaf."

"They never do. They get out from under the thumb of one mob boss and end up entangled in something else," Hara says. Yeah, I know that feeling.

"You ever think of trying to escape all this?" I ask.

"Of course," Hara says as she finishes applying red to her lips. "My father promised I could leave with my son after I brought you to him. I was foolish to believe him. You know how I'll escape this?" she stands in the doorway of the washroom.

I shake my head.

"When my looks fade and I'm not desirable to men. He'll have me killed. Tonan is the son he wanted, his heir. I just complicate things. And Tonan will grow up to be as despicable as my father."

"That's not going to happen." I'm not saying that because I don't think Whyan won't discard of Hara. I'm not going to allow it to happen.

"Not anytime soon." Hara smirks at me. "I reckon I'll age well."

"I think you might." I smile.

"Anyway, you can't kill my guy until I give you the nod. Okay? No matter what happens, whatever he does—"

"What's he going to do? You're just fucking him, right?"

Hara hesitates. "Yeah." She smiles. "But promise me ... the better I do on these jobs the more time I'm allowed to spend with Tonan."

"I promise. So, who is your guy?"

"Juran Cadole."

"Nice. Sort of a shame we've got to kill him."

The smile slips from Hara's face. "Yeah. Right." She claps her hands together and slips past me, around the bed. "Want to help me pick a dress?"

"Do I?" I say thick with sarcasm, but I really do. I just wish I was helping her pick a dress for a date with me, only I wouldn't care what she wore. I scootch back, on the bed, against the headboard. "You do realise I'll think you look good in everything?" I groan internally. What next? Will I admit my growing love for the woman I've known a few days? Anything is a possibility with me, and I can't even be bothered backpedaling this time.

"Perfect." Hara beams, and I'm pleased I let the compliment stand. "My favourite kind of critic."