SNUFF (h.s.)

Chapter 19

Tramontana

Give me some lovin', I wanna die.

Nora had Cleopatra's nose. Rhiannon's transmission was playing on the radio, Nora remembered the artists she'd played. She always listens to Rhiannon on Viper FM, even her first ones in a pirate station. Rhiannon's voice had changed as the wind blew by but the voices of the singers remained the same – the voices of perpetual youth.

Nora couldn't remember how she felt when she listened to her voice in "Rosa Pantera" for the very firsty first time. She didn't remember whether Harry had changed since, he sure had yet he sounded the same. Well, he wasn't talking now. He had a cigarillo as he was looking at her through his lilac shades as she was shaving his face.

"Let's go to a drive-in..."

"When we'll find one, I'll take you there", he was sneering to stretch his skin as she stirred the cream to applied it on him.

"Baby Bud", he tossed off, "It passed out", he talked with jutted words watching his smoke to not fall from his mouth. Nora rubbed a match with her nail and lit it again.

"Hang on there now...", Rhiannon's show was almost over without ending titles but the last few tunes were snowed by a local station with a butchy lady talking in haste that didn't bother Nora. Harry listened. The Caddy was a white glow from afar. Harry leaned on the hood as she never minded the hustle exciting him. He was a klutzy kiddo.

"Did you hear that?"

"Should I?"

She pulled the open razor with an artful nimble leaving no cream lines behind. She'd done it a couple times before but when Harry shaved back in Roseville, she'd step in the bathroom to wear her long lashes or paint her lids. Nora made sure her man was clean alright. He had his fair share of troubles from Sergio. She'd washed his hair, they had now a damp scent and her hands still smelled of the soap that was drying slow on a tiny plate with a geisha.

"They talk about us"

"Who?"

"They talk about Magica...", his blissful eyes half-closed as he leaned on the side to catch his cigarillo and blow.

"What are they saying?", she was holding his head in such a skillful way that no drop ran on his forehead or his cool neck and his sheen brows.

"They don't know what the fuck happened"

"They never do. Unless they stumble upon a fuckhead", Nora smiled and whistled.

"We ain't fuckheads, are we?"

Nora winked and washed the blade in a Campbell tin. She had hungry eyes whenever she shaved him. He was a kind little child in her hands. She watched the straight razor move on his skin and how it fitted his shape, she watched it reach his neck like her fingers do.

Harry was holding the tin and wondered who he's been before falling in love with Nora. He was struggling to remember but the life past Nora had disappeared from his mind. He was born once her eyes gazed upon him, the jasmines and the lilies blossomed around his feet, in each step a rose grew. When dinosaurs walked the earth, Harry was a coltish kiddo and wasn't certain if he knew better now. Maybe he'd discovered a forgotten self but while he stared at the small mirror he couldn't recognize the troubled man.

"What else did they say?"

"The fuckers think I did it"

"Would you?"

"What do you think?", he had a half-closed eye and a wicked one.

"I don't...", she raised a brow.

"I come after the spilled blood..."