In The Dark

Two

• • •

From the forty seven bus stops distributed all around Pineford, number thirty eight seemed to be the most crowded lately.

It was 12:37 p.m. when the third bus of the morning arrived to the stop, the number of people waiting to get in was strangely big for a Wednesday, or any other normal day for that matter.

Mia Gagliardi held a brown knitted basket tight to her chest as she sat on the back of the big, blue bus; her arms were wrapped around the top, working as some sort of cage for the flowers inside it, and her feet nervously tapped on the bus' floor as it came to a stop. She was ecstatic to get out of that devil's trap as soon as possible.

The pink hairband on her head made a poor job keeping her shoulder-length, dark brown hair out of her face, mainly because of the tiny sweat drops that dripped from her forehead and caused the plastic material to slip to her face; her skirt was a complete mess, thanks to the chubby man who had hardly squeezed his enormous self into the tiny seat beside her, drawing all the air out of her lungs and ruining her perfect skirt in the process; and to top it all off, she was running late, again.

And for a moment, Mia was thankful that her nana wasn't anywhere near, or else, she would have scolded her for arriving late to a date, for the second time that week.

The solely image of the short old woman in her whitest apron, holding a wooden spoon on her right hand and cursing in italian like no sailor would ever dare, scared her enough to walk faster, as if it were possible to turn back in time and not be thirty minutes late.

She left out a relief sigh when a pair of old gates rose open in front of her; the rusty metal was covered with a thin layer of black paint, that had already started to peel off, and an almost fallen sign hanged on top, swinging to the wind's rhythm in a strangled melody, with its barely distinguishable letters that read: Pineford's Cemetery.

Mia rushed past the gates in a desperate frenzy; as difficult as it was with all the people blocking her path in some way, whether it was by pushing her aside, or bumping into her hard enough to knock her to the ground, or by simply not noticing her small frame as she tried to zig-zag her way out, she managed, with many difficulties, to cross the gates.

The young italian quickly excluded herself from the annoying crowd by walking to the most secluded part of the graveyard, where she sat in the grass with her long, round skirt folded neatly underneath her. Enzo Giomo's gravestone was fully covered with spiderwebs, pollen and dead flowers; it only took her several minutes of continuos scrubbing with the old cloth she always carried with her to leave it all perfectly spotless.

"Well, Enzo," she said, placing a small bundle of yellow flowers in front of the grave "I think I made a good job, you look so much better now. I've been telling that rude caretaker to keep an eye on this side of the cementery, not many people come around and the state of the graves would make my nana scream, of course he hasn't done anything; every time I come, it all seems to be even dirtier! Should've seen it coming, men never listen to women's advice; admitting we're right —which we normally are— would just hurt their little, dumb egos."

The brunette waved her arms with unnecessary strength as she rambled about the awful morning she had. It had all started when her old alarm clock, which she had adored since her father gave it to her on her thirteen birthday, didn't ring at 6:30 like every other day; her bad luck made its second appearance when  she broke half of her hair curlers by stepping on then in her desperate search for her white working apron —which had, somehow, managed to turn grey overnight—; finally, not only had she arrived forty minutes late to work and, consequently, had her lunch time delayed thirty minutes, leaving her to catch the last morning bus —along with half of Pineford's population— and arrive late to her meeting.

• • •

Roy Nelson enthusiastically devoured the contents of the greasy paper bag in his right hand. Crumbs of toasted bread dangled from the corner of his mouth and tomato soup dripped from his perfectly shaved chin. The page of Pineford's Daily News he held in his left hand was partially covered with a big brownish grease stain, which didn't let him read the part of the sports' section that read it all about Pineford's softball team's, the bizontes , first —and probably last— victory of the year.

Once the only reminder of the cheap chili sandwich he had was nothing but a couple of crumbs and an odd looking piece of meat in a dirty napkin, Roy threw his trash in the green metal bin behind the bench he was sitting in and observed the people gathered in the green grass in front of him.

It had become his routine during the past three months: everyday, during his sixty-minutes' lunch, he would drive his CAR all around the city to the cementery, where he usually devoured a lame sandwich —bought in one of those cheap cafés scattered all around Pineford— while he intently observed the Renzis' mausoleum, still holding the hope to find in one of the numerous visitors a clue to the old italian man's fate.

But that Wednesday was no lucky day for him. The wealthy italian family's burial place seemed desolated —for the first time in the past three months—, no one was around and there were no flowers or gifts placed on the white marble steps of the mausoleum. Roy took his small notepad out of his right pocket and wrote down a quick note concerning the absence of visitors, the words "end of duel" messily scribed under his annotations. Roy knew it was a matter of time; Nino Renzi's death was bound to become old news, and it seemed to him that after the one-hundred-days-long duel time