In Transit

In Transit

My fingers shake as I lift the cigarette to my lips. To the casual observer, it might be because it was bitterly cold in New Amsterdam. Even the fur lined coat I was wearing didn't protect me from the wind. I could feel my face chafe as the winds blew. A cold chill that happened once every few years in the area was passing by. The place was notorious for these kind of things.

"You're not supposed to smoke here," Cheryl says, standing there as if it was a balmy day in her crimson dress. Her gray hair (prematurely graying hair, it ran in her family) was tied up in a bun and she was wearing her diamond ring, even though she had divorced her husband four years ago. It was the only thing that she demanded that she keep. Her husband got custody of their two children (as was usual in a non-magician/magician relationship; magicians were seen as horrible parents for some reason) but she ended up faring better with a wonderful apartment in the middle of Manhattan and the prestige of being the Ice Queen. Her children were now in a private boarding school where she taught magic, ironically, so she got to see them anyway.

"Fuck it all. I deserve a smoke. The bastard I was fucking stole my fucking money." Salami slicing, they called it. He was taking a bit here and there to fund his stupid gambling habit, and I never noticed, not even when I was fucking the bastard and letting him seek out publishers for my novels. I take a long drag, which calms my nerves down just for a moment. "I'm suing."

"Is that all?" Cheryl doesn't prod. It wasn't in her nature to. Cheryl could go through the details later when the lawsuit was public.

"I threw his things out into the street."

"Mm-hmm."

"I want to stamp on his fucking prick."

"Come again?"

Cheryl wasn't used to the slang I was using. It was understandable Ð she was a New Amsterdam native, and I had moved a few years ago from the Britannian Union, because it wasn't working out. "His dick. Genitals. I want to make sure that he can't get naked without immense embarrassment at what remains of his pride."

Cheryl gives me a weirded-out look but nods. "You should write a book about this. They'll call it another bestseller from Lucia Morstan." I give her a look. Cheryl chuckles, taking my cigarette and taking a puff before giving it back to me. The motion surprised me, and even more, she smoked it like she had been smoking for years. No first-time coughs or hacking like the young people who smoked. "Who said it had to be fiction? The Memoirs of Lucia Morstan, Part One."

"Thanks, but no thanks. You may be a first-rate magician, but you're fucking shit at titles."

We get shooed away by the proprietor of the cafŽ we're having coffee at for smoking, and we quickly finish the cold brew before we head down the street.

"So, what are you going to do now? It was his house you were living and fucking him in." Cheryl makes a good point, and I shove my hands in my fur coat before responding.

"May I room with you? While I get shit straightened out?"

"As long as you don't throw my shit out on the street."

The Bastard has my things in a box outside on the curb. My clothes are in a suitcase (I never bothered unpacking my clothes since I traveled on the maglevs to cities for book signings and talks) next to the box of proofs. They were mostly of my novels but some were from other novelists across the country. On the top was the first novel that I wrote, titled We Sink, along with a post-it note from the bastard. I don't bother reading it; I take the post it note, crumple it up, and throw it as far as I can at the house.

It lands in a heap ten feet away, partially hidden in the lush Bermuda grass of his lawn. I give the house the two-fingered salute (he wasn't home but fuck it) and call for a cab.