Rhapsody in Gold (BoyxBoy)

Beginnings

The servants meekly clamored about their hardened knees sliding against cashmere carpet with gloved hands picking up fine shards of glass. Gary Stafford and his wife, Scarlett, had once again been fighting. The walls themselves whispering the vicious knives thrown verbally between the once loving couple.

Scarlett sat in her room, stewing in the aftermath, her sobs almost shrill in desperation to be heard to be comforted by the arms of the man she had given her love and life so many years ago. But, the house had fallen silent as the opulent man had taken to escaping to the city in the fastest car he owned with only a single glance of regret towards his wife and without his chauffeur. The servants continued cleaning their hands staying busy to mitigate the turmoil.

The fighting happened often these days and Gary stayed at his office more and more to escape from his wife's drunken wrath. Soaked in hubris, the blonde haired man scavenged anything to regain his wife's favor, for the public's favor. Married New York City Senator Impregnates Woman. The news was unrelenting and ruthless and he had been disgraced fully.

He did right by the woman and offered publicly and privately his full support of her and offered to take the baby and raise it. A mild light shone in his eyes then, even with his wife's increasing displeasure of him. The two were childless and the most savvy and tenured of servants knew how much he wanted a child, the gender not mattering much to him at all. It was a bitter pill to swallow and Scarlett raged about the gilded cage of her dreams and nightmares.

Sweet wines, bitter whiskeys, and snow colored powder kept her docile for a time until her husband arrived back to once again grovel at her feet to accept the child. She damned that infant and cursed his name, leaving him to return to his office once more and slowly but surely transforming to a broken man with a broken wife to match. Was it pity that kept the two so high in the servants' eyes, or was it the juicy gossip which fueled their nightly talks as the two previous lovers walked down the road to divorce?

Broken glass now cleaned with only the faint remains of blood appearing on the carpet, they headed to the aforementioned wife, knocking meekly on her door for a sign of life. The sobs had descended into a childlike cry before disappearing into the atmosphere leaving a sense of foreboding. That had been an hour ago and they had been far too frightened to check on her during the mania, lest they get caught in her swirl of anger.

Opening up the door, they tip toed themselves around the door frame, seeing and hearing nothing before their eyes caught the empty bottle rolling hollowly on tanned ceramic floors. Her body laid itself askew from the side of her bed to the floor and puffy eyes from tears lay peacefully closed, deceitful in her seeming serenity. A Basquiat hung inconspicuously and observed the scene as cold as God, as screams echoed off rapturous paint strokes and phones, gripped in sweaty palms, were rapidly dialed.

The press arrived before the ambulance, their cameras rolling and taking in the beautifully gruesome scene at the manor. The police and EMTs fought against the rancorous mob to the victim and the growing blue tint of her skin told all that they needed to know. Suicide, but an investigation was sure to follow in the coming days. The rich man was oddly absent from his own wife's passing, the press observed smugly. His phone was shut off and only the brisk and business-like voicemail tone remained, reminding all whose hand's the victim's blood was on.

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A fool and his money sat parted in a rundown bar and stared glumly at an empty dancefloor. There was a beer that was warming up in his hands, it's ice mere slivers of the cubes they once were. A total of 20 people, mostly little friend groups, gathered around a miniscule bar stage waiting in anticipation for the guitarist that was said to be their entertainment. Gary had no need for such a thing. He had sped here on a whim and picked it out from the plethora of low starred reviews on Yelp.