[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019e7cbe-43dc-713a-9c31-7e0fc5f6a725.webp[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=9174cb][I]Eve[/I][/color][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=9174cb][b]Death and all her Friends - XI[/b] [i]Marone[/i][/COLOR][/right][/sup][/indent][center][COLOR=dimgray][SUP][sub]_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________[/sub][/SUP][/COLOR][/center]

[indent][indent][color=silver]

Eve watched across the way as she settled into her seat at Silvio’s. At hers. Time really didn’t exist, she’d been here before and would be here again. She couldn’t tell which Eve was sitting, the one that was thirteen and new, feeling the leather upholstery for the first time, wide-eyed and parentless. Eldest only daughter; now youngest third child. Was she the one who was seventeen? Caught out after curfew with a boy, fractured wrist from falling off the trellis after midnight. Was she twenty-one again and celebrating Ralph’s engagement in her pajamas, with a glass of champagne at eleven am, and fast food fries and Ralph’s awkward announcement and Cosima’s beaming smile? Or was she twenty-two and alone in the kitchen in the dark of the night making sense of something that had happened to her that still didn’t make any sense at all. It was just compartmentalised away next to the other baggage she’d gathered up over the years. 

The household kitchen was just a place. She’d observed so much of the human condition here.

Beyond the glass panes that were the window to the indoor pool and she saw a woman swimming lazy laps in a bikini, hardly ten years older than Eve. One of Silvio’s girlfriends. He’d never remarried after his wife died, he’d just gotten older but the girlfriend of the month stayed the same age. The girlfriend climbed out of the pool. As expected, the glamour filters had been sculpted onto her skin and she did in fact have a perfect face and she was probably an exotic dancer or model of some kind; that had always been Silvio’s type. [color=6b7653]ᵂʰᵒ ᵈᵒᵉˢ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵍᵘʸ ᵗʰⁱⁿᵏ ʰᵉ ⁱˢ ᵖⁱᶜᵏⁱⁿᵍ ᵘᵖ ʷᵒᵐᵉⁿ ˡⁱᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵃᵗ?[/color] This girlfriend was moving around in the space of Silvio’s grief and stress for the day and Eve wanted to think it unhealthy but she remembered her own reaction to it all was to shred her apartment to pieces and then fire double entendres at someone unsuspecting. Eve was the wink wink to her father’s nudge nudge. They were not all that different. They both turned their pain sideways.

“I’ve got prosciutto and melanzane,” Silvio said. Opening the fridge to take out a small platter. “Come on, eat something.” He said, placing the antipasto platter in front of her. [color=7ea7d8]𝙶𝚊𝚋𝚊𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚕？ 𝙾𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎[/color] The same one she’d seen a thousand times before with the same gaudy little bowl, the chip still there from when Ralph had sent it rolling across the bench while fighting Joey for the last olive. They weren’t even children when that happened; they were two grown men at a wake. The platter always got brought out for occasions and holidays. Today the platter was out because Michael Marino had been shot and nobody really knew how to deal with it unless it was with gabagool, prosciutto, and sundried vegetables. 

He was being soft with her, she could tell. She could feel the restraint in his body, the awkwardness. He poured her a coke in a glass and placed it in front of her, coasterless. [COLOR=9174cb]“Thanks,”[/color] she sighed.

“Funeral will be in two weeks,” Silvio sighed. [i]“Marone,”[/i] he continued. His own can gave a crisp crack as he opened it, the fizz filling the silence. [color=6b7653]ᴵ'ᵐ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᵍˡᵃᵈ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜᵘⁿᵗ ʰᵃˢⁿ'ᵗ ᵖⁱᵗᶜʰᵉᵈ ᵘᵖ ⁱⁿ ʰᵉʳᵉ.[/color] “Shoulda seen your aunt Rosalie,” he shook his head. “We’re going to need to fall around her, Eve. And the girls. I got some shit taken care of for them. Food, meals on wheels or whatever. Just for now, you know.”

Eve sipped from the glass, the full sugar burst onto her tongue and fired off into her blood. She always drank a diet. [color=76535c]M̷y̷ ̷w̷i̷f̷e̷ ̷l̷i̷k̷e̷d̷ ̷D̷r̷ ̷P̷e̷p̷p̷e̷r̷,̷ ̷t̷h̷e̷ ̷c̷h̷e̷r̷r̷y̷ ̷o̷n̷e̷.̷[/color] In her mind she did think of Rosalie, pictured her falling over herself in tears with that all-exhaustive, all-consuming grief. The way that the wound of his absence would sit in the wrinkles around her eyes and she’d carry it in her body and it would be heavy for the longest time. 

[right][i]Maybe things are ‘a long time’ until they’re not.[/i][/right]

Beside that she pictured the very real images and replays of all of Michael's goomahs over the years that Eve had seen through his eyes and from his perspective. 

“I’ve lost guys before,” Silvio continued, snapping her from her thoughts as he moved around the space. “This was something else, shouldn’t have happened.” He paused. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

[COLOR=9174cb]“It’s okay,”[/color] Eve said with a shrug. [color=537076]ǝʌƎ ʎɐʞo ʇ,usɐʍ ʇı[/color] She was the fifteen year old about to let him make an excuse for himself.

“It’s not,” he added, taking a seat opposite her at last. “But you have to understand from what I was seeing. Things are just changing so quickly Eve, new families popping up in every district. Never used to be like this.” He took a sip from his own glass and sighed, placing it back down and getting himself back up. “I just– I needed you to be there, and when you didn’t answer–” Eve already knew he was reaching for something stronger, and he did, pulled out a bottle of scotch. Some thirty year old thing, and a glass. Eve saw in the cupboard a bottle of vodka that she knew to be entirely water. Eve and Joey at eighteen and nineteen had gotten into the actual stuff years ago and that was when Eve realised she enjoyed the kind of sickness that the excess of alcohol made her feel the next day. It would be another year or so before she found coke. Silvio glanced over his shoulder to look her up and down and then got a second glass.

“I just wasn’t thinking straight when I saw him,” he said as he sat back down. 

[color=6b7653]ᴵˢ ʰᵉ ᵉᵛᵉʳ ᵗʰⁱⁿᵏⁱⁿᵍ ˢᵗʳᵃⁱᵍʰᵗ?[/color]

[COLOR=9174cb]“And you needed me to tell you what had happened.”[/color]

“I just wanted to know who did it, wanted to do something.”

[COLOR=9174cb]“That’s not how it works–”[/color]

“Fine,” he shrugged as he sipped from the glass. “But I woulda settled for fuckin’ anything, just. Something to say I’ve done enough to figure this shit out.” He toyed with the glass in his hand. “You know what the worst of it is?”

Eve shook her head.

“I knew the second I saw you that you didn’t want to do it. And I asked anyway.”

[color=a7d52b]He didn’t ask you.[/color] [COLOR=9174cb]“But you didn’t ask.”[/color]

His eyes sharpened and he gave a wry smile. “No.” He drank again. “I didn’t.”

What was she to tell him? That he had made her afraid of him, and of herself? That he pushed her to the wolves as he always had. For what had she done really? Nothing she hadn’t for him already. [color=537076]ʇןnɐɟ ɹnoʎ ʇou s,ʇı ǝʌƎ[/color] Neither of them spoke for a while, and Eve let herself rewind to family breakfasts at fourteen in the room. Her making toast and eggs and bacon. Fetching cereal while Ralph and Joey wolfed it all down and knocked it all back and made a mess and maybe there would be a slice of bacon left, always the one closest to overdone and the piece of toast that was a little burnt and the last dregs of the milk; she’d make her breakfast from that after they’d all gone and left and she didn’t push in and she didn’t do anything that would make them dislike this stranger.

“I called it in, Eve,” Silvio said then - breaking the silence. “Had to. They said they found some concrete traces from wheels of a van. They’re looking into it.” Eve knew how much it would have killed him to involve the police but she also knew that he had no choice with this, not really. “They’re getting those kids out today,” he added with a tone of disbelief in his words. “They’re not - we’re not – not suspects, you know. Got nothing on us, on you.” Because that was what mattered, what really mattered to him. Whether or not he could get booked for it, whether he was snitching on another gang. How it all made him look and whether it pushed or pulled at his standing. That was all that mattered. It was hideous. He was trying to reassure her and she thought back to her anxiety spiral of the morning and the doom she’d scrolled herself to and only some of that weight lifted. She sipped at her scotch.

“I hated seeing you that way, I didn’t know – I didn’t realise. I thought you were–”

[COLOR=9174cb]“Dying?”[/color] she cut in.

Silvio winced and looked away briefly. Yes, that was what he had thought. 

“Jimmy pissed himself,” he said, meeting Eve’s eyes again and right then she could see herself in the reflection of his own, blue like hers. Like pools. “You scared the piss outta Jimmy. Even the dog didn’t piss.”

[COLOR=9174cb]“They shouldn’t have been there, why were they there?”[/color] Eve asked but her voice was too quiet but something was rising in her chest.

“Jimmy’s only ever thought of you as a sweet kid–”

[color=6b7653]ᶠᵘᶜᵏⁱⁿᵍ ᵗᵉˡˡ ʰⁱᵐ ᴱᵛᵉ. ᴸᵉᵗ ⁱᵗ ʳⁱᵖ.[/color] 
[right][color=a7d52b]Tell him[/color][/right]

[COLOR=9174cb]“But I’m not sweet though am I?”[/color] Eve cut in. [COLOR=9174cb]“I’m not a sweet kid.”[/color] [i]I'm a woman.[/i] She hesitated on her words. [color=537076]˙sıɥʇ op uɐɔ noʎ 'ƃuıoƃ dǝǝꓘ[/color] He’d stopped in his tracks - glass halfway to his mouth, his eyes fixed to her in expectation. [COLOR=9174cb]“Your [i]friends[/i] think I’m a sweet kid, I know they do because all I do is keep quiet and smile and nod. Because you tell me to. Do they know what I’ve done for you?”[/color] she spoke daringly, [color=6b7653]ᴱᵃᵗ ˢʰⁱᵗ ˢⁱˡᵛⁱᵒ[/color] letting a match dance over the length of fuse that had always been there. His jaw had tensed, his eyes darkened just so to have her back down, bite it back, blow out the match. [COLOR=9174cb]“But then. But then,”[/color] she continued. [COLOR=9174cb]“Out there, people look at me and they think I’m crazy. I’m trying too hard. Or they know I'm a Raciti, so I must be spoiled or trouble and they assume I’m a brat and maybe I am.”[/color] [i]Nobody sees that I'm Eve.[/i]

[i]“Eve–”[/i]

[COLOR=9174cb]“Everyone has an idea of who I am and what I should be except for me and shouldn’t I get to decide?”[/color]

“Honey–”

[COLOR=9174cb]“Maybe I was dying. Maybe I do die a little bit. I don’t know. Nobody has explained this to me." She took a breath. "But I go somewhere else and then I am all of those people and they're me and then I wake up. Back into the dark after tasting all of it. Do you know what that’s like?”[/color]

He thought about it some. He did not know. He did not answer.

[COLOR=9174cb]“It’s not [i]sweet[/i],”[/color] she paused, her lower lip trembling so she brought her glass to her mouth and drank again. He waited. [COLOR=9174cb]“It’s always scratching at me. All of these voices that want out of me. Clawing to get out.”[/color] [color=6b7653]ᴶᵃˢᵒⁿ[/color] [color=537076]ɐıʌıןO[/color] [color=76535c]C̷o̷n̷n̷o̷r̷[/color] [color=7ea7d8]𝙻𝚘𝚛𝚎𝚗𝚣𝚘[/color] [color=a7d52b]Paloma[/color]

He said nothing, just averted his eyes and returned awkwardly to his drink. She finished her own in a single mouthful. The only sound between them was the gentle splashes from the pool from beyond the glass.

"Funeral is two weeks away," he said after some length of time where they both sat with that silence. Drawing them back full circle to the start, to the point that mattered and made sense. "You'll be there. You and your brothers."

[COLOR=9174cb]“Of course.”[/color] Surprised and unsurprised all the same at the way he refused her subject. She once again wished she could tell him more about how she felt. Explain why she so often sat in silence around him and start to unspool why they orbited each other like this. 

The ghosts of herself all breezed past her then; all pieces that in their totality that didn’t fit right. She was a girl once, she was a grown woman now. She was here and and she would be here again next year and the year after that and she’d see this version of herself from beyond the moment and with the hopeful and keen hindsight that she could've, should’ve handled everything better. Maybe one day she’d have it together, and it would all be worth it and she could gather up each ghost of herself and reassure them that it was all worth it. It was all worth it. And she’d eat an olive from the same bowl.

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