[RiddleRose]: 298.Gold Dust - NaNoWriMo '07.Chapter two

Chapter two.

Wren shook the sleep out of his eyes, and sat up groggily. Still disoriented from his dream, he staggered to the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth, took a short shower, and shaved. His face in the mirror scowled at him, protesting this rough treatment so soon after waking up. 

Carefully he examined his face for stray hairs, bruises, or scraped. None. The face looking back at him was a nondescript, although good looking one. There was no striking feature about him, something that had kept the cops off his back several times. 

He had brown hair, edging towards auburn. It was slightly curly, and fell to just below his earlobes. His nose was straight, his eyes grey green, and his mouth tended towards smiles. When he had been a child, his hair had been redder, and he had looked like a little renaissance angel. Now he just looked like himself.

He was nineteen years old, out of high school, but not yet in college. He wanted to go to college, definitely, he just didn’t want to do it now. There would be plenty of time for that kind of thing later. Now, he wanted to eat, drink, and be merry. And deal Gold Dust of course.

Wren was about five feet eleven inches tall. He had no brothers or sisters. His parents were still in California, but he had left ot go to high school, and never gone back. He wrote them now and then, and occasionally sent a picture or two. They were happy knowing that he was happy. Of course, he didn’t tell them about the Gold Dust, or the girls, or any of the other things he did that they wouldn’t approve of. He loved his independence.

Now, looking in the mirror, he stuck out his tongue at himself, and went to get dressed. He decided to visit a friend, and dressed in worn out jeans and a Nirvana tee shirt.  Appearances were important always, when you lived on the edge of the law.

He took the T to his friend’s house, arriving there just as the sun went down. He used the spare key Neil had given him a few years ago to let himself in, and thumped up the stairs. Inside, it was warmer, the bite of late fall air no longer so strong. He banged on the door to Neil's flat, three times softly, three times loudly, and let himself in.

Neil was, as usual, sitting at his typewriter. Neil was always sitting at his typewriter. There was a mug of cooling coffee next to him, and the floor was covered with crumpled up bits of paper. Wren was willing to bet quite a lot of money that he had been sitting there all day, as he was liable to do when hit by an inspiration.

Neil was a writer, one who was truly dedicated to his work. He churned out novels, poetry, short stories, and anything else you could think of at his little typewriter. As far as Wren could tell, he lived on coffee, alcohol, and pad thai, yet somehow he was thin as a rail. They had known each other since the second day of high school, when Wren had defended Neil's big glasses and constant pencil behind the ear look, by saying that he secretly still slept with a teddy bear. Since then the two had been fast friends.

Wren no longer slept with a teddy bear, although he did keep it beside his bed at all times. Neil still had glasses, but they were a little more trendy, and although he always had a pencil about him somewhere, it wasn't usually behind his ear anymore. They had both grown up a lot since that day as scared freshmen.

Wren shook Neil gently, waking him from a doze and causing him to groan indignantly. “Who? What? Why? Go 'way.” was the coherent welcome that issued from his lips.

“Shaddup you idiot, you're still asleep,” said Wren jokingly, “you got company.”

Neil, slightly more awake now, grinned muzzily, “You don' count as comp'ny. You're family. Get me a bucket 'f water, yeah? I'm gonna drown myself.”

Chuckling mightily, Wren got a bucket of water, and held Neil's head under it til he started to wriggle. “There you go you sot. You do realize that your liver is probably about half normal size, yeah? You should really cut down on the booze.”

“You say that every time. Don't fuss mama, I can take care of myself. What's up with you lately? Haven't seen you in a couple days.”

“Oh, this and that. Know that big fancy shindig uptown? I went to that yesterday. Met a girl too. Hoo boy, you should get yourself one of them. Some nice geek lady who'll bring you coffee, and read your stuff.” Wren grinned, imagining it, “she'd get you sweater vests, and bring you pad thai.”

“Ha! I got you for that, buddy. And anyway, you know I never let anyone read anything I write. Might get stolen. Might get plagiarized! Bad. I need coffee.” Neil grabbed the mug from beside his typewriter, and took a swig, despite the fact that it was at best lukewarm, and possibly strong enough to take varnish off of chair legs.

Wren made a face, but didn't comment. He was used to this sort of odd behaviour out of his friend. Neil was a character, there was no getting around that. He wrote constantly, periodically sliding stacks of paper into huge manila folders, which he then filed away in his triple locked filing cabinet. They would never be seen or heard of again. As far as Wren knew, no one besides Neil himself had ever read anything that went into those manila folders.

Even the crumpled up papers on the floor would disappear at the end of the day. Neil put them into the furnace and burned them every night at midnight. The one time Wren had tried to read something of Neil's, it had been violently ripped out of his hand, and thrown summarily into the paper shredder, despite the fact that he had only read about a sentence.

Wren had thought and thought about why Neil would be so anal about his work. Was his writing bad? No, it couldn't be, he had gotten straight A's in school, and his English teachers had wished there were even better grades that he could be given. Neil had occasionally written some of Wren's more terrifying papers for him, and had edited his writing consistently through high school. Wren suspected that he would have done a lot worse had this not been the case.

Was he actually afraid of plagiarism? Maybe a little, but he knew that Wren would never betray him like that. He and Wren shared everything, from money, to food, to Gold Dust.

Neil had gotten Wren his first job dealing, when he had introduced him to Gold Dust. Wren hadn't known about it til then, but Neil had. They had both become dealers, although Wren thought that Neil was also addicted to it. Neil was higher up on the chain of dealers than Wren, Wren got the stuff from Neil. He had no idea who Neil got it from, and actually had a slight suspicion that Neil might make it himself, but he had never asked, and Neil had never volunteered the information. It didn't hinder their friendship, and it could be dangerous for Neil if Wren was ever caught.

The two friends chatted for a while, about this and that. Wren managed to get Neil out of his apartment and down to a café for a coffee break and some relatively fresh air. They chatted some more. At about ten they left, because the café was closing. They went back to Neil's flat. Wren dozed while Neil had a brief inspiration and wrote for an hour. At eleven Wren left, with a promise to get Neil a new green argyle sweater vest and some soap. “And don't forget, I want the ROSEMARY this time! You got lavender last time, and I smelled funny for DAYS!” Neil shouted at Wren's retreating back. Wren waved an arm vaguely and made a note to get the lavender again. Or maybe the sage, sage soap was nice. He loved tormenting Neil. He was so very fussy about the smell of his soap. It was so very easy to mess with someone like that.

Wren wasn't nearly sleepy yet, so he walked to the red light district, which was only a few blocks away, and found a nice strip club to settle down in for a while. He cheered and catcalled with the rest of the crowd, but also enjoyed the general anonymity of the place. No one really looked at you in a strip club. He had hidden from cops in them several times.

All in all it was a pretty good night. He left the club when one of the dancers got sick, because the show fell apart a little then. She had been the lead, and without her the whole thing was just a little less sexy.

He wandered the streets for a while, helped out some graffiti artists when the police showed up unexpectedly, and got the sweater vest for Neil. When you knew where to go, you could get anything cheap at any time of night. That included formal dress wear, all kinds of animals, and children... speaking of children, that little girl looked lost. If there was one thing Wren could not stand, it was cruelty to children, and that girl was so cute that she'd end up in a moving whorehouse for sure if he didn't get her home quick.

“Hey kiddo, you lost?” he asked moving slowly towards her, so as not to frighten her. She was wearing an elaborate green dress, and it looked like she was carrying a folded up umbrella. Her hair was long, golden, and curly, and when she smiled at him, completely unafraid, he saw that she had a little gap where one of her teeth must have recently fallen out. She was, in a word, adorable.
She shook her head, but didn't say anything. “What's your name sweetie? You should get home, it's late, and there's bad people out here.”

Still she said nothing, and Wren looked around, determining where he was in relation to the nearest police station, where he could take this little kid to safety. But when he looked back, she was gone.