[pirate witch]: 524.Novels.NaNoWriMo 2007 chapter 1

More than halfway through the rice and pasta aisle, Livia was still lost. She picked up a cardboard package of Rice Pilaf and sniffed it. Livia shook her head, of course it would have smelled like cardboard, why was she smelling a box in the supermarket? She knew what Rice Pilaf smelled like, her apartment smelled like it Tuesday evening when she came home from the
studio. 

The box rattled when it fell into her red plastic grocery basket. She swung it around, skipping a tiny bit as she finished walking through the aisle. The skipping reminded Livia of her first Ballet, the one where she played Little Red Riding Hood. The basket hit a display stand of frozen spinach, and she stopped. That was what she needed! Vegetables! She put six packages of spinach in the basket and jogged to the checkout station in her dance shoes and leg warmers.

The woman in front of her was taking an awfully long time picking out the gum she wanted, and Livia tapped her foot, trying to get her message across. The woman ignored her altogether, and stared at the wall of candy bars and mints with her eyebrows knit. Livia noticed that she didn’t have any other groceries, and exhaled loudly.  Finally, she pushed in front of the woman, who didn’t even notice the basket knock into the long red skirt she wore, and started unloading her rice and spinach onto the conveyer belt. 

“People these days!” She mumbled to the cashier when she handed over her money.

“What was that, darling?”

Livia looked into the face of the woman who passed a bag over the counter and saw that her eyes were cloudy and white. She took the bag from her quickly, thanked the blind cashier, and left the store.

The key, where the hell was her key? Balancing the brown paper bag on her hip, Livia fished around in her purse with one hand, trying to find it. No luck. Feeling somewhat like a chicken, she shook her purse up and down, listening for a jingling.  She heard it, and she plunged her hand back into the pit of despair that was her purse. Her hands were closing around sharp metal when the door to the apartment swung open, and her father’s brown face wrinkled into a smile.

“You’re late.” Livia couldn’t tell if her father was joking or being serious, she never could. She remembered the time her first boyfriend came to the apartment, her father had opened the door. She hadn’t even been able to go out that night, the poor kid had driven off crying. When Livia had told her father that her now ex boyfriend would probably crash, he just laughed and made some bacon. 

“Am not.” Livia replied and went into the house. The sound of dinner reached her before the smell did, and she smiled. Fried egg sandwiches on wheat toast. Of course, Livia couldn’t hear that the toast was wheat, because toast does not actually shout out its name in a feeble voice while browning. No, the way she knew the full menu was because this was a Thursday night. Ever since she could remember, Livia’s family always ate wheat bread or toast with dinner on a Thursday. She couldn’t quite remember the reason, but she suspected that it had something to do with her father’s health. 

“Could you set the table?” Mr. DiMaria asked his daughter as he slid slightly over-fried eggs onto two plates. Livia shut the door to the refrigerator with a bang and opened the silverware drawer with her pointed foot. The silverware, which was not actually made of silver but tin and other slightly less impressive metals, clanged cheerfully while she fished around and extracted two knives, a beat up steak knife, and what looked like a cleaver from the disarray. She was going to return the weapon to the drawer and extract a less lethal butter knife, but her father laughed and grabbed it out of her hand. 

“Naw, let me use it,.” He said, and sat down at the rickety poker table with his dinner. “I had a boring day at the office, didn’t get to shoot anyone, and I have got to keep my anger in control somehow.”

An unsuspecting visitor would have been surprised to hear this violent remark come from such a seemingly genial man, but Livia just rolled her eyes and cut hungrily into her egg. Anthony DiMaria was a police officer who usually had to deal with the rowdier criminals. He didn’t shoot people quite as much as he liked to tell people, but his job could get pretty violent at times. When Livia was younger, she would run to the door the moment he got home to take the desert that he brought home from his hands. Her father and mother thought that she only wanted to see what sweet was wrapped up in the newspaper, but heart would beat hard in her chest every time she saw her father’s police cruiser pull up into the parking lot. Whenever she waited for him at the door, peering out of the tiny window, she was really looking for any blood that may have stained her father’s white shirt, or a bandage that was covering up a mighty battle wound. Livia spent the first twelve years of her life terrified for her father every time he went to work.

“What did you do if you weren’t shooting anyone?” She asked around a mouthful of food. The yolk of the egg ran down her throat and scorched it, and she grimaced. 

“We spent most of the day waiting at a corner for some drug dealer to show up,” her father replied. “He never did show, though, and all we did was get stopped by other officers who didn’t know that we were just undercover. Do I look like a druggie to you?” 

He did, a little bit, but Livia didn’t mention it. She hated the way his eyes had sunken over time, and the lines on his face that had only appeared there with constant sleepless nights. “Not at all,” she said, and swallowed a mouthful of milk that didn’t completely help the burn. 

“Well, whoever this kid is, he’s good. He must have known that we would be onto his new trading spot and moved last night,” Mr. DiMaria went over to the cupboard that was usually empty and pulled a little packet out of it. He brought this over to the table and put it in the middle. 

The first thing that Livia thought of when she looked inside the baggie was the fairy dust that she used to play with as a kid, gold glitter that was really hard to wash up, no matter how hard her mother would scrub her face in the bath. This powder was the color of pure gold dust, and it seemed to be constantly shimmering, as though it were magical itself.

“Careful, don’t breathe it in,” he warned, and put out a hand to stop his daughter from leaning closer to watch the mesmerizing powder. “This stuff is really strong, even one breath will give you some of the effects.”

“This is the drug that you guys are after?” Livia asked, and leaned back in her chair. “What’s it called?” 

“As far as we know, it’s just called Gold Dust,” he sighed and passed a hand over his face. “Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone we have this stuff in the house.”

Livia collected the plates and utensils and put them into the sink, running hot water over the dishes and her cold hands. The heat in the apartment would have to be turned up, even though her father hated it. She honestly believed that he would rather die, or show up to the police station with icicles coming out of his ears and nose than spend money on heat in anything less than a blizzard. 

That night, after her father went to bed and she padded down the hall to turn the thermostat to 60 degrees, Livia lay in bed listening to herself breathe. When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed that the woman who had been in front of her at the grocery store was still looking for gum, and when she finally found it, the gum was made of pure gold dust.

The radio alarm clock played “Stand Be Me” loudly enough to jar Livia awake from the deep sleep she was in at seven in the morning. In anger, she grabbed whatever she could find and hit the clock with it, not allowing herself to wake up completely, until the noise stopped. Shoe horn still in hand, she sank back into the pillows that were ceasing to be warm with every second that they were exposed to the morning air and tried to fall back into blissful sleep. 

Sleep never completely washed over Livia, however, and within twenty minutes she found herself applying lipstick while staring into the mirror with bleary eyes. Her curly brown hair was in a dreadful state of disarray, and the eyeliner that she had forgotten to wash off the night before was smudged under her gold flecked brown eyes, making her look like a raccoon or a prostitute. She would have to remember to buy new eyeliner before that night’s performance of...Livia fell asleep for a few minutes with her head rested on her hand. She couldn’t think of a reason to be so tired, 10:30 was a good time to fall asleep, and she hadn’t woken up with leg cramps that night. Shaking herself awake, she went into the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on. 

The packet of swirling gold caught her eye as she was looking for a moderately clean mug. Livia did her best to ignore it, sitting all alone on the shelf, with an official police evidence sticker on the cover, proclaiming it ILLEGAL. Her father would bring it into the office when he woke up, and she would never see it again, never know what it did, never know what it was like to watch that dust float in the air like minuscule fireflies, blinking. The cup fell out of Livia’s hand and brought her attention back to earth.

When Anthony came into the kitchen at eight in the morning, the only evidence of his daughter’s activity was the lipstick stained and slightly chipped coffee mug in the sink and the steaming cup waiting next to his newspaper. He read about a fancy party that had happened in the city that night, and checked the baseball scores while sipping his coffee. Something was nagging at his mind. Something was worrying him, but he couldn’t think of what it could be.

It was still there, still in the same place, making an imprint in the grime that coated the inside of that cupboard. Anthony watched the Gold Dust for a few moments, a small battle raging in his mind, before he plucked the packet up with two fingers, put it in his pocket, and put on his Police issued coat. Today, he would not give into temptation. Today, he would uphold the law. The whole time that Anthony was driving, he thought that he could hear the powder calling his name from his pocket. 


Livia’s toes hurt bad very badly as she walked down the cracked pavement. She should have warn walking shoes today, it was cold, and the director of the ballet would kill her if she wasn’t dancing at the top of her ability today. She hopped up and down on her toes, trying to warm herself up, when she spied a coffee shop that she had never really noticed before on the corner. There was a warm, welcoming light shining from the glass door, and a woman with short blonde hair and too much eyeshadow walked out of the door, carrying three coffees. 

“Do you want help?” Livia asked the woman, who was tripping over her long skirt. The woman just looked vaguely at her for thirty seconds and held the door open with her foot. Livia reached out to open it for the woman, who was spilling one of the coffees on the pavement, but when her hand got near the handle the woman moved her foot quickly and let the door slam shut. Livia stared in disbelief as the woman tottered down the road, steam rising from the paper cups. She recognized the rude woman now, possibly from the vacant expression. She was at the grocery store, and had appeared in Livia’s dream briefly. 

“Do you know that lady?” She asked the cashier who rang up her mocha. 

“What lady?” The boy asked, glancing into the tip bin to see how much change Livia had dropped in.

“The one who just left, with all the coffees,”

“Can’t say I do. ‘Course, can’t say I served anyone since ten minutes ago either, but maybe it’s just the drugs taking effect,” 

Livia opened the plastic lid of her coffee and sniffed it, trying not to look too suspicious of the teenager’s levelheadedness. “Guess it could be,” she said, taking a careful sip. It smelled all right, so she gulped it down once she had left the corner store. The coffee could have been scalding, she couldn’t tell, because her mouth was still slightly numb from the burning egg the previous night. The warmth was nice though, and by the time Livia had removed her scarf and was at the exercise bar, she felt much more awake.


The ballet did not go quite as well as Livia would have liked. The audience didn’t really notice anything, audiences seem to have a tendency to do that, but the dancers went home that night feeling beaten and downtrodden, Livia possible the worst of all. She had forgotten to buy new eyeliner before the show, and had ended up borrowing a stick from the male lead. Now her eyes hurt, and she felt in dire need of a stiff drink. 

The dancing itself would have gone perfectly well, if only the female lead had shown up that night, instead of calling up from the strip club where she also worked and cried into the phone that she had terrible cramps and wouldn’t be able to dance. The girl who substituted for her, a good friend of Livia’s, was a good enough ballerina, but the male lead wasn’t used to working with her. This resulted in a somewhat humorous, somewhat heart-stopping moment in the third act, during the romantic scene, when he nearly dropped her and ended up swearing very loudly on stage. Luckily for the careers of all dancers on stage, the audience seemed to think that it was just the passion of the moment, and found the play quite enjoyable indeed.

She was tired, again, and the sun was setting. Livia checked her watch, it was only 6 pm, why was she tired? Back in her apartment, Livia collapsed onto the couch, dug the remote control out from under the cushion, and turned on the old television set that rested on a bunch of dictionaries and phone books. The picture on the screen came slowly into focus through lines of static and white noise. Livia had difficulty keeping her eyes open to watch the headline news, but the sight of a police car with smoke issuing from the windows made her jolt upright.

“Reports are telling us that a police car with two officers in it had a dreadful crash not forty five minutes ago by the train tracks outside of the city,” a man who looked like he was kept awake only by the large mug of coffee in his hand was saying into the camera. Sure enough, a train was racing by the car now, as the camera changed to a helicopter view, and the motion jostled the vehicle so much Livia was afraid that it might break.

“It is certain that one of the officers died on impact and very probable that the other one died on the way to the hospital,” Livia blanched and scrambled into the kitchen, throwing a woolen blanket that her father had gotten in Italy onto the table as she grabbed the phone. 

“Dad. Dad, Dad, Dad,” she repeated as it rang, slowly and mockingly. He had his mobile phone on him, he always did, and she couldn’t figure out why it was taking him so long to answer. The only option was so bad that she shoved it down deep into her brain and concentrated on counting the rings, hoping to hear her father’s voice very soon. 

“This is the phone of officer DiMaria,” the faint, faraway voice said on the line, as though he were speaking through a walkie talkie or a hole in a wall. “I’m unable to take your call right now, but leave a message...” Livia slammed the phone down onto the table, breathing quickly and beating tears back. She mustn’t lose hope, but in her mind, she already had. In her mind, instructions were scrawled out in a list.

1. Get coat. She pulled a leather jacket out of the tiny closet. It was her father’s, but she didn’t exchange it.

2. Lock door behind you. She put the keys in her pocket and ran down the apartment steps. Back inside, the TV still reported the news, but Livia ignored it and ran out into the city air. People strolled up and down the sidewalk, minding their own business, and Livia pushed past them, towards the hospital that was four blocks away from her apartment complex. He would be at the hospital, she forced herself to believe, because his friends would have been hurt, and he would be visiting them. She would see him in the waiting room, and go visit his buddy with him, and then the two of them would drive back in his police cruiser.

3. Feel like an idiot for worrying. This was the only item on the list that didn’t quite go as planned. True, Livia did feel like somewhat of an idiot for crashing into an eye patched patient in a wheelchair as she careened through the sliding Emergency Room doors, but it didn’t make her feel any different about the worry that was eating her up. On the contrary, the worry deepened when a nurse came up to her and held out her white gloved hand.

“Are you related to Mr. DiMaria?” She asked in a practiced, calm voice that made Livia sweat.

“Yes,”

“You need to come with me, please,”

“Why?”

The nurse stared at Livia for a few moments, as though she weren’t sure what she was being asked. Apparently, most people had the ability to just follow a nurse through rooms of people and not ask questions. The nurse wondered if the distraught girl in front of her was really completely oblivious as to what was going on.

“I beg your pardon?” She asked, pursing her lips.

“Why do I have to go with you?” Livia asked, and the tears finally fell.