What Am I Doing In Here Again? (Closed)

[Macbeth]

"You're real profound when you're drunk," Macbeth said archly. "You got a cigarette?" She didn't smoke much, but something about the roof always gave her an urge to.

[Risk]

"Does that mean I should drink more, then?" smirked Risk, fishing into his pockets to find an almost empty box of cigarettes. He handed one to her as he searched for matches.

[Macbeth]

She rolled the cigarette back and forth between her fingers. "No," she said curtly. "I'd suggest less."

[Risk]

"What happened to being profound?" frowned Risk, handing her a match to light her cigarette.

[Macbeth]

"That was sarcasm," she said almost patiently, lighting it and breathing in a calming lungful of smoke. She flicked a spark off the roof and watched it fall and vanish. "Ershey'll come around, y'know."

[Risk]

"Seems like forever," muttered Risk, cigarette in his mouth as he lit it with his match before throwing it off the edge. "How'd you two get so close, anyway?"

[Macbeth]

Macbeth shrugged, taking another drag. "She talked to me when no one else would. She was the only person I got along with from the start. Never once told her to fuck off. And if you knew me then..." She smirked at him. "You think I'm bad now. Back then, me making a friend was a goddamn miracle." She hesitated. "There was this guy, Michael, at our old lodging house. Bigger mess than anyone else I've ever met. He was a drunk. Like you," she said sharply. "Only he also popped pills, cut his wrists, tried to shoot himself, punched me in the face a couple times, and tried to throttle me once. Real charmer."

She couldn't believe she was telling him all this. But once she'd gotten this far, she kind of had to finish the story. "Only people who bothered trying to take care of him was me and Ershey. Me 'cause I was friends with his girl, Irish, and Ershey 'cause she's a bloody saint. So we sorta bonded over that, too." She swallowed. "And Irish...she died of consumption. That's what really pushed Michael over the edge." She turned to look at Risk. "Her real name was Josephine."

[Risk]

"Oh geez," muttered Risk after hearing Macbeth's story. How the hell could Ershey have stayed so positive and nice for this long? "She was born around that time too?"

[Macbeth]

A hot flush crept over Macbeth's face. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. "She...she was born months before. When she was born..." God, how she didn't want to talk about this. Why the bloody hell didn't she stop now? "She was born in a boardinghouse, and Ada died. She died in my arms, and I just...I couldn't..." Just spit it out. "I walked out on her. The baby...she didn't have a name yet. I left her there for months. The women at the boardinghouse was taking care of her, and I never went back or asked no questions. I didn't care," she said hollowly. "Not till Irish died."

She couldn't even look at him anymore, just at the thin trail of smoke drifting from her cigarette. "Irish was...well, she reminded me of Ada. Fucked up but trying so hard for a better life. When she died, I went and took my niece. Found her a home in that orphanage by the bridge. Named her Josephine Adeline Rowlands." She swallowed hard. "I ain't gone a single week without visiting her since then."

[Risk]

"Wow, uh... and I thought my life was bad," he chuckled to himself, taking a drag out of his cigarette. "Sorry, Beth, I didn't know... if anything, Jo's a little bundle of joy, y'know?"

[Macbeth]

For a while, she didn't answer and just stared at nothing. Ada and Irish were two of the three ghosts who would be with her all her life, and abandoning Jo was probably the biggest of all her guilt complexes. This hadn't exactly been an easy conversation.

"So things got worse after Ershey left," she said, finally looking at Risk again and crossing her arms. "Worse like how?" She was damned if she would be the only one spilling out explanations of everything that ever hurt her.

[Risk]

"It was like the family broke apart," he muttered, taking his cigarette out of his mouth. "Our Mom started looking for her everywhere. She was completely determined... and Dad, well, he started drinking, then. He didn't want to admit it but he was crushed about it too -- he ended up chasing Mom away. It just all fell to pieces."

[Macbeth]

"I can imagine," she said thoughtfully. "Hell, I'd fall apart without Ershey. 'S'why I came back from London, y'know. Got her letter, figured things'd make more sense if she was around again." She blew a last smoke ring from her spent cigarette and crushed it out on the roof. "'Course, things never make sense anyway. This right now, for example, makes about as much sense as green flamingos." She gave him a sideways look. "Luckily, you prob'ly ain't gonna remember none of it."

[Risk]

"I'm soberin' up," smirked Risk, glancing at Macbeth. "I probably won't remember a couple hours at Irving Hall, but that's nothing new... nothing makes sense, anyways."

[Macbeth]

"That's a shame. You might'a almost had sex on the bar again," she said with a smirk. It wasn't until then that Moonshine's drunken words came back to her. "Well, I'm going in. Don't fall off the bloody roof, Ershey'll never get over it." She headed for the ladder.