Untitled
By Adam a.k.a. Misawa
Part I
Angelina Rodriguez. Thirty years old and born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, now residing in Bluebird Creek, Public Sector, San Brooke. The 1984 Miss Teen Raleigh, San Brooke High’s 1985 Carolina Cheerleading Champion and a former camera operator for SBCN, San Brooke City News. She is now employed by the city’s top dirt dishing tabloid, The Saint, as a leading photographer.
‘My little saving grace! D’know what I’d do without you, Angel.’ Angel was Angelina’s nickname, used only by her close friends and work colleagues, such as the grey haired stubble bearing male sitting before her in a giant leather arm chair, brown and intimidating with its elegance and value, dusty with sheer age.
The seated man slips a number of glossy sheets of paper between his fingers, analysing them closely with a growing smile on his wrinkle riddled face. Meet multi-millionaire and chairman of The Saint, Mr. Dennis Witherspoon.
‘I wasn’t too sure if you’d like them or not, you know…they’re fragile.’ Replies Angel, confident in her speech and comfortable in her seat, embracing her compliment and giving Witherspoon a smile of delight. ‘These snaps are fantastic. I’ll have them published tomorrow, front page! This is the most groundbreaking exclusive in years!’ Replies the multi-millionaire, whose house Angel thought, would be constructed of individual crisp dollar bills. She chuckled at the idea of him sipping pricey champagne whilst swimming in a pool where the water had been replaced with cash.
‘Thanks Mr. Wither-‘ Witherspoon interrupts, ‘Please, to you I’m Dennis. Only those half-wit clowns out there call me Mr. Witherspoon.’ Dennis points to the flocks of reporters and photographers in the open office. Angel giggles slightly as he returns a delayed smile.
Tomorrow morning, San Brooke’s inhabitants will be pouring their milk, sipping their coffee and crunching their toast when they read The Saint’s front page exclusive. Two photographs of an empty warehouse’s interior and two olive skinned men in brown coats and blue denim jeans quarrelling over a crate. An open crate containing a polyethylene bag of white powder, undoubtedly cocaine given the identify of the men: two Cubans who have been wanted for nearly an entire year for a string of crimes, varying from drug trafficking to multiple murders, including two seemingly motiveless killings of families in the same street in two months, and that of San Brooke Police Department officer, Tyler Everett, who received six twelve gauge shotgun shells to the face when working the night shift, again, for no apparent reason.
It’s fortunate that he was a cop in uniform, because it would have been one hell of an identification job for the forensics team otherwise.
After what seemed to have been a disappearance off the face of the earth by the Cubans when a warrant for their arrest was released, they had finally been seen.
In Dennis Witherspoon’s interest, or more specifically, his financial and media interest, he had mentally decided to release the pictures before even contemplating about contacting the police. As far as he was concerned, the whole city could find out about the drug dealing murderers at the same time. He couldn’t care less about the advantage that he has given them of a second escape; the chance of once again going into hiding. All that bothers him is money, he wants nothing more in life than to raise and raise and keep on raising his financial status.
Angel took the shots from an old and abandoned clothing store across the street from the warehouse in one of the more derelict parts of the public sector, Old Market Avenue.
She wasn’t too creative with her viewpoint, how the Cubans didn’t see a foot long lens coming out of a dust laden; glassless window frame is an utter mystery. She was hardly far from the entrance and that was where they were standing, one man in the open and the other slightly secluded behind a slowly crumbling wall.
The main thing however is that she got her, as Dennis would say, snaps.
Sirens will be tomorrow’s awakening; a manhunt is imminent.
Angel leaves Witherspoon’s office, letting out a faint sight of relief and briefly closing her worn eyes, lightly resting against the wooden door with her arms at her side, thinking of tomorrow’s front page: her exclusive, her success.
She smiles to herself as she opens her eyes, sleepily composing herself and clocking back into reality, her Oh My God, I’ve Done It reality, where all her negatives have just congregated into one intricate positive, lined with gold and faraway thoughts.
In dedicated happiness, she takes the stairs, the long way down to the ground floor, exiting through the steel doors with a second secret within her. Her secret’s secret. Her second secret’s secret secret. It vanquished in her brain, her elation had defeated her dark memory…just this once. Too many tears have been shed to forget, although too little an amount to extinguish her burning past.
Angelina holds the door open for a colleague to pass, exchanging crystal glances and warm smiles as she closes the tubular handled rectangle and begins the ten or so minute journey to her navy blue 1991 Mercedes-Benz.
The walk is blustery; her skirt ripples madly like a grey ocean. The spring air is strong and wild, yet warm. It cuts and winds through her hair, blonde and sun kissed. Peachy.
The mild rays breathe lightly on her legs as the leathery heels of her black stilettos clap the dusty sidewalk. One by one her shoes raise and fall, raise and fall, raise and fall. The stilettos orchestrate shadows like dark puppeteers, drowning the concrete in a sparkling black sea.
Grey concrete and dull shadows melt under the feet of an angel.
She arrives at her vehicle. The navy blue paint sparkles in the sun like diamond teeth and the angel’s bubbling shadow stands up, backing against a morning fresh palm tree, cowering from that yellow blob in that blue sky, with those giant white cotton buds swimming, like a kindergartener’s painting.
It’s hot. Smoked woodchips.
The Smoked Woodchips Smell, Angelina’s acknowledgement of a hot spring. She could feel the heat and the light breeze kissing her limbs, and she could smell the palm trees, roasting under the sun as if they were on tree-sized barbeques. The smell of woodchips she always thought, smoked woodchips.
Secrets.
