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Monday, January 17th, 1994
Not a lot of Matt's life has been traditionally normal, he can admit to that. But honestly, running through the labyrinthine alleyways of Velvet Vale with the punky rich girl who's become his vaguely Dickensian patron takes the cake, hands down, no questions asked.
One could point out, if they were so inclined, that technically the only reason they're being chased is because said rich girl bit some rando-creep - her words - behind a diner two weeks ago. Which isn't wrong per say, however, he's not quite in a minutiae kind of mood at the moment. The image of the strange tall man in sunglasses with the too sharp teeth is more than enough fuel to keep Matt running, right on Nico's heels. The reason behind that is much more simple than whatever reasoning is driving that weird ass man to hold such a grudge against two teenagers. Matt doesn't want to die, he likes being alive, thank you very much.
Nico grabs ahold of his hand at some point in their mad dash, and uses that point of contact as leverage to drag him into a secluded alleyway. Which is nice, because at this point he's not so much breathing as hyperventilating. He leans back against the cool brick and allows himself the luxury of a deep lung filling breath as he takes in his surroundings.
Old pre-war brick monstrosities tower high above them. They don’t beat out the skyscrapers in Magnus Proper, or the clandestine institutional buildings of Tarrow Island, or even the over-full gambling dens of Grant’s Ville, but they have their own utilitarian beauty, he supposes. The facades are pockmarked with the scars that tell of their age, their windows are pried open, even in the late January chill, a million different shapes and colors of drapery and venetian blinds dancing in the oddly warm breeze. That makes sense though, he's pretty sure they already crossed over into what kids back in Paper Mill always called Helltown. That triangle where Velvet Vale and Carventi meet. He doesn’t have a clue why they call it that but for some vague memory of the teenaged girl who lived in the room two doors down from him and his Ma at the Kingston-Billings that watched him every weekend he was 9 - Tammy Lau-Barker - telling him about a of string of murders that happened there back in the 1920s. But he’s sure it’s been called that for longer. The name’s more than a bit funny to him, because half of the place is laundry services - everything from dry cleaning to coin laundromats and self-service washaterias to 24-hour wash-n-folds to old-fashioned laundress houses and even more ancient bath-houses. The gaps between buildings are filled with spring-warm air from the stream pipes beneath the streets that feed the old beasts. It’s hardly a place he would associate with his Ma’s telling of a burning and blistering Hell, or Dante’s telling of a Hell of freezing lakes and killing chills.
Matt knows this alleyway, his Ma used to have a friend who lived in one of the ancient brick apartment buildings off of it. That's how he knows that all the fire escapes here are old and rusted, the latters don't come down to street level any more, as fused to themselves as they are. At this point he's pretty sure he's gonna die, because Nico has all but led them into a goddamned dead-end death trap. Because Nico's smart, he'll give her that and more, but that doesn't keep you from stumbling right into stupid.
It's a sudden thing, Nico stopping before one of the fire escapes that empties into the alley, it looks just like all the rest, and yanks with all her strength and the latter falls down with a cacophony of shrieks and a rain of rust onto the washing water soaked pavement.
There's adrenaline in her every movement, her hair a wisp around her head like a cat, all puffed up and set to intimidate. She's up the latter in a blink, half dangling off the fire escape, hanging her arms down so that she can pull Matt up.
He hadn't told her yet about his leg, she just went and figured it out, ready quick as a wick to accommodate in whatever small way she could. Ready to dangle half her body off a fire escape that's 15 feet up in the air just to help him. It makes his chest feel warm. It's that feeling and not the inevitability that the man who's chasing them will soon be upon them which drives him to climb. Matt hates heights of any kind, he can feel his legs all but liquifying as his braces squeak. As soon as he's within her reach, her fingers digging into his clothes, Nico whispers:
"It's okay, I got you."
He believes her, goddammit, he doesn't want to, but he believes her.
She hauls him up. Which is a little insane, she's only got like 10, maybe 15, pounds on him, and about 5 inches of height, where and when and how did she learn to lift damn near her own body weight? It's not fair, she's just as scrawny as he is.
As they pant on the cold iron grating, trying desperately to catch their breaths, he wheezes a question into the air:
"How'd a poor little rich girl do that?"
"Trial and error."
She says it all matter of fact. She says it like it's just that simple.
Trial and error. Nico Faraday, what a girl.
The kids in Paper Mill would have loved her just as much as they hated him. Yeah, that'd be a real treat to see, Nico in the wood-pulp scented streets of Grant's Ville, one-upping the res hotel kids at their own games. It's like a vision right into another world.
He feels more than a bit light headed. It's probably the adrenaline high giving him a head rush, but when he sees Nico, already sat up, hawk-like eyes searching, ring-laden fingers drumming on the rusted metal grating, he thinks he could do this for the rest of his life. Follow five steps behind her right into the depths of Hell. She’d make a good Virgil.
Matt's been shit out of luck from the moment he was born, but Nico makes him feel like that doesn't have to be a bad thing. She weighs the odds of most every decision she makes, and apparently however those odds played out, weighed in his favor, because she's kept him around. He appreciates that, he likes that.
It's not like Lav and the Skylark girls who look out for him out of a need to protect kids like them. It's not like his Ma who kept him only because he was hers. Nico keeps him around because she's weighed the risk and decided he was worth it. No one has ever done that before. He gets the distinct impression that when Nico looks at him, she sees a person. That's not something you find easily.
He decides that it's definitely the adrenaline and lack of oxygen making him so sentimental, as he allows Nico to drag him to his feet.
"Ready to run, Matty?"
Perhaps he's a bit too ride-or-die for her already, he's only known her for a little over a month, but he can't stop his words even if he wanted to, as he meets her gaze. Bottle green. Ocean blue.
"Of course."
Nico smiles, and it's this odd closed mouth thing, but it bleeds genuineness.
"Good."
He has the sinking suspicion that, that man is going to get them, one way or another, but Matt doesn't think about all of that right now, instead, he follows the soft and long-perfected steps of Nico Faraday up the fire escape, ducking through an open window into one of the brick monstrosities' hallways, down fights upon fights of too-narrow stairs, through a smoke choked lobby and out into the watery sunshine of a winter afternoon.
It’s too early to go back to the rowhouse, Mrs. Koshek is not only nosy, but old, and will probably be on her ‘evening’ stroll right about now. Nico assuages his fears before hailing a cab and telling the driver to take them to the corner of Calgary and 45th. The only Calgary in the city is Calgary Street in Piano Row.
He likes Piano Row, it was the only bearable neighbourhood in Lovelace. It used to house a whole bunch of artisan instrument builders over a hundred years ago, including the Demetrio family who made the piano’s which gave the area its name. His mom’s friend Sal said that it was even the third biggest spot for rum-running in the city back in the 1930s. He has to figure it was a mix of the rum-runninng money and the artisan craft houses that lead to Piano Row containing the Balmuir Opera House, The Rue Carmine Theatre, and H. A. Arlington School of the Arts - Nico insisted he call it Arlington Arts. The weird, simultaneously bohemian and brutalist - notoriously hard to get into - art high school that only 67 kids in all of Magnus attend. Nico is one of them.
Within fifteen minutes after arriving at Arlington Arts, Nico has led him through a propped open side door in what is apparently called the Lavender Building - He should find a payphone and call up Lav and tell her that there's a whole building named after her, she’d get a kick out of that - down several window lined mezzanine hallways, over a locked gate and onto the common green of the school, nestled between its longline lecture buildings and gothic revival dormitories.
He had heard Nico’s rant about the dorms back at that diner two weeks ago, the same night with her biting the creep who was just chasing them, the same night when he’s pretty sure Nico figured out about his leg. There are three dormitory halls on the school grounds, Summers Hall, the co-ed dorm for the school’s year round residents, St. Cloud Hall, the boy’s dorm and Marble Hall, the girls dorm.
He finds out that Nico’s dorm room is in the back left-hand corner of Marble Hall’s second floor, and that her roommate is really into Nirvana. He’s overly aware that at the moment, Arlington Arts is currently on winter break and that, for all intents and purposes, no one is supposed to be in this building right now. He’s also more than a bit jealous at how easily and how quickly she was able to pick the building’s lock.
Matt looks around the room, trying to take in as much information about his mysterious benefactor turned friend as he can before they both are inevitably forced to leave.
There's photos everywhere. Photos tacked to bedposts, cork boards, clipped to strings and dangling from the ceiling and walls. Polaroids taped to the window by her bed and the standing mirror in the corner. A big stack of glossy developed photos sitting in a pile on her desk. There's even one taped to the front of the endlessly humming a/c unit. Photos that show places so unlike Magnus that Matt has to force himself not to linger on them.
None of them are of Nico.
"None of you?"
"I don't like having my picture taken."
She speaks about this, as she speaks about everything, from medieval papal laws to turn of the century telephone operation, in such perfect nonchalance that Matt has to wonder what she really thinks, what goes on in her head. Her flat-affect doesn’t exactly help matters either.
Matt's never really put too much thought into if he likes having his picture taken or not. The last time he had his picture taken had been at the photography center at the Glasslaw Market on his 12th birthday. That was more than 2 years ago now. He wonders if Nico would ever take his picture, if he would have to ask, or if-
Almost as though in answer to his thoughts, the sound of a camera flashing followed by a bloom of light happens all before he can even think.
There’s a developing photo of him now perched on the edge of Nico’s desk, nearly in profile, looking over his left shoulder, babyface serving to make him look even younger in the soft afternoon light, hair half-pulled up yet still falling in his face, in his second-hand two-sizes-too-big brown leather bomber jacket and his patched up jeans. He looks like some new age angel. It’s beautiful, it’s awful.
“You take a good picture Matty.”
Yeah, maybe he does. Maybe one day he’ll take her photo, and they’ll both take a good picture.
A few hours from now, after they eat the senior girls supply of cup noodles, they’ll get another cab back onto Blackwell Island. They’ll walk the last half-mile to the rowhouse, their words and conversations turning to mist in the freezing air. She’ll end up giving him the photo, telling him to keep it, before disappearing into the pitch dark of Magnus at night.
Maybe friendship is just that simple. Maybe friendship is just trial and error.