Track 22: This One For– Yeah

1.

The city of Marbleporte with its tight streets and old clapboard buildings had grown out of a pirate colony, though the town museum and the school district was loath to own up to that fact.

The term city might be a bit of a misrepresentation as well, to be fair it was much too big to be called a town, but if we gotta be fair and split hairs, then it was too small to be called a city, especially if you’d been to a city of any real scale. Its goals of expansion and becoming a metropolitan hub had been thwarted again and again by being geographically located between its far more famous siblings, Abbaton and South Providence. Still, there was money here.Full novel: A Simple Story About Wild Girls — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

The Lockmann/Mellor residence was in a fairly nice upper middle class neighborhood in the South End, the same part of town that tourists from out of state would visit in the fall; after another half hour of driving from Milo’s, Madaline took herself and Amber past here, first into downtown and then over the Marbleporte bridge to the North End.

Madaline pointed out the window at the bridge, “I jumped off of this once.”

Amber considered the bridge with this information in mind, her eyes growing to the size of dinner plates.

“No, no, not from the top,” Madaline laughed.

“Right,” Amber said, looking down towards the river, that was better, but it was still one heck of a drop nobody should try.

The downtown area on both sides of the bridge were fairly indistinguishable from the South End, which meant a staggering lack of potholes, a detail Amber was in a much better head space to take note of this time than on her first visit. This deficiency in potholes began to correct itself as soon as they’d left the downtown area heading into the North End proper, it didn't take long for the frequency of minor craters to hit ordinary levels, then a couple of roads after that it was considerably worse than average.

“Fix the fucking roads, assholes,” Madaline cursed, swerving around one such meager canyon as they came to a stoplight.

At the same time, Amber was taking in other details, noticing a slight increase in the amount of green; pavement overgrown with grass and weeds and there was a depreciation to the buildings, they weren’t any older than the downtown or the South End, it was all old, things were just less well taken care of up here.

Amber had lived in South Providence for roughly four years, she was somewhat used to a variety of conditions in the flow of a metropolitan area, mostly seen either on the bus or out riding around with Madaline, however she found Marbleporte quite strange in this regard.

Marbleporte was bigger than Cypress Fall to be sure, but far smaller than South Providence. Amber had assumed that like her hometown, Marbleporte would exist in a more standardized condition, rather than the shift she was actually seeing.

Madaline tapped her fingers against the wheel, looking out the window at a weathered convenience store, she clicked her tongue, “I’m feeling stupidly nostalgic… aww fuck it, you mind if I make a little detour?”

“No, yeah, I don’t,” Amber smiled, “I’m just happy to be along for the ride, you know.”

“Cool, thanks.”

The light turned green and Madaline immediately pulled into the store parking lot and ran inside.

While Amber waited, she studied a strange sign on the door, printed in metal, dotted in rust, but its image and message were still clear: DON'T EAT THE CRAYFISH! Followed by a skull and crossbones.

Madaline was back in three minutes, with a pack of Al Capone Cognac dipped Mini Cigars, a pack of Newport Cigarettes, a sixteen ounce can of beer, a pint of Cachaça and too Amber’s chagrin a pair of slushies.

Madaline passed Amber’s over, Amber took it, and opened her mouth.

“Have I told you you look beautiful today?” Madaline said, closing the door, and starting up the car.

Amber pressed her lips together trying not to break into a smile, her resolve quickly crumbling, “You told me you liked my makeup.”

“Your makeup looks great, and you are beautiful, both naturally and by nature, but progesterone and calories are maximizing things, there needs to be more of you to share with the world… Drink it, it’s good for you.”

Amber sipped at frozen delight made from pure sugar, as Madaline wheeled them down a side street. “I’m not sure slushies are good for you.”

“Some things are good for the soul, princess, the soul needs junk food,” she said, sipping at her straw.

“Interesting theory,” Amber mumbled, keeping her grin to a moderately hidden smile, “Hey, did you see the weird sign on the store?”

“What kind of sign?” Madaline asked, straw in her mouth.

“Don’t eat the crayfish?”

“Oh, yeah, right, yeah, there’s a lot of those up here,” she said, as though she were talking about how trees were so common, one tended not to notice them.

“Why don’t we eat the crayfish?”

“It’s the river, the river, especially in spitting distance of the town it's… not great and like you shouldn't eat anything out of there, but, the crayfish are a problem caus-" she sighed, "It's a Marbleporte thing.”

“Alright, I won’t have any crayfish then. So what’s the other stuff for?” She tapped the bag, “Or is that good for the soul too?”

“Mmmm, yeah, suppose it is, well not the cigars, nah, I just have to drop this stuff off real quick... It's kind of something I try to keep up on, like a ritual, tradition, something.”

Amber wondered which one of Madaline’s odd, likely frighteningly beautiful friends, she was going to meet now, it was a feeling in which excitement and anxiety were so well mixed she couldn’t peel them a part to make a determination of how she felt on balance, she would love to meet another Milo, she’d liked Milo, but she wasn’t sure she could handle meeting a Rikka or an Emily or worse they were in Marbleporte, so maybe it would be some girl friend or… girlfriend that Madaline had known for years and years and years-

When she looked up, she instantly felt a mix of confusion and shame, they were pulling into a cemetery. A sign specified it as the Jonas Harp Cemetery.

Madaline caught her looking at the sign. “He was a pirate, not a priest, don’t let anyone on the other side of town tell you any different. Simon either.”

“Kay?” Amber said.

Madaline waved a hand and once again said, “It’s a Marbleporte thing.”

The cemetery was surrounded by an old spiked fence, two gates were open, with a wide road going through, Madaline took them into the entrance and drove them along, then stopped the car.

“I’ll be just a sec.”

Amber watched her cross three or four rows, heading towards a target with practiced steps, like she could walk it blindfolded, before pausing at a small grave, it was too far to read what was written on it.

At least it doesn’t grow… Amber thought. It was an odd thought, she wasn’t sure what she meant.

She watched Madaline unscrew the bottle of liquor, and dump it on the ground. If Madaline said any words Amber couldn’t hear them. She then placed the cigars on the stone, gently tapped her hand, like patting someone on the back when you were hugging them goodbye and walked back to the car.

Madaline climbed back in, the door closed again. She glanced at Amber.

Amber wanted to ask, but wasn’t going to, it would be gloriously insensitive to barrel in full tilt for an explanation, no matter how the curiosity was eating at her. She tried to project that without words, that Madaline didn’t have to talk about it, but that she would like to hear if Madaline wanted to talk.

Madaline rolled her wrist, stretching her fingers, “Sorry, it’s ah, it’s my… grandma,” she said, thumbing out the window as she put the car and gear and began pulling them slowly around the cemetery.

This broke Amber a little, if she said the thought out loud it would have been a shout: No, you’re Vovó, your Vovó Maria, call her your Vovó Maria or is it just Vovó? I can ask, if you just... Why does Emily get to hear about her and not me, tell me about her, tell me about how your Vovó was from Brazil, tell me about how she was some sort of political activist, tell me you’re a... Trilingual, third generation immigrant.

“That’s what she always wanted… Al Capone cigars and cachaça, usually got her Al Capone cigars and tequila, Christmas, Birthday, whatever, right, well, when we c- ... Anyway, that was her treat, but once and a while when... when the store had it we'd get cachaça and if it was the winter she'd take it neat and in the summer she'd mix it with ice and lime juice and sugar, ” Madaline shook her head and laughed, “She almost smacked me once, only time she ever did something like that, usually just her yelling at me, that was bad enough, disappointed, don’t get me wrong, every time I get flicked in the ear by my ma, that’s her, but ah, twelve years old, stealing one of those cigars and putting it in my mouth. She wound up her hand, and stopped at the last second. It was…”

“Scary,” Amber replied.

“Surprising,” Madaline said at the same time... “But yeah, ah, Al Capone Cigars and Cachaça, I like to bring them out here once a year or so and I didn’t make it out here while I was staying in town, figured I'd take care of it now, instead of running up here just for that in a couple months or whatever."

Madaline stopped the car on the opposite side of the loop and put it in park. “Alright, one more second.”

She climbed out of the car, and headed for another gravestone, this one wasn’t as far back. At the gravestone she popped the can of beer and dumped it out, the Newports went on top.

Amber could read this one, Eric B. Thornton 6/17/1971 - 9/22/2013. She thought she could hear Madaline saying something as she ran her fingers across the surface of the marker, something about getting her stuff and being sorry.

Then she returned to the car, stopped off at her trunk and dropped the bag with the empty bottle and can inside, shut it, climbed in, and closed the door.

"Thanks for understanding," Madaline smiled.

“Oh, um, no problem," Amber said.

“Like I said, it's just a little ritual, I try to keep up with... stupid nostalgia, really. Suppose the fact that it took me so long to keep up with it this time means I'm on my way to.... letting it go." Madaline laughed, hitting her vape, spinning it in her fingers.

Amber twirled a strand of her hair on her finger, her brow furrowing, thinking about telling Madaline that by definition a ritual for the dead wasn't usually considered an expression of nostalgia, but in the end she kept it to herself because correcting Madaline as she performed her personal rites for the dead didn't feel like an appropriate time for a vocab lesson.

Madaline didn't put the car in gear, she hit her vape again, held the vapor, let it trickle from her lips, staring out the window at the graves, lost in thought, about a conversation she'd overheard between Raven and Estelle about how nostalgia was an essentially poisonous emotion, but her mind quickly jumped tracks, and she was thinking about the crayfish.

How there were parts of the river that were particularly accessible in the North End, that would wash out regularly at certain times of year and you could walk down and find pools packed full with crayfish, how the less economically advantaged parts of the city's population had long flocked to these pools with nets and shopping bags or whatever they had, and collect them and just like that they had a free crayfish boil, dinner.

Except starting in the 80s they started teaching the children of Marbleporte to never eat the crayfish. If you wanted to catch your own water critters to eat you went out of town, because for almost a century two of Marbleporte's industrial bailiwicks were the Seafood Processing Plants, primarily owned by Brams and Gladwyne Families and Rambeldt Chemical owned by the Rambeldt Family.

The Rambeldt family had effectively turned the water of the river into straight up poison, which was why the Brams and Gladwyne families hadn't processed anything out of the Marbleporte river in 80 years.

There'd been a small scandal in the 70s that had resulted in a clean up campaign, they'd done a good job, it now took a long time to get you sick instead of right away, but they still warned people not to eat anything out of the river, it took years, but over time the toxins accumulated and then...

Madaline thought of Ms Hamish, who’d suffered from terrible headaches that had started long before Madaline had known her, just because of those repeated dips into nature’s grocery store, screamers she’d called them. She was in Jonas Harp too, though Madaline didn’t know where.

You weren't supposed to eat the crayfish, but sometimes, some people, some families, didn't have enough money to get by when the river washed out and God provides... And when it came down to it, wasn't that really just another form of credit, eat now, pay later, after all, it took repeated dips in nature's pantry over years to accumulate enough poison for it to do anything, though if you started having some serious complications due to such a diet, chances were that the damage was already done, and then there were the people that didn't get anything loud like screamers or three or four stillbirths, but instead suffered from a little chronic weakness or say, the light headaches and stomach pain combo, those were more common, those could be ignored, until they died.

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Amber said, “You loved her, you know, it makes sense you’d want to stop in once and awhile.”

Madaline gave her head a little shake, turned up the music, put the car in gear and began to take them back to the road, laughing again, “Every time I do this I always think about how some kids are going to come through here and they’re going to swipe those smokes so fucking fast.”

“You think?” Amber asked.

“That’s what I did, used to c- come up here to see if anyone left anything good.”

Amber laughed, “Of course you did… so, who was the beer and cigarettes for then?” Amber asked, after taking a moment to consider that Madaline had already offered up information on the identity of the first grave's occupant.

“Ah, that’s Mister Thornton, he was our neighbor for a while, he used to kind of look out for me... took an interest… I can afford it, so why not throw him something while I'm here? Barely though, those smokes were so fucking expensive. Anyway, yeah... I got chased out by this old gravedigger with a shovel one time,” Madaline noted.

2.

From the cemetery they headed across the North End, the upper portion of the municipality unfolding as Amber's brain had gotten used to, a little more worn out and less busy than the South End, but otherwise perfectly ordinary and not lacking for some particular charms of its own, that was until in the space of three streets the part of town they'd been in gave way to the most perplexing and indeed haunting stretch of urbanity Amber had ever experienced. It was the polar opposite of the busy streets Amber had been seeing on both sides of the bridge; Madaline cut them through the section of town in under six minutes, six minutes in the middle of the day mind you, but in those six minutes, they didn't see a single active car or another living soul.

It's the A Game, Amber, A is for Abandoned, Madaline said in Amber's head.

No, Amber thought back in Serpentine's voice without noticing the distinction, A is for Apocalypse. What happened up here?

A long, uninterrupted, gallery of shuttered businesses served as an appetizer, but she knew they'd gone off the edge of some map when they took their first turn and encountered the houses; seemingly entire streets of empty homes, front doors stamped with neon orange tags as though warning of some terrible plague that had swept through and claimed all the residents.

Many of these houses were intact, but others had yards that were so gloriously out of control, that the plants seemed intent on retaking the materials the homes had been built from, trees growing into and through walls, taking the houses apart in slow motion.

Perhaps most ominous of all though was the occasional home that interrupted the orange tagged houses, structures which were nothing but charred skeletal remains, the blackened outline of a house, often still standing, like an impressionistic sketch.

McDonough Street was particularly bad, one in three houses were burnt out husks.

"What happened here?" Amber asked, fascinated, unable to stop herself from feeling that the sights were strangely beautiful if unsettling.

Madaline sucked hard on her vape and shrugged, vapor coiling up from her mouth as she spoke the syllables, "Eco-nom-ics," she laughed, "Necro-economics out of the Economicon, sorry, ah, things were always tight up here, but the city had a little bit of a financial crunch in the early 2000s, then the housing crisis hit and it hit some parts of town worse than others. The whole North End was hurting really bad, and this and a couple other spots got stripped out over like five years, first the businesses, then the people, then the copper wiring. The orange tags are bank repossessions." She chewed her lip, "I kind of figure most of the time that's how ghost towns happen, economy goes bad, money dries up and the bank just kicks everyone out. Sure seems that way, there are more ghost towns now then there were during the end of the last century. There's a little one outside of South Prov called Emleeton, it's not as concentrated, but Emleeton feels like an actual ghost town rather than just a ghost collection of neighborhoods that the city ignores, banks aren't too interested in it for whatever reason either. I'll take you out there sometime- if I get a chance."

"Okay, but what's with all the..." Amber pointed at the remains of a house that had burnt part of the way and caved in on itself, like a rotten jack o lantern.

"Cheaper than a movie," Madaline grinned macabrely.

"What?"

Madaline sighed, tapping a finger on her vape thinking, "Back in the day there was a movie theater up here, a nice cheap one, until 2009 when it closed, so after that you had to go to the Atlantica on the other side of town and one ticket is twelve bucks."

"I don't think I under-"

"Whole streets of people kicked out of their houses, movie ticket is twelve bucks and you have to get to the other side of town, meanwhile a can of gas at its most expensive is four dollars. Factor in that the cops only came to these neighborhoods to serve evictions and arrest squatters and that in like 2005 the city killed the North End Fire Department, didn't have one up here for almost ten years, and the South End Fire Squad didn't tend to make it up here that quick, if at all. Think about it, Friday night, you and your friends have nothing to do, so you pick a house where nobody is living, that's between two other houses where nobody is living, so you grab a can of gas and have a nice big campfire. For another six bucks you and your friends can have some s'mores with it."

"I see," Amber said carefully, "Yes, that does make sense."

More than making sense, while a fire of that scale made s'mores an impractical party favor, the idea in itself was such a strangely magnetic concept, it was frighteningly easy to imagine herself and Madaline sitting in folding lawn chairs on the sidewalk, as a two story house blazed away, lighting up the dark and silent night like a hundred thousand Christmas trees.

Amber lost herself in it for a moment, then she became conscious of the reality of the area once more, and it posed another question, "The housing crisis, that five year period, that was like twenty years ago?" Amber asked, looking at the state of ongoing decay surrounding them, an activity level comparable to the surface of the moon.

"Yeah, I don't know how it works, but somebody downtown is profiting from keeping the area this way, fuck, probably a whole gaggle of em. Graft and shit are traditions round here, right,” Madaline concluded.

"Is that a Marbleporte thing?" Amber asked.

Madaline tapped her nose with the base of her vape, "See, you're catching on."

They passed the corpse of a crumbling brick factory marked Bram's Fish Company #5, Madaline bent two fingers against the steering wheel until they cracked, glanced at the center council display, and allowed her car to go ten miles faster.

"So, these cookouts... was that something you did as a teen-" Amber considered before cutting off, "No, you lived on the other side of town."

"Ah, no I saw a couple when I was up here, smelled more," Madaline said, "They reopened the fire department by the time I was getting to that age and they cracked down on it, so I kind of missed the Golden Age of the House Fire Barbecue. No big loss, there's a place near the edge of town in the woods called the Strolling Marshes, when I got to high school that's where a lot of kids would go and have fires, like normal bonfires and stuff. Not as big, but occasionally fun."

Multiple spots across Madaline's body seemed to tingle and vibrate with the words, as in her head Dylan Templeton repeated her name, pleading, begging, crying.

"That does sound fun," Amber said,"Never really got to do... that kind of thing... didn't have too many friends, well, we've talked about it, you know."

"Mmm," Madaline dragged hard on her vape, "So you've seen my parents place, my home town, what was yours like?" Madaline asked without thinking things through.

But Amber didn't seem too perturbed by the thought, "Cypress Fall... it was... it's nice there. Smaller than here, but big in a different way, lots of long roads going nowhere... Like the town proper is on these two streets, everything you need for a town was there, general store, clinic, grocery, school, you know, and the rest is houses and woods and farms and... roads. There's a little lake. We lived pretty far out into the county, into the... hinterlands. We..."

Madaline glanced over, Amber's pause was so brief that Madaline would have taken it for Amber thinking, if she hadn't looked over when she did she'd have totally missed Amber's face going slack.

Fuck me, Madaline cursed herself, No, go right ahead, you dumbass, ask her some more questions about her hometown. Cypress Fall had a little lake? Ask her if she learned to swim in it, if her father taught her to swim in that lake and what that was like. Did he tie a stone to her first?

Amber blinked herself back, glanced down at her hands, "We had... have... had..." she swallowed, "We had a little house, but a really big yard, two stories, but the upstairs was just the landing and my room. The property was my Granddad's first, it used to be a farm, but we just used a little plot to grow stuff, the rest was just grass, and there was a barn and a lot of woods behind the house, my dad went hunting back there, in the woods, and... we were a ways out so you could get lost real easy... but it was nice. Pleasant."

"Yeah, that does sound like a nice house," Madaline said, as her brain took this description of a little house in the hinterlands, along with her nickname for Amber, and concocted a delightful fantasy based in part from half remembered images of Disney's Snow White in which Madaline used the combined threat of a shotgun and the impact of her boot to kick Amber's father into the woods, before returning to the small home and waking the sleeping princess with a kiss and bridal carrying Amber to her car.

"Mmm, I think I like the city more though," Amber said, after a moment of consideration.

"Yeah?" Madaline smiled.

"Ye-ah," Amber said, her voice stuttering and cracking, her finger rubbing at her wrist, not anxious, but more confused, like she'd said something unusual and wasn't sure why. "Maybe, I'm not sure, I haven't been- I've been in South Providence for a while so my perspective might be skewed."

"Right," Madaline said, then before she knew what she was doing, she found herself, purely platonically, reaching her hand out and placing it over Amber's, her thumb petting Amber's knuckle, "Well if you'd be kind enough, factor me liking having you in South Providence into your consideration, Princess."

Amber grinned wide, and quickly looked away, her mouth so bold, but the movement of her head so demure, it was in the top five cutest things Madaline had ever seen.

Amber's smile and the skin on skin contact, tore away some of the caul of negative emotions that had been stretching itself over Madaline's brain since they left Milo's, the aching of old wounds and persistent worries that she'd put off dealing with since she'd come back to the states. Madaline luxuriated in the giddiness of the moment, the ruins around them swept away for a background of glowing colors, blue, pink, white, light orange, dark orange, dark pink, dusty rose.

Then Madaline's brain at last caught up with everything she'd just pulled in the last five seconds. The statement was utterly fine, though the tone in which she'd said it was suspect, the gesture though, touching Amber's hand, rubbing her knuckle, was far too familiar.

Having already made the mistake, Madaline allowed herself one more stroke on Amber's knuckle, and then she slowly and calmly pulled her hand away, locking it back in place to the steering wheel.

Great job sublimating and maintaining the right level of familiarity, asshole, new management strat is going off without a hitch, do not fucking do that again, Madaline thought, castigating herself. You're just fucking lucky that she's got a blind case of we're both girls so it isn't weird syndrome.

3.

Two or three minutes following the hardcore pornographic display of hand on hand contact, the car exited the economic netherworld onto a busy street, cracked and faded but with all the normal signs of life, less than a minute down the road, they rolled through the gate of U-Store It All and trundled back to unit 117.

“Okay, this won’t take long, I’m only after a couple things,” Madaline said, climbing out of the car. “Just need to get my ex-boyfriend's jarred head out of the back of a Rolls Royce before the FBI finds it.”

“What?” Amber asked, as she climbed out, watching Madaline crouch down and begin working the lock.

“Nothing,” the lock clicked, “Never mind, bad joke, if you don’t get it, good. Old transphobic movie, don’t watch it.”

Amber nodded, any possible curiosity of the title of the movie she should avoid was lost due to her eye's carelessly window shopping the bulge of Madaline's muscles as the woman worked the door up.

Amber eventually caught herself, after Madaline had finished and was stepping inside.

Weird, but really… it's not so bad is it? Just admiring her… the human body. It doesn't have to be weird, Amber thought.

“Though,” Madaline considered, “at least they gave the evil tranny good taste, Goodbye Horses is a,” she flipped on the light and sighed, “Banger… Fuck, this is going to take more than a couple minutes. I forgot I buried it all the way at the back on the off chance it got broken into.”

Amber gazed in curiosity at the multitude of boxes, and for the most part with the exceptions of things like an obvious weight bench and some shelves, boxes were what was inside, like before Madaline had left she’d given up all her furniture to someone or stored it elsewhere.

“How can I help?” Amber asked.

“Ah, the shelves, can you look for some stuff in those boxes? Just pull them down and look through them?”

Amber looked at the shelves, all the boxes were marked helpfully with a single word: Music. "Sure. What am I looking for?"

“Do you know what an old handheld cassette player looks like?”

Amber thought about it for a second, hesitated, “Yes, I think so, if I'm wrong, I'm sure I can figure it out.”

“Cool, you’re looking for that and a handful of good cassette tapes, the little square boxes,” Madaline made the shape with her thumbs and forefingers.

“I know.”

“Alright, just making sure.”

“Which cassettes?”

“Make sure there's a little soul and funk, but after that dealer's choice. Whatever looks good to you.”

“I don’t think I know which ones are…,” Amber said embarrassed.

“That’s cool, just find cassettes and read 'em out, I’ll come over and finish up when I’ve got my other stuff dug out.”

Madaline headed to the opposite corner and began to restack and move boxes around, digging back carefully to avoid a cave in.

The first two boxes Amber pulled were records, but then at last she found some tapes and began reading off the titles.

Madaline had organized them by media type and seemingly no other criteria, but here and there as Amber read them off, Madaline would say, that one, and Amber would set it aside, along with a few other options that Amber thought looked interesting.

After several boxes, Madaline had selected The Dramatics, Martha Reeves and the Vandels, the Fairchild Four, Black Merda, and the Meters, with the addition of the tapes Amber had liked the look of, they had a stack of twelve.

Madaline turned her head and nodded, “That outta do, you’re just looking for the player now.”

Amber tried another box from the bottom shelf, this one was strangely light.

There wasn't much inside this one, just a shirt bundled around something and, "Neat sunglasses," Amber said.

They were wraparounds, thick gold frames, with pink bug eyed lenses. Amber put them on without thinking, casting the storage unit in a glorious hot pink tint.

Madaline laughed, box in hand, “Those look great on you, you should keep them."

Amber used her phone to look at herself, she liked the way her heavy eyeliner showed through the lenses. She slid them up her forehead, "They're a little gaudy and ostentatious.”

“They go with your coat, I guess gaudy and ostentatious looks perfect on you.”

Amber hmmed and hawed over it for half a second, before deciding on not debating it. She wasn’t settled on the issue, she just left them on her head and didn’t take them off. She went back in the box, unwrapped the shirt, and discovered a strangely shaped glass vase and the tape player, “Found it.”

"Great, this shouldn't take me much longer," Madaline said, wiping her brow.

Out of curiosity, Amber inspected the glass vase, wrinkled her nose and set it back down carefully, “Uh… Madaline. Your vase is growing black mold or something... I think...-”

"My vase?" Madaline moved over to her, laughed again, “That’s not mold, princess, don’t worry your fine, it’s resin. Shit, where's the slide? Was there another little piece, a tube of glass with a bowl on top?”

Amber picked it back up, “No, just the shirt, the player and... what is it?”

“Must've stashed it in a different box, ah, according to the policies of this storage unit, this is a water pipe for tobacco use, not a bong for marijuana," Madaline went back to work.

“Oh,” Amber gave it a moment's more interest, and was about to close the whole thing back up when a slice of color on the shirt caught her attention, she unfolded it.

The shirt featured slashing letters in warping pink, blue and white: GOOD GIRLS RIOT LIKE MONSTERS!

Followed by a strange symbol that Amber didn’t recognize, nor could make heads or tails of.

“That’s merch from a show,” Madaline said, smiling awkwardly, “You know, shout out to my lost girls, get vicious, shout out to my lost girls, get raucous, shout out to my lost girls, be wild. Bringing in instruments with each line, drums, guitar, synths, everything going up a step, anticipation, anticipation, anticipation, cut out- Delay... Casual: No seriously, be good girls and riot like monsters for me.” She turned back to her boxes, “Then you’re off. Shameless rip off of Bangerang, but you don’t go to McDonald if you don’t want the fries. References come with the territory,” she shrugged.

Amber nodded, wrapped the bong up and closed the box. She got it back on the shelf before suspicion snuck up on her, it was like the far off whistling sound of a mortar shell coming in, falling through the sky. "Territory?" Amber mumbled.

Madaline hadn't heard her.

The whistling grew and grew until at last the knowledge that was falling on her was a screaming roar, until it hit and the idea exploded into full view in Amber's brain.

If Amber had been holding a box she would have dropped it, as the dust cleared from the impact she had only one thought, No way, no way, there’s no way.

"We had others, of course," Madaline said off hand, as though she hadn't bombarded Amber's mind into a desolate crater, "Good Boys, Good Enbys, Good Queers. Not my best work, but it made for a good opener early on.”

Even in the face of that line, Amber still found the situation too unbelievable to be conceived. She took a breath, she had to ask. Amber said the words slowly, calmly, but they were stilted, “Madaline, who’s show is this merch from?”

“Mine,” Madaline responded absently, continuing to work.

Amber rested her back against a shelf to keep herself upright.

Madaline had said that it was the case and still there was no way; Madaline doesn’t mention being trilingual, fine, Madaline doesn’t mention her grandmother, fine, but there was no way music mad Madaline Mellor, had… made music, not just made music, but performed live, had performed live and sold merch… and it had never come up.

Madaline had never told her.

I told you so Amber, I told you so, over and over, but you don’t listen, said Simon in Amber's head, It’s not as simple as deciding that you’d like to know her. I said it the day she moved in, you and her are not the same. Rikka knows. Emily knows. They all know, but not you. She doesn’t tell you.

Amber scratched at her wrist, staring at the wall. I’m being silly, this isn’t something to get upset about. Except, it was, wasn’t it? How could they be best friends, or just friends if…

That was the worst part, nothing else in their relationship made her feel as naive and stupid as this, because, what had her earliest appraisal of Madaline been, the day they met, sipping the drink Madaline had made her?

“Do you have a motorcycle?” Amber asked.

“What,” Madaline laughed, “No. Why?”

“It was one of the first thoughts I had about you when we met. That you were cool, that you were plays in a band cool, rides a motorcycle cool.”

“No, no, motorcycle, thanks for a fun idea though, no band either, I subbed a few times before I got started on my own… act, but I haven’t been in a band since I was eh, since a little bit after I started my transition,” Madaline said, struggling a wheeled crate out of the back where she'd buried it.

The crate was big enough that Amber wouldn’t even need to go full fetal position to lay in it. It featured multiple heavy duty locks, three combos plus two built in for keys. It looked reinforced, like a special container the military might drop from a plane as a way to deliver weapons, something that could survive a light bombing and it was emblazoned with pink, blue, and white marker, in multiple hands. A sample from the sides Amber could see at a glance featured:

HEY HOE! LET'S GO!

FROM BRICKS TO BOMBS!

RIKKA SUCKED DICK HERE

THE DEVIL IS A T-GIRL

I WENT TO SEE M3IC AND ALL I GOT WAS A T SHIRT AND KNOCKED UP

FORCE FEMME PHOBROS

SAVE THE PROLES! KILL THE PEASANTS!

21st CENT-

And in the open space left over there were stickers, the trans pride flag, the symbol that had been on Milo’s wrist, a speech that began “This is the age of Sin”, several molecule chains and prominent under one lock was the symbol that had been on the shirt. Amber supposed that might be Madaline's logo.

Amber noted there was a second crate, still submerged behind boxes, sitting next to the empty slot the first crate had left behind, pressed flush to the back wall.

She went back to considering the first chest, looked at the whirls of colors from the writing on the crate until it all seemed to melt together, and felt a sharp tugging in her chest, like hooks piercing her heart and yanking, attempting to rip it out.

Amber's bottom lip twitched, experiencing a strange sense of being cut off from a history that she maybe could have taken part in, a feeling like she’d just missed something special, a golden era where mythical things had happened and now it was too late, she could only ever know the diluted second hand form because she hadn’t been there, she’d learned that it existed far too late.

Madaline was still talking,“...I always need a DJ during shows, usually Fernanda or Z-. Amber, are you okay?”

Amber couldn’t bring herself to lie properly, “I just… I’m just… flummoxed… dumbstruck, I can’t believe… I can’t believe I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean you didn’t know?” Madaline asked, taking a step forward, her hand twitching.

“You… never told me… you made your own music or played shows or…”

“Well, no, but you knew, Simon told you.”

“No… Simon’s never told me.”

“Sure he did, like three minutes after we met, he did, ah, we were in the kitchen, I was making you a drink and Simon was like,” she took a breath and put on a passable imitation of Simon, “Just wait till she tells you all about her music.” Madaline tapped her fingers on her pants, “Huh, now that I say it I guess you could have taken that to mean my music collection, she pointed at the shelves.

Amber thought back to that day, and now that Madaline mentioned it, yes, she’d caught half of what Simon had said, but had been distracted by Madaline talking about traveling, but that didn’t matter, because whether or not she’d heard Simon that day, even if…. just… how was it possible they’d never talked about this? That was the real problem, even if Amber had heard Simon and taken it to mean Madaline’s grand library of music, how had this not come up?

Madaline was still talking, “Anyway it’s why we’re here, I’m… finally… just picking up some of my gear, trying to get back into it, been… missing it.”

Amber’s brain tried to grapple with that little factoid, that they were here for Madaline’s, as she called it gear, which meant Madaline, once again music mad Madaline had gone without it for at least the last couple months, but Amber couldn’t even begin to wonder about that, cause the bare fact of the lack of words exchanged on this subject was eating her alive…

What stung the most was just how much sense it made: It made more sense than anything else about her, it made more sense than her assault charge, it made more sense then her… odd views on relationships, it made more sense then the fantastical cadre of strange sapphics she ran around with at night, getting up to who knows what, sometimes speaking in a silly, but effectively alienating constructed tongue. It made more sense than anything else about her, so how… How had she not known, even without being told, because of course Madaline made music. Of course she did.

Amber tried to express this in as even a way as possible, “Why don’t we ever… talk about it, you never talk about it, you talk about music all the time and you tell me stories all the time, but why haven't we ever talked about it?”

“Ah,” Madaline shrugged, “Throw enough roman cokes in me and I’ll shout to you about how I’m Joe Strummer reincarnated, all I’m saying is I was born the day he died.”

She pushed the crate a little with her boot so Amber could see the other side:

JOE STRUMMER BORN AGAIN

Amber blinked, "Joe Strummer... that's the... lead singer of the Clash?”

“Uh-huh, died December 22nd 2002, don’t know for sure if it was after or not but it’s a good way to talk myself up.”

“Madaline. That’s… cool, but it doesn’t explain why? Why don’t we talk about it.”

“Right,” Madaline sighed, she crouched down and began working the dial of a lock, “I guess I see why it feels weird to you… I just kind of figured- Look, I’ve ended up in this place where… unless… roman cokes… Ughhh,” she popped the first lock, scratched her head, and started on another, “People I meet under circumstances like... a family dinner or whatever, I feel like it puts me and them in a weird spot."

“A weird spot? No, Madaline, this,” Amber shook her head, and tapped her foot on the cement floor of the storage unit, “This is a weird spot, this feels weird, you are obsessed with music.”

“Granted it’s a minor hyper fixation, but, that’s other people’s music, right, it’s different, but it’s like, I start talking about my stuff to people and… Hey, I’m Madaline, I’ve made some music and played a couple shows and it’s like,” she sighed, “I worry people might feel obligated to ask me to listen to my music," a lock popped, "or I’ll get over excited and push my music on them, and then it’s like forcing them, and even if their genuine about it, even if they do want to hear, even if they legitimately love my music… I’ll still have to wonder if they’re just being polite cause they want to be friends or they… want to go to bed with me or… So, I just prefer to have it come up a little more naturally…Like this. Right, it just feels less awkward.”

“But don’t you still have to worry about if they’re being genuine?” Amber asked.

“Sure, that comes with making stuff and showing it to people, but when it comes up in the course of things, I worry about it less." She popped the final lock.

"Alright, I think I understand what you're saying," Amber said, slowly.

Conceptually Amber did understand, however it was still a little difficult for her to imagine her bestie being insecure about anything, as Madaline's mere presence in Amber's life had lead to drastic improvements in Amber's own confidence in many regards, even if that confidence wasn't totalistic and its presence was ultimately unstable.

Madaline took up the lid of the crate, as she did Amber half expected gold light to spill out. It didn't.

Madaline first drew out a long case that based on its shape Amber thought might be for a short keyboard, then what could have been a laptop case, and then a guitar case that was off somehow, the proportions looked just a little wrong.

“Is that a guitar?” Amber asked softly, her fingers tingling.

"For lack of a better term."

“For lack of a better term?”

“I mean that literally, some call it a miditar or a digitar, both sound stupid, so I just tend to think of it as another guitar. My traditional bass and rhythm are back there,” she pointed to the crate that was still submerged.

“What’s a- “ Amber stopped and reoriented herself to the crucial issue, and then had a wonderful idea, even if it didn't work, she'd get a consolation prize, “What about if someone was wearing your merch, would you still feel worried about if someone was legitimately interested?”

Madaline reached down two handed into the case, and started body lifting something big and heavy out, laughing as she straightened her spine, “Well, yeah, if someone's wearing my fucking merch then that's a safe indicator that they're actually interes-"

"Oh good," Amber said.

Madaline stopped mid turn, holding a huge boxy speaker. Madaline stared at Amber, sucking her teeth.

Amber had pulled the merch shirt over her head to fall down her body like a dress, it was far too big on her.

Madaline didn't get a hold of her own brain in time, her mind dropping this image of Amber into a recreation of the shadowy back hall of Kirby’s bar behind the stage, this vision of Amber spoke coyly inside Madaline's head, Bestie, will you show me the green room?

Madaline suppressed a shiver, and cleared her internal cache, Just a slip, she told herself.

“Bestie? Can we talk about your music now?” Amber asked pointedly, thumbing at the shirt, wrinkling her nose a little, noting that it didn't smell like Madaline---'s room.

Madaline experienced a sudden pulse of paranoia that her thoughts were somehow visible, but then she got Amber's little joke, a little verbal trick; Madaline had assumed Amber had been asking about someone wearing Madaline's merch when Madaline met them for the first time, but Amber had actually only asked if wearing the shirt period would take care of Madaline's concerns.

Now, Amber was standing there in the shirt, with an only slightly veiled self-satisfied expression on her face that read clearly as: See, now we'll talk, I'm wearing the shirt so you can't feel weird about it now, you just said this would take care of it.

“Cute," Madlaine said, "Very cute. Sure, princess. The shirt looks good on you, by the way, but, yeah, ask away.”

4.

Can we listen to your music on the way back? Do you have videos of your shows? Can I watch them? All of them? Amber's brain erupted.

The desires made it to Amber's lips, starting the push of air to form the C of can, then she stopped short, finding a wall between her desire and expressing it.

She could ask questions, but she didn’t want to have to ask Madaline for the music and videos, no, she wanted Madaline to show her or offer them to her, which might be placing them in a stupid game of social chicken, but that’s the way things were, maybe if she played, she could find a good place to nudge Madaline in that direction.

Madaline pushed the crate back into place, and began working boxes back to where they’d started.

Amber reached through the jar of questions and asked the first one that wasn’t blocked off, setting out on a path of inquiry that was almost a stream of consciousness, “You… played shows?”

“Uh-huh, a few,” Madaline said.

“A few? What’s a few?”

“I didn’t really keep count, heady years, princess.”

"I'll bet," Amber said, smiling, keeping the bitterness out of her voice, “When did you start?”

“Shows? Ah, I subbed in for the Dayglos a few times the summer before my freshman year, my own shows... first semester, pretty sure..."

"You don't remember?"

Madaline thought for a second and a heap of broken images swept across her brain, before at last landing on a pint glass slowly filling with black liquid, less the color of coffee, more the color of ink, of pitch. Distantly her juke box clicked on, and played the frantic rolling guitar and pounding drum from the middle of Pulp’s Like A Friend.

Madaline laughed it off, and her jukebox quieted, she gave her hand a shake, and as she had been ignoring the hand of cards her brain had slowly been drawing and saving up since they’d gotten within spitting distance of her hometown. "Ah, not sure, but pretty sure, I take it back, the first couple years of college were less heady and more... insane. So many things happening, all of it so fast, they all get jumbled up, add a little alcohol, and your recollection of when something happened gets sketchy. Fun though, it was all lots of fun, like the best and worst parts of living with jumper cables hooked to your brain."

“Fair enough," Amber nodded, "When was the last time you played?”

“Ah, couple of months before I went to Sweden…”

The hooks in Amber’s heart yanked, she really had just missed it; if she’d met Madaline before she met Simon, if she’d met Madaline before she’d come out to her parents, if she’d met Madaline-

Amber cut the thought off.

“I played at Kirby’s, that’s Happy House Tavern and I played at Sappho's Paradise, my biggest shows were at Basement 18. B18 is a good metric for things actually, cause people go there for the music. By the summer between freshman and sophomore year there were a few people coming a ways to see me too. Which is gratifying. I had a little following online, that’s where the travelers were coming from, but subscribing is cheap.”

“What was the biggest show? How many people?” Amber asked, she didn't really care if it was just ten of Madaline's closest friends, but she wanted to be able to picture things, she needed scale, to know what it would have been like to be at one of these shows.

“I don’t know, like a couple hundred.”

Full Disclosure: As Amber would discover when she actually did get to see the video footage of Madaline’s performances, a couple hundred was rounding down a bit, a standardized answer Madaline’s mind had seized on for herself and others, someone else had kept track of such numbers.

“Madaline, that's amazing,” Amber beamed, "That is so... so amazing."

“Yeah, it was,” Madaline smiled. “It was cool, I miss it.”

Amber’s next question was if Madaline was going to play shows again, but found this question blocked as well. So she shook her head and moved on, “What kind of music did you make?” Her heart rate climbed a bit in excitement, as this was an opportunity for Madaline to offer the music to her.

Madaline blew out a stream of air, “Stew,” she said, placing a box.

“Stew?”

“Stew, that’s how I think of it, Nice thing about stew is you can add whatever works for the particular batch, song needs what it needs, needs to be what it needs to be. See?"

"Sure, stew, comprised of diverse elements," Amber said. "Alright, if it was stew, what were some of your preferred stew ingredients? I mean, it's not music, but like Edgar Allen Poe didn't always write about sickness and madness and waifish maidens, but he wrote about those things a lot. Those elements came up over and over, he favored them. What kind of elements did you favor?"

Madaline giggled, "Waifish maidens?"

"Yeah, you know, Lenore and Annabel Lee and," Amber pointed, "Madeline Usher."

"My knowledge of Poe begins and ends with the episode of the Simpsons when they did the Raven, but I see what you're asking," Madaline said to the waifish maiden. She considered, “I know this special slap bass technique, that's something of a signature so I'd use that a lot, make it the heart of things and build around it with other elements... I'll show you... later."

Amber’s heart leapt with glee, before reminding herself how vague the statement, I’ll show you later, can be.

Madaline went on, musing out her list of frequently utilized ingredients: "Psychedelic riffs and piano were pretty common inclusions, EDM elements were a necessity, but I used all kinds of stuff, I've got this song called We Can Always Tell, people liked that one and it's mostly just the lyrics and a bass line and these drum sequences I made from... I was around Cam’s shop one day, and they were working on this car and the engine… it sounded like furries drumming on iron or something."

She paused to stack a couple of heavy boxes, Amber stopped herself from saying what else.

At last Madaline turned back and dusted off her hands:

”Like I said earlier, I'm really big on references and rip offs, so I’d incorporate samples of stuff, lines from movies or whatever or just sounds, but I didn't usually do proper samples for songs, with songs I’d recreate, mutate and mutilate them… Like maybe I’d want to incorporate the chorus section of Gimmie Shelter, I’d remake it myself, cover the guitar and vocals, usually altered them, or I’d work with Fernanda, she would remix things, yank out most to all the vocals and strings, send it to me to play with and we’d go back and forth. Collaboration. Single act, band, orchestra, or whatever, a musician's life is collaboration. At shows Fernanda or Zai would record and remix elements from one song and bring it back in another. Get going so for long stretches the songs just bled into each other. I’ll show you a simplified version, maybe.”

Amber nodded, her stomach sinking, at the transition from Madaline showing her something later, to Madaline showing her something...maybe, "You had lyrics," she tapped the shirt, "What kind of songs did you write?”

“Ah, Queer punky subject matter, trans stuff, politics, that kind of thing, occasionally something else... party song or what sounded like one, a lot of angry stuff, I guess, occasionally even violent, but it was hardly the only vibe I went for, like pride, when I had a chance to do a song or part of a song that was prideful, I usually took it, expressing pride is really important to me. Then, form wise I favored rap, or rap-like structure."

“Wait, really? You rapped?” Amber asked, not expecting Madaline's music to go in that direction.

“Rap structured," Madaline emphasized, "But, yeah, sometimes, hell yeah, I'd rap, I'd sing, I'd rap sing or talk or shout or... German word that means speech singing. A hipster asshole once called me rap rock trash, someone else called me Twenty One Trans Politics...

“As opposed to Twenty One Pilots? Is that the joke?”

“Uh-huh, honestly, both might be kind of fair. Probably the easiest place to shelf me is somewhere on the rap rock spectrum, which I suppose would make me part of the great 2020s rap rock resurgence, which is kind of cool, even if I'm luke warm about nailing my music to the term, but it's a way wider field now than it was in the early 2000s... There was another term that apparently I do… I forget… It was in this review I got from the Stenowell," she snapped her fingers, remembering, "the music critic said that when I really get going I start pattering. I mean, really, I just did whatever felt right for the song or the section, but, yeah, when I write lyrics I tend to pull from the rap form and tool box.”

“What do you mean by pattering?” Amber asked.

“It’s more of a theater technique, had someone explain it as... rapping is about rhythm, pattering is about going fast while still hitting certain notes, I’d argue there’s a bunch of crossover, they exist on the same floor of the same house, but I'm also not a music scholar so... Not to mention that reviewer who said I pattered also felt the need to declare my music trap rock with a T,” she cracked her thumb, “So you should maybe take what he says with a grain of salt too… Could have said, rap or rock or rap rock or alt rock or indie pop or punk hop or anything else, and maybe I would disagree that I should be shelved there, but I wouldn’t take issue...” Madaline cracked her thumb against her leg. “Well, it’s an old review anyway, and fairly complementary other than that.”

Amber wasn’t certain why the term bothered Madaline, she was pretty sure she’d mentioned Trap Music favorably before.

"Does the rap structure surprise you?” Madaline asked, “I'm fairly certain I've made you endure my sermons on Queen Latifah and Lupe Fiasco?"

"Yeah, you have, but... I don't know, I guess my original idea of you playing in a band... I just assumed your music would be more..." Amber trailed off.

Madaline stopped and turned, "More what?"

"More rock and roll?"

Madaline dropped her hands to her hips, and pitched her voice up in offense, mostly in jest, but there was also a hint of authentic hauteur, “Excuse me, little miss short stack, my music might not be specifically rock and roll, but my music is very very rock and roll.”

Amber wasn't entirely sure what she meant by that, nor why the comment nipped at her, but it didn't matter in the moment, because here Amber could see a pressure point she could push on that might perhaps get Madaline to play her music for her, if Amber handled it right and pressed it in the right way, but she had to be careful, use a feather not a hammer.

“I mean, I guess you’re playing the guitar, and you're kind of mixing different elements, but… if you start rapping or... using rap structured lyrics, even if your music qualifies as rap rock... Doesn’t that still kind of take things out of the," Amber got daring, "The, you know, real rock area?”

Madaline put her tongue in her cheek, “Real rock? Okay, class is in session. What is rock and roll?”

Amber had pressed too lightly on the issue or at the wrong angle to achieve her desired result, and for a moment felt like she'd failed in executing a planned chess gambit, sacrificing a valuable piece without gaining any ground, but the sense of failure and frustration from futilely making herself sound more ignorant then she was faded quickly, as her mind flickered to Madaline in a suit at the front of a classroom.

Amber paused, cast the image out and thought the question through, racing her mind over the archive of music Madaline had played and talked about, “I don’t know… Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Against Me?”

“All fair examples, add Kurtesa, add Chuck Berry, add the Clash, add Living Color, those are all extensions of the rock and roll family, they are also all different kinds of music, different kinds of rock music, and for the most part from different periods. Get it? Things aren't so simple, there's so many questions to ask."

"Questions?"

"Uh-huh, like, there are people who would contest Against Me, Kurtesa, even the Clash, and a smaller number would contest Pink Floyd. Do punk and prog even count, are they part of that same tree, I think so, but ask someone else, they might disagree, to that end what are we talking about, when you say real rock or rock and roll are we talking just the original genre of rock and roll, or that plus things that get cataloged in that family tree?"

"I... don't know..." Amber answered.

"How about Rage Against the Machine? Are they more rap or more rock?”

“I don’t think we’ve listened to them, Living Colour either.”

“Really? No Living Colour? Not even Cult of Personality?" Madaline said, shocked.

Amber shook her head.

"I should be ashamed of myself, if only I knew how. Okay, we’ll get to them soon, but you've heard Rage Against the Machine, Wake Up, it's the song at the end of the Matrix."

"I haven't seen the Matrix either."

Madaline blinked, "Never mind, I think I might be learning to feel ashamed of myself... okay we'll watch it soon.. ah, here's my point... Motley Crue, Ted Nugent, Gene Simmons and transphobic man in makeup with a girl’s name Alice Cooper, you know them, heard of them?"

"I've heard of Motley Crue, but I don't think we've ever listened-"

"Not from my playlists we haven't, no, I can resist my once in ten year urge to listen to my pirated copy of Schools Out for Summer until Cooper is in his grave, same goes for Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue though that one hits every five years or so."

"I'm not sure... I'm assuming if you're lumping the others in with a transphobe then they're all not great people. All transphobic?" Amber asked.

"I don't know if they're all transphobic, but chances are, yeah, they're a pack of conservative basicmales and they're undeserving members of the classic rock canon, who have all found one way or another to whine that rock music should just be fun and not political. That view alone should disqualify them, but to add insult to injury, they're all hacks, there's six good songs between the four of them, and they're all by Cooper and Crue.

"So what you're saying is... rock music shouldn't be conservative?"

"Kind of, it's supposed to be liberatory. The point I'm getting at with mentioning these guys is there's a lot of different ways you can talk about what's rock and roll and what's not, for example, if you want to talk the politics and the spirit of rock and roll then Tupac and Lady Ga Ga are more rock and roll then any of those assholes have ever been,” Madaline explained, leaning against a stack of boxes, arms crossed.

“Politics of rock and roll… Lady Ga Ga has made political music?” Amber asked skeptically.

“I don’t know, how political are the rights of queer people and women? Born this Way, Americano, but even if she didn’t have those, she also has Angel Down.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess she does,” Amber nodded.

“Fuck it, even DJ Tiesto counts," Madaline went on, "And Tiesto primarily makes intoxicatingly danceable mainstream party tunes, but he worked with Dance4Life and more importantly, he made the song Dance4life, combo prayer and public service announcement: You only need take heed if you need to, and you need to, HIV, AIDS is lethal… With one song he is more rock and roll than any of them too, simply on the basis of these… frauds, arguing that rock music should just be a good time or worse that it’s acceptable for rock music to be used to," Madaline bobbed her head back and forth on her neck, searching for a phrase, "Rage in favor of the machine.”

Amber chewed this over, "Okay, but... So then rock music has to have a political focus to be considered rock music? Is that what you're saying? Didn't you tell me most songs are love songs?"

"They are, and no, songs are about what they're about, right, they can be about all kinds of things, but especially people that hit the level of Motley Crue... or... or something... then they should be using a bit of that time on their albums, not to mention a little bit of that money, to try to help people who need help, people who aren't so... fucking lucky... Look, when it comes to music if it's good I can ignore stuff, especially if the artist is dead or they changed their point of view later, or, depending on the artist, if I didn't pay for it-"

"Eric Clapton?" Amber asked, remembering Madaline talking about her issues with the artist she considered to be one of the best guitarists of all time.

"Eric Clapton, yeah… Look, I’m not asking anyone to devote their entire discography to fighting evil, I love me some vapid party music, but come on, just something and if you can’t do that, just shut up about others doing the right thing, right? People at that level who don't do anything... I usually just don't hold them in as high a regard, but the second an artist starts wagging their finger about not wanting a genre that was gentrified by white owned corporations, stolen from the working class black people that created it, just so a loser like Ted Nugent can get wealthy..." she trailed off.

Madaline had been ramping up, her fingers flicking and twitching in agitation, cracking against her leg, but now she stilled, and an odd expression fell over her face. She swept her gaze over the boxes; uncomfortable, almost guilty, like for a moment she'd found herself in a place she didn't belong.

"Madaline?" Amber asked softly.

Madaline shook her head, "Right, ah... Just so a talentless hack like Nugent can get wealthy off it and be in a position to say this music shouldn't be political," she continued, her voice even and conversational again, "Guys who wag that finger deserve to have their fingers broken, and they don't deserve any association with the letters, the individual letters, that make up the words rock and roll. For fuck sake, the woman who invented rock and roll was in an unmarked grave until the 1970s. That horrifies me right and just to say it, if you have any awareness about the history of the music that comes out of the US, then it’s not just genre it’s genre’s. Punk, EDM, It’s not that no good music happens as they’re getting gentrified or after, but that's historically what happens, and when they’re not getting gentrified, they’re getting blown up. Disco was created by not white people and not cis-het people and not white not cis-het people and just like that, boom, disco is dead."

Amber did not take Madaline's explosive expression of disco's fall to be literal, that would be too absurd, for an actual explosion and riot to be involved, however it must be said, that in the history of disco, the explosion that ended the genre's prominence was in fact not hyperbolic description, no, it was dynamite, very real dynamite.

“Wait really? The person who started rock and roll was in an unmarked grave?” Amber asked.

"Yeah, no, it's so fucked up, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, I've got a song about her actually. I have a couple of like... history songs, whatever anyone else thinks of them, I'm proud of those," Madaline found her vape pen and began tapping the end against her wrist. "I did one about the Cafeteria Riot, another about Disco Demolition Night and the Institute of Sexual Science, all 14 years, not just how it ended. Of course, I mention stuff in other songs, but these were focused on queer history."

Amber had no idea what the Cafeteria Riot was or for that matter, the Institute of Sexual Science, but she had Madaline on a bit of a roll so she decided to keep pushing rather than swerving off for those questions at the moment.

"So Sister Rosetta Tharpe was queer then?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so, though with the way queerness gets scrubbed from history, who fucking knows, but I had to do a song about her, cause I learned about her reading this thing my freshman year and it seemed insane that I'd literally never so much as heard her name mentioned in a song before, right, if she's the mother of rock and roll then she's kind of the Grandmother of like all to nearly all the popular music that's come about from rock, which in this country is nearly everything." Madaline cracked her back, and drew on her vape.

"Yeah," Amber said, "That makes sense, it's really sweet of you to memorialize her like that."

"Thanks," Madaline smiled, then her mouth flickered, "But it's not about being sweet... It's about like... what's owed, trying to do the best I can to..." she scraped her teeth over her lip and shook out her hand. "Anyway, ah, so yeah, politics and spirit is one discussion to be had, but you can also go just by sound, the fact of the matter is by the time you hit like the 70s, the sound of rock music had splintered into so many different genres with all these different techniques, including some proto rapping, that beyond that point defining it really kind of becomes a snipe game, unless you just want to go by the nostalgia cannon. That's what I was kind of getting at when asking if punk and prog count."

"Huh. You know, that kind of matches with the way the term rockstar gets applied to artists that aren't remotely rock sounding or... heck, we use it when we're not even talking about music," Amber considered.

"That's a good point, actually, in some ways that is my point, cause yeah, defining a hard as nails direct line of rock music that goes from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Kurtesa... it gets really tricky really quick, kind of impossible, especially when you start looking at how its influence has been infused into so many different kinds of music, so in my book the easiest thing to do is just to say at this point being rock and roll,” Madaline waved a hand down the length of her body, “Is an idea.”

"Sex, drugs, and liberation?" Amber offered.

"That's good, I like that," Madaline said, snapping her fingers.

Amber glowed inside, "You know an awful lot for someone who isn't a scholar?"

"Eh," Madaline shrugged, "Reading a couple books and listening to people talk online doesn't make me a scholar," Madaline said, resuming the work of rebuilding her stacks of boxes.

Amber stepped forward to help, "Alright, your music is as rock and roll as you, and you are very rock and roll, I'll buy that," Amber scratched around for a question to keep Madaline talking and took the first one she could find, "Why rap structured lyrics, though, as opposed to traditional rock lyrics is it just to incorporate that end of... the musical spectrum or..."

Madaline grunted, stretching one of the last boxes up over her head onto a stack, then glanced down at Amber, and looked like she was restraining a chuckle, "It's about... how do I say this... Amber, I appreciate that there are probably more drawbacks to your-” Madaline paused as she watched Amber crouch and lift a box, fixating on the shape and movement of her hip encased in leggings. “Ah what was I…”

“Something about drawbacks."

“Right… I appreciate that there are probably more drawbacks to your height than mine, but as I am a bitch that’s been in a couple of old houses where I've had to duck my head in doorways, I appreciate the space and versatility that the form gives me, more words, more options. I wouldn't ever say rap is more creative, but there's a bigger tool box.”

Amber who occasionally had to get out a step-stool to reach items in the cupboards of both houses she'd lived in, had to restrain herself from grinning at the image of Madaline ducking her head in door frames, especially as she'd endured, not a lot, but a couple teasing comments about her height from her General Sherman Esq Bestie in the last two plus months, comments which had left her embarrassed and a little flustered.

In point of fact she was mildly flustered by the reminder of the difference in the scale of them in the present moment, leaving her struggling once more to find a thread, "What did you mean about expressing pride in your music? Like trans pride?"

“Just lyrics where I exhibit pride or prideful energy and, yeah, trans pride, queer pride are mainstay subjects, of course they are, but I'll also... look, I'm told I'm not that great a lyricist period, apparently I get by on my skill with strings and my presence, but I'll talk up my ability as a performer in general as an expression of pride, and I’ll also talk about how great I am in… other ways," Madaline smirked, her voice just a little sly, before going back to being serious, "Part of it is the rap form, I think, the music I make isn’t Hip Hop, I’ve never been part of that community, but the form comes with influences and traditionally Hip Hop is a very proud genre.”

“You said you sampled songs too, didn't you?”

“Mmmhmm, sometimes, but I make mine from raw or however you want to say it, that's probably the EDM in me as well, I play off a lot of stuff. But the rap form comes with influences and those influences incline me to find opportunities to express pride and I'm grateful for that, it’s important… If we're being fair, it also appeals to my ego.”

Amber laughed, “Sure, but you kind of singled it out earlier, why is that an important thing to include in your lyrics? Why pride?”

Madaline licked her lips. “So much trans music is about dysphoria and being dehumanized and that's definitely something we should keep making, but we need a little more counter point. So, if a trans person hears my music I want them to be able to experience some of that, to feel it, have it, take it with them. We deserve it."

This explanation sent Amber's brain spinning around an idea that had nothing to do with music, several beats passed and then before she could stuff the words down, “You’re proud of what we are? Like actually proud? ” she emphasized the word actually.

“Of course I am? Aren’t yo-” Madaline stopped, her face frowning in concern, and then pressing her lips together, her fingers flicking for a moment and then going still.

Amber had to admit it was an odd thing to say, why would the party that came every year be called Pride if they weren’t supposed to be proud, but that was supposed to be like, the idea that they deserved to exist the same as everyone else… not actually being proud of being… For a flicker of a moment she wondered how that felt. Then she attempted to course correct:

“I mean,yeah, of course I am,” Amber smiled, “But it’s like… you're…” but she couldn’t find an out, this difference in them felt daunting, “Sorry, I’m just being silly, I’m not sure what I meant,” she said, making her voice certain.

Madaline didn't say anything for a minute, tapping her finger on her pants, until at last, "Amber, it's alright if you don't get it, if you're not there yet, lot's of us aren't, we'll work on it, kay?”

“Kay," Amber nodded, before pressing the conversation back to more desirable and far safer waters, "So.. what's other stuff?"

“Other stuff?”

“Yeah, like you said you expressed pride as a performer and being trans and other stuff, you know?”

Madaline licked her lips again, looked uncertain for a second, and then smirked, seemingly moving in a direction that she couldn’t resist.

For a moment, Amber thought she might have accidentally jumped from dangerous waters to the exact slab of land she wanted to be on, that Madaline might say they could listen to one of her songs discussing this other element of pride as soon as they closed up the storage unit.

Instead:

Madaline tapped her fingers on a box, and unknowingly met Amber halfway, “Bridge section of a song called Contemporary Villain, well, the title was a matter of debate, never mind, it's old bullshit,” she swallowed and took a breath.

Madaline didn’t sing or rap or rap sing or shout, she more just recited, but Amber was delighted to see that as Madaline went on she couldn’t keep herself from adding flourishes, a wave at her legs during one line, her fingers twitching, seeking phantom strings to play:

”Now let me rock the dossier:

Tall girl, T Girl, Malcontent with all the confidence

and an extent that gets me a few extra compliments.

But I'll never be celebrated across the continents

Over my pants considerable contents.

Instead my fame will always be a consequence

Of my​ sheer​ got​ em​ coming​ again​ and​ again​ and again​ competence.”

Two beats passed, Madaline waited. Then:

“Madaline!” Amber said, ears red, her body temp instantly climbing two degrees.

Madaline grinned wickedly, “See? Pride, and I don’t know what you’re so scandalized by, princess, I’m clearly only talking about how proud I am of the length of my legs and my skills as a performer, making people want to see me a second time. Right, people can say what they want about my lyrics, never going to be a great lyricist or rapper or vocalist, but I am to die for, princess, when it comes to my instrument.”

That last comment was said in such a nonchalant manner that Amber wasn’t entirely sure if it was intentionally or unintentionally another double entendre, but Amber’s ears took it as such, lighting back up just as they were dimming.

Madaline pulled her phone out of her pocket and began texting, speaking absently, “The instrumentals for Contemporary Villain have DNA from Twentieth Century Boy by T Rex and Don’t Stop by Interparty System and a whole lot of influence from Aqua’s Barbie Girl, which is obvious if you actually hear it.”

Amber waited, but no offer for her to experience the stew that had a bit of a Barbie Girl base with ingredients that included 20th Century Boy and a Don't Stop garnish emerged from Madaline's lips.

Instead Madaline looked up, stared for a few seconds, her fingers curling open and shut, until she sucked her tongue, “We should get going though… and as much as it kills me to ask, did you wrap my bong back up when you put that box back?”

“No, I’m sorry, I’m glad you caught that so it didn’t get broken,” Amber said, apologetic and embarrassed.

“Long as one of us did, I like that bong."

Amber nodded and started, reluctantly, to pull the artifact of the shirt over her head, but Madaline stepped and stopped her with a touch.

Amber looked up at her, through the glasses.

"It looks good on you, the shirt, I mean, you can keep that too, if you'd like, I have another one somewhere, I’ll get-” Madaline looked away from Amber, and then didn't finish, nor did she wait for Amber's response, instead she went to her car and got an old Blue Oyster Cult shirt out of a small sack in the trunk to wrap up her bong.

Amber would end up wearing the shirt for the remainder of the day until it was time for Simon to return. After that she took it off, hung it on a hanger and placed it at the far end of her closet.

Not because she was hiding anything, she wasn't hiding the shirt, she just didn't wear it when her boyfriend was around, and didn't tell him about the cool shirt his step-sister had given her.

But it wasn't hiding something in the closet, that would be silly. Why would she even need to?

And even if she had a reason, this wasn't hiding something, cause hiding something took thought and effort and choice and Amber refused to think about it.

5.

They did not listen to Madaline's music after they departed the storage unit, nor as Madaline drove them out to and then around Marbleporte's furthest edge, Amber was instead treated to a compilation of Living Colour off a CD from the big case behind the driver's seat.

Amber did her best to enjoy the music, instead of feeling that Madaline had coldly refused her a desperate desire.

The sting abated a bit after the first couple of songs, which isn't to say it went away, but she did find herself rather liking Living Colour; their identity as rock music felt fairly secure, though Amber thought they might also have a bit of a stew quality to them, but then so much music did, that was part of Madaline’s point, the longer a genre went on, the more it interacted with other genre’s, the more stew like variations occurred, or you could say, the longer the genre went on the more the genre was in a certain sense, Queered.

Madaline took a turn and they were suddenly creeping through traffic, cars were stopped in a line, progress choked.

“Of course, less than five minutes before the ramp,” Madaline sighed, popping her finger as they came to a stop, looking ahead at the eight cars between them and the intersection.

Amber watched as the light turned green, just long enough for a couple cars to make it through, before flipping back to red, where it stayed for a while, it seemed inclined to the warmer color.

They crept up slowly, Madaline watched the process go around again,

Madaline popped another finger against the steering wheel, "Must have a faulty sensor... out here, who could have guessed."

Living Colour was suddenly interrupted by the chorus of Birdhouse in your Soul playing out from Madaline's phone, the screen read: LOUISA

Madaline tapped the speaker-phone button on her phone screen.

“Hey, Lou, I’m in traffic up in Marbleporte, I got my mom in the car,” she nudged Amber and rolled her hand, “So please watch what you say, hen.”

Amber moved her voice a little towards Serpentine’s and spoke in a professional manner, “Hi Lou, don’t mind me.”

Madaline gave Amber a thank you for being a good sport smile.

The cars weren't moving, and nobody was saying anything.

“Hello? Lou?” Madaline asked.

“That’s not your mom, is that Amber? That sounds kind of like Amber, she’s with Amber, bitches, I told you,” said a very familiar, smokey valley girl voice.

“Hello again, Rikka,” Amber said, feeling a bit pleased, but also once again intruded upon.

“Heyyyyy Amber, so how-” Rikka started.

“Spacecase, I am stuck in fucking traffic,” Madaline said, rubbing her eyes, “And in this situation if given the option between listening to you or to Corey Glover, I’m picking Corey Glover, so either hand the phone to Louisa or I’m hanging up on you.”

“She’s reaching for the button, Rikka,” Amber warned, remembering to fix her voice back to normal halfway through.

Madaline gave Amber another smile, she hadn’t been reaching for the button, but the claim worked.

“Fuck, Madddyyy you can be such a selfish bitchhhhhh,” Rikka whined.

“So I’m told, I’m hanging up now. Three. Two.”

There was a shuffling through the speakers, Rikka was replaced by a new voice, sweet and balanced, almost flowery. “Hey, Maddy.”

“Hey Lou, what’s up?”

The car inched forward, the car came to a stop once again.

“Bad news I’m afraid, Aisha lost her job this morning.”

“Right, well, fuck that place. Fired?” Madaline declared.

“Uh-huh.”

“She actually do something to get fired or did they find an excuse? Not that it makes a difference.”

“An excuse. New management.”

“Right, well, somebody should show them the block.”

There was a pause,

Then Louisa went, “Mmmm,” and chuckled in understanding, “Not my department, though I’m sure there’s discussions going on. The bigger issue is unfortunately the last couple of months have wiped out her and Rowan’s savings, everything else is paid for, Raven and Xuan both stay there part time, but they also have other bills. Everyone was depending on Aisha for the rent this month, we’re hoping to get her in at WUC or Mickelson Wood Company or something soon, but it might take a minute so their situation is… it’s an issue, they need help.”

The car inched forward and stopped.

“Yeah, I get you. If she can handle something physical for a bit, have her put in an application at R and I Packing, have her put me down as a reference, the manager there, Lan, can probably give her a job by the middle of May and Lan will look out for her.”

“Mmmhmmm, that’ll help, we’ll look into that, but we do have pressing concerns, there’s no pressure if you’re strapped, we've already got people throwing in and plenty more to ask, but since you’ve got domfedora status we were hoping you'd help, Rikka, Cam, and I, cover the lion's share of their rent until we can get Aisha situated, keep their place in play. It's a good place.”

They were at the light now, it was red, but Madaline wasn’t looking at it.

For a second, Amber thought Madaline was looking at her, but then she realized, no, she was looking past her, out the window, almost a little dazed, her mouth falling to the side in a tiny frown.

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Madaline said absently, “Of course, yeah, count me in, what are we looking at?”

“Figure two months at most, but probably just this month, can you do 250? Can be any time before the first.”

“Right, that’s not a problem, should I drop the money to them or you?”

“Them, if you see them before Cam or I. Thank you so much, sugar," Louisa sighed happily.

“Nah, it’s no problem, mark me for both months if need be, just keep me updated.”

Amber turned her head and looked out the window herself, and found a worn out sign on an entrance road marked: Marbleporte Courts Trailer Park.

Madaline's tongue slicked over the points of her teeth, “Actually, I’m going to go ahead and just throw an extra hundred in, let them top off on some groceries or meds or whatever they need, so they don't feel so... yeah...." she said, almost sighing a little at the end. “And get Rikka to throw them some dandy, put it on my tab, losing a gig like that stings.”

“Very generous of you, shug.”

"No problem, give them my love, tell them everything is going to be fine."

"Will do, thank you, Maddy," Louisa chirped.

There was muffled speaking, followed by Rikka whining from off the phone, “Nooooo waaaaayyyyyy.”

“Rikka,” Louisa said, in what was both the sweetest and most exasperated scolding voice Amber had ever heard.

“No, alright fine, yeah, of course, I’ll do it, but… Goddammit,” Rikka whined, “Arggg…Tell that knock off Attack Titan human giraffe hybrid bitch to walk my money over to me right now, cause I’ll do it, but her tab doesn’t exist until I get Amber’s s-”

Madaline interrupted her, “If my tab doesn’t exist it never comes due, thanks Spacecase. Lou, I’m hanging up,” Madaline said, tapping the phone.

The call went dead.

Madaline was still looking out the window.

Living Colour returned to the stereo with the track, Which way to America.

“What does Rikka want from me?” Amber asked, uncertain.

“Oh… probably nothing… don’t even think about it, she’s just high and running her mouth… probably on her period,” Madaline said, fixated on the sign.

Amber nodded, letting it go, she turned back to the front window, the light turned green.

Madaline didn’t push the car forward.

Amber opened her mouth to say something, but somebody laid on a horn behind them.

“Fuck,” Madaline shook her head, and cranked the gear shift, blowing through as the light flickered yellow.

"What was with the trailer park? It had your attention for a second."

"Ah," Madaline waved her hand and found her vape, drawing, exhaling slowly, "Just a place where I knew some folks... Nostalgia."

“Oh... It’s nice that you’re helping with your friend’s rent like that,” Amber said.

“Madaline shrugged, "Yeah, I mean, it’s basic, won’t hit the four of us as hard as it'll hit others if something goes wrong and they can’t pay it back, right, it’s just… basic.”

See, Serpentine said, Ask for the boots, it’s basic.

Amber ignored the comment.

The car picked up speed, and soon they were hitting the ramp, shooting out of the confines of North Marbleporte.

Serpentine allowed Amber roughly ten minutes of listening to the music and watching the scenery go by, before returning to raise kane:

Alright, never mind the boots for now, you know the real issue, so go on and ask her, Amber, ask her the question.

The question? Amber asked carefully.

Come on now, princess, you know exactly what you want to ask her about, Serpentine hummed pleasantly.

It took a second for it to hit, but it did, and then Amber squirmed quietly in her seat, before stilling herself, No, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Of course, you are, you know, you're a curious girl, and your bestie is just so proud, it doesn't have to be weird you're both girls… so how much of an extent gets her… probably more than a few compliments, Serpentine inquired, purely scientifically.

Amber clutched her wrist and wanted to climb under her seat, instead she took a breath and tried to regain control of her thoughts.

"You good?" Madaline asked.

"Mmmhmm, just getting myself comfortable, it's a bit of a drive," Amber smiled.

"Yeah, thanks for coming, princess, it helps."

"Helps with what?"

"Eh... company," Madaline said after a moment. "You're always good company."

"Yeah, of course, I love riding around with you."

Madaline smiled.

She thanks you for coming, Serpentine noted, But we both know you not coming is part of the problem.

Stop being crude, Amber hissed. That little snippet of song... it's fun word play, but I don’t want to think about this, any of this.

Amber glanced over at the muscles of Madaline’s arms as she worked the gear shift.

Oh, but you do, and I’m not being crude, she brought it up. The rest of her is so impressive after all, so it wouldn’t be illogical to assume that extended to-

Amber cut Serpentine off, No, I don’t. It’s a line from a song and she’s played us way more scandalous stuff before so why even make a thing about this?

Those songs weren’t talking about her. And if you think back to her in her underwear in the kitchen and what you decided not to notice while you were admiring her-

I was not… It doesn’t matter, I’m not doing this, I am mature and not creepy and not thinking about this and so what if she does? Size isn’t everything, Amber insisted.

Sure, but if she prefers being the… top and she's got skill and size, Serpentine insinuated.

Then I’m happy for her.

You know, really, you should probably be happy for Rikka and Emily and Louisa and…

Amber almost started grinding her teeth, I am. I am very happy for them. If that’s the case, then I am.

Okay, if you say so, Serpentine said.

I do.

Serpentine said nothing for fifteen minutes letting Amber's jets cool then right as the car jumped off one route to another, Serpentine returned with, If your heights are any indication hers probably makes yours look so tiny in comparison.

Amber had to stop herself from screaming.

6.

Madaline was a little quiet on their way back, pre-occupied by her own internal matters particular to this day, but as periods of silence that stretched out while music played on weren't too unheard of in her and Amber's relationship, Amber didn't take notice of this extra bit of hush.

In fact, once Amber had calmed down from the aftermath of Serpentine's final scale based salvo she found the ride to be as invigorating and relaxing as rides with Madaline always were, even if the trip was pricked by a moment of hope and anxiety that occurred after the Living Colour disc concluded, in which to Amber's on going disappointment, Madaline punched a button and switched them back to the radio, rather than volunteering any of her own music.

Other than those ten seconds of craving, nothing of real note nor consequence happened on their way to the house, at least not until they were back in South Providence and ten minutes away from their destination.

They were on Ogden Avenue when Madaline wheeled the car into another liquor store, the one across the street from the Market Basket where Amber went grocery shopping.

“Thirsty?" Amber asked, looking upon the super sized liquor store.

“Yep... was just thinking... the whole thing about the day we met reminded me that I said we’d get the supplies to make the drink I made you, forgot about it till now. You wanted more right?"

"Oh yeah," Amber remembered, so much had happened since the day she'd made the request, that she'd totally forgotten, "That would be nice."

There was a man sitting down at the other end of the storefront, maybe sleeping, maybe not, topless cup in hand, a cardboard sign specifying that he didn't have a home, requesting spare change. He was wrapped in a coat that was old and tattered; in other words it was in mildly better condition than its grey bearded owner.

Five minutes later they were coming back out with two bags containing six bottles and a jar of cherries, “Do we actually need all that for the drinks?” Amber asked.

“No, not all of them , we have most of what we need at Simon's, but I've got to buy in batch, I promised not to let the recipe slip. Seems silly to me to worry about the intellectual property of a drink, but the woman who taught it to me had me promise.”

Amber nodded, “You've said that keeping promises are important to you.”

"It is, and I always do the best I can," Madaline said, meaning it.

"What about how you learned it though? The day we met you said I wouldn't believe the fun you had to have to learn it, what did you-" Amber asked, about to step off the curb and head to the car, when:

“Oh shit, right,” Madaline wheeled away, missing the question, and began walking down the side of the building towards the man.

Amber completed her step off the curb and back on, then followed after her.

“Hey, old timer, you awake?” Madaline asked, her bottles clinking in the sacks.

The man's head turned, looking their way, his eyes were glassy until they sharpened, peering past Madaline to Amber, “F-Foxy cutie,” he slurred.

Madaline slowed, sucked her teeth.

Amber cocked her head to the side, studying him, almost laughing in surprise at the phrase. She saw that he wasn’t quite letching at her, no, he was doing more of the basic admiring routine that others often did, and in the grand scale of things was doing so more respectfully then some of her customers did when they thought Amber wouldn't notice or even when it was obvious Amber would.

Amber believed this admiring by other people to be a recent development, and in truth the increase in her self confidence had led to an uptick in sustained interactions with customers, she got more tips now, but it's also true that Amber was now taking notice of the noticing because her sense of self confidence left her both capable of accepting the idea that someone was admiring her, while at the same time her capacity for perception among other qualities, was now less encumbered but the tumult of her own psychology then it perhaps had ever been.

Amber found men looking at her or flirting with her such a strange experience, the truth was it gave her a little rush, a kind of pleasure, a buzzing and unfamiliar gratification, that always came part and parcel with a bizarre sense of... smug contempt for them.

That sense of smug contempt had been growing as these interactions happened more often, she'd had to take pains to hide it.

She did so here by reflex, putting on her PR smile.

Another Gregor Samsa, Serpentine giggled.

I disagree, this man isn't a Gregor... a Gregory, Amber herself had trouble thinking of the customer in question as Gregory and not Gregor, Gregory, wouldn't think to call me anything as interesting as, foxy cutie.

Madaline glanced at Amber. The pair had a back and forth using only their eyes:

“You good?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Madaline looked back to him, “I’m going to assume your manners are out to lunch, my man, but, all things considered, that’s pretty tame and if she’s not bothered, I’m not bothered, actually,” she glanced at Amber, “Kind of fair.”

That filled Amber with a far more pure and clear form of pleasure, though she still found the declaration silly.

The man was still staring at Amber, Amber stared back, considering his slurred speech and where he was sitting.

Drunk, very drunk, Amber concluded, Someone should tell him sitting outside the liquor store is probably a bad location to request donations, people will judge him, not Madaline, but others... he could probably get more if he went across the street to the Market Basket... but he has to know that... so why... Amber thought.

Madaline’s hand reached into her back pocket.

“Fair… M-Manners are fine, sir,” the man declared.

Amber blinked, confused for a moment, almost turning around to see if he was talking to someone else, then the realization came together, making everything inside her lurch in hurt and anger, her sympathy for the man burning away instantly. How in the world could he possibly confuse Madaline for-

A knuckle cracked in the hand holding the bag, Madaline stepped forward into a stance that was unconsciously reminiscent of a boxer's, wider, side facing, her spine straightening her to her full height, but the hand was still in her pocket.

“I’m actually a woman, old timer, she/her, proudly transgender, whole deal.”

The man stared at Madaline for a moment, then, “Still a man.”

Amber's insides lurched again, and for a second she could only puzzle over just how childish that response was, as far as arguments went it was nothing but a slightly complex form of a nuh-uh. That moment of puzzled consideration came quickly to an end, Amber had lost all of her cooling sympathy with the first statement, now all that was left was the emotional equivalent to a long compromised and increasingly overtaxed reactor core, racing towards a meltdown, HOWDAREHE!!!!!!!

Amber felt something like venom coil down from her brain and slip around her tongue, she stepped forward, teeth bared in a leer and then she ran into Madaline’s arm.

“Take that for me, Princess.”

Amber's mouth fell back to neutral. She took the bags, not even sure what it was she was about to say, the meltdown had been halted, but the venom was still sitting around her tongue, just sitting there with nowhere to go, boiling and bubbling in her mouth like the contents of a witch's cauldron, popping and hissing and spitting.

Madaline took a breath and tried one more time, the thumbs of her hands working in a repetitive cocking motion, her smile broad and false, but she was doing a good job of keeping her mouth friendly instead of letting it spread into the ferocious stretch it wanted to, “My dude, I'm not judging you, but it looks to me like the last time your brain wasn’t a jar of pickle juice was when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and I've got other things to do with my day than to force an update on gender," her lips closed, became thin, took a breath, the smile came back, "But it would both be the polite thing to do and to your advantage, to not call me a man again.”

Distantly, Amber wondered just why they were still interacting with this guy at all. Madaline tossing money to someone on the street who was down and out and asking for help was pretty common, but this one had insulted Madaline once, been gently corrected, then doubled down.

“Talk like a man, l-look like a man too,” he insisted.

Tripled down, Amber thought.

Madaline sighed, suddenly not so much irritated as she was pissed the fuck off and positively thrilled, she cracked two knuckles, as inside her head the wind began to spin, taking her up into the twister, here it was, she had a perfectly usable excuse, not even an excuse, a perfectly good reason, to drag this haggard old fuck around the back by his hair and bust his nose on the wall.

But then, before that happy idea could properly start rolling towards execution, Estelle’s voice jumped in as it often did in such moments, sitting comfortably in the role her Vovó had occupied until Madaline's late teens, the angel on Madaline's shoulder, her Jiminy Cricket.

Take a look at him, Madaline, Estelle's voice began, her voice clear and analytical and piteous, Come on, you already said his brain is pickled. This is not some neocon U-FIC or a frat bro phobro, this is a broken old man with an old man’s prejudices, and not one who is living in any kind of privilege. Look at him, there’s a more than zero chance that if he doesn’t get in at a shelter, he’s sleeping outside tonight.

Madaline felt slightly sick and the internal wind slowed a bit, but then the dilemma, because Madaline didn’t want it to slow, she wanted to be carried away, she wanted her excuse, so she pushed back, thinking about how what he’d said to her wasn’t the problem, but what he could say to someone else, what if he said that to Amber or ran into some trans kid on the street? She followed with the reassurance that she wouldn't take things too far, just make the message clear, in the end he would have a bit of a bloody nose and a terrifying reason to not respond to such corrections the way he had again.

Madaline's fingers flexed, her foot went up, and came back down as Estelle spoke again:

With a lot of people that point about him doing it again would be fair, but what's most likely to happen is he won't even remember why you went at him, what he did, and what he shouldn't say in case he runs into someone like you again or worse. Look at him. His liver is long past its sell by date, he’s fifty going on a hundred and fifty, even if you keep control of yourself, if you grab and haul him around, his bones will turn to dust and I know that might sound fun right now, but even if you don’t feel bad later, and you're going to, cause look at him, look at all he doesn't have, but even if you don't feel bad, Amber’s here and she will be terrified of you. Maddy, flip him off and walk away.

The idea of Amber terrified, and the idea of everything this man didn't have, swirled about in Madaline's head, the wind stuttered, slowed, and died.

Madaline hadn’t been submerged the way she had when she’d almost gone after Simon, so the come down wasn’t anywhere near as bad, but it still left her feeling terribly empty and frustrated, psychologically blue balled… again.

She unclenched her teeth and slid her whole wad of cash from her pocket, her jaw tense and twitching, “See this? I was literally grabbing a twenty and a ten so you could get yourself something to eat and a drink or whatever, I don't judge, I am now going to keep it and buy myself something, maybe a dress, probably drugs, either way, thanks.”

She waited, to see what he'd say, to see if this could go somewhere productive and then she'd feel less conflicted about giving him the money.

He stared at her.

Apparently he didn't have a response to this.

Madaline put her money away, and turned back towards the car. Goddammit, man, fuck you, Madaline thought.

Both women were climbing in the car when he called, “Hey,” after them.

Madaline closed her eyes, sitting in her seat, her door still open, “Fuck.”

She hauled herself back out of the car and tried to keep her boots from stomping as she moved in on him.

Amber got back out and followed.

Madaline reached into a different pocket, slid out her fist, looked in her palm and dropped a big handful of coins into his cup, “Get your ass to the shelter on time before it fills up... Asshole!”

The man just poked sloppily at the cup's contents as Madaline returned to the car.

Madaline kept her door to a light slam as Amber jumped back in.

He didn’t say sorry or thank you, Serpentine noted, as Amber worked about her emotional state, trying to swallow the venom she could still feel inside her, she got it off her tongue, but felt it tingling at her core for a while after.

“Are you okay?” Amber asked, slowly, carefully putting a hand on Madaline’s arm.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Madaline sighed.

“You don’t look like a man, he’s wrong.”

“Eh, a man, no, obviously, but I am fairly clocky, at this point I don’t care, I’m also hot, but… fucking asshole. Just shut your mouth, let me give you the money.”

What? No you’re not, Amber thought, her brain unable to reconcile the fact that Madaline was both very beautiful and fairly clocky.

For whatever reason, cause she’d certainly never thought about it, Amber’s mind had inverted the situation that many trans people suffered from when it came to cis-normative beauty standards, at least as it applied to those outside of herself.

The standard was usually that being clockable meant that someone wasn't beautiful, Amber had flipped it: she found Madaline to be the most beautiful woman in the world and therefore Madaline could not be clockable.

“Well, you’re right about… you didn't give him the bills, why'd you go back and give him the change, I mean, he obviously didn't deserve the bills, but he didn't really deserve..." she trailed off..

Amber caught half of a statement as Madaline grumbled something that might have ended with, "... getting what we deserve."

Madaline chewed her lip, reached into her pocket and pulled out her wad of walking around money which was by measures of multiplication more money than Amber had in her bank account.

Madaline rocked the stack of cash back and forth, opened her mouth and closed it, sighed, put the money away, licked her lips, "It's pretty warm out right now, but at night the temp drops real fast, gets really cold, didn't think he had much in that cup, wanted to make sure he could get on the bus so he could get to the shelter or wherever to stay warm."

Amber thought this over, it wasn't really an answer to why he deserved that aid when he'd so soundly been rude to her when she'd been trying to help him.

“Are you okay?” Madaline asked.

“What? Yes," Amber answered, surprised, "He didn’t- he just called me foxy, which… whatever that means.”

Madaline laughed, her seriousness sliding off of her. “That’s the only time I’ve heard that outside of a song, ah, think it means you’re sharp and pretty and alluring.”

The laughter was good to hear, it made Amber's bones hum with relief. “You said he was right about that."

“Oh hell yeah, no, he got you spot on,” she hit her vape, “Foxy cutie, all the way.” She turned the key waking her car, spinning it around back to the street, "Let's get out of here, I'm fine, you're very fine, no reason to dwell on his bullshit, we're never going to see him again."