The Dead of Day

by Billy Conn

Trouble. It’s everywhere. All you’re asked to do is avoid it. Just stay out of it. But that had always been easier said than done for her. There were just some things that weren’t easy to let drop. It was a double whammy. There was the sense of letting both herself and the other person down though why that bothered her so much was another one for the psychologists.  Now that would be an interesting job but if was that was half as good as it’s cracked up to be why isn’t everyone happy. How unlikely is that.. All utopias are surely delusions. Human nature sees to that. Had she heard that somewhere? Not that it mattered if it was true. Anyhow she’d nothing to be unhappy about. Now thanks to her short time as part of an all-female bike gang, for the first time in her life she had plenty of money. She still had the bike and a new identity if she choose to continue to use it – to be Alex Devane rather than CJ. Was it possible to be both?

From her table by the window in Orlando’s café her view was of the street corner where on her way in she passed the woman and a little girl sitting on the pavement begging.  Though a generous guy her former boss, Marc Logadon, had always refused to give money. He’d buy the beggars a sandwich or some such thing. Too often he said the money would be misused or be taken from them by the gang masters. Begging, she knew, could be a criminal enterprise. She’d made that offer of food. The child had seemed interested but her mother had refused. Mother and daughter both had fading bruises. That was a bad sign. Changing her mind she gave them five pounds. The child had run to her and given her a hug then asked her what happened to her arm. The reply that she’d got bored with the old one and got a new one that worked better had unexpectedly been accepted. It still amused her to give different answers to that question. The one thing she’d never say was that she’d lost it to a sniper’s bullet in Helmand province as she was defusing a roadside IED. Believable accounts always appealed to her more. Though all that was years before and since then there’d been several prosthetic arms she still experienced pain in the amputated arm. Phantom limb the medics had called it.  The other thing she also experienced time and time again was the sound of distant explosions and gunfire. It had been necessary to learn not to react publically to those.

As she watched an old blue transit van had appeared. From where she was sitting the man who got out appeared to be talking angrily to the woman. Alex winced as he struck her and grabbed the child roughly by the arm. Without thinking she picked up her helmet and calling to the café owner she’d settle up in a minute, ran to the door…TBC