rumbles on the horizon [Hopes & +1s] the eyes of argos

Leland Durrow

I’d seen the invitation when I’d slept over at Birdie’s a few weeks ago. It was the night I’d blown her back out, or – well, the morning, when I’d gotten up and left without a word. I’d been getting my jacket from the coat tree when I’d see the half-opened letter from Pierre.

King of District Eight himself having a birthday party to celebrate the fact that he was old as hell.

You know I couldn’t quite think of a single time when he’d ever been nice to me? Known him close to twenty years and I think I’d remember if he’d once said, we’re lucky to have you here. Even after all I went through with Damaris, and the ups and catastrophic downs with Birdie, I got the feeling that half her family was happy to forget I existed after we put my daughter in the ground.

They say you find your families later in life, but all I got was cold stares and disappointed sighs form these folks. Not that Birdie hadn’t gone and poisoned them all the second that we fell out. Except who was the one that showed up to take Damaris now and again? Who was the one that remembered your birthday almost every other year, Birdie? Who was the man that was willing to care you’d broken your arm, that thought about how you fell apart again and again? Huh, Birdie?

So yeah, I thought about coming here and getting my shrimp fucking cocktail, and drinking some of the champagne, rocking the boat, and setting off a few fireworks when night set in (or whatever bullshit rich people did to celebrate someone’s fiftieth… but fireworks felt like the sort of thing Pierre would go for). And maybe I’d get a bit of dancing in, I’d see Pierre’s hot wife, the one with great tits for her age, laugh at Blackston out on that dance floor, give some liquor to the boys and smoke some cigarettes out on a balcony.

A good night that I deserved, for all the shit that I’d gone through.

Of course, even when I’d gotten settled picking at finger sandwiches and my third tumbler of gin and tonic, Birdie blew in like a typhoon ready to rip me a new one.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

“What the hell does it look like? I’m eating,” I shot back.

‘I don’t want to see you right now. No, no I said—‘

Here we go.

Everything had to be her way. It was so predictable, the way she pent everything up in her chest until it twisted up so much that her head was ready to pop right off. Attacking me for what had happened between me and that fucking dick from eleven – who started it, by the way – but no, Birdie blamed me for that. And for everything else that had ever gone wrong in her life, too.

“You think I came to see you, sweetie? You know how much I love Pierre. Glad to see you haven’t stopped being selfish,” A part of it was fun. The dance back and forth between us. Because she could be mean, and I got to be an ass right back to her. It used to hurt a lot more, the fighting. But now it just feels like sport, being able to tangle with Birdie. One that didn’t have so much a winner as two people struggling to walk away after. “By the way, did you fuck him, after he took you home?”

‘You need to leave.’

“You don’t get to take me out of everything, Birdie. You can’t just cut me out of the family tree because she… “ I stopped short. I swallowed down the rest of my drink and belched. “You know what? No. You’re causing a scene.”

It’s almost as the universe read the cue that it had to top Birdie somehow. When she slipped forward and dropped her drink, I thought she was up to some new kind of dramatics, but the rumbling kept up and I moved to grab onto a part of the table to secure myself. I guess I probably should’ve thought of Birdie then but she didn’t slip so – she turned out fine. Well, fine as she could’ve been.

That’s when we all gaped out at the window at the smoke, the fire, the oh-my-fucking-god sort of, someone’s done something. Which meant bad news, either peacekeepers or people in the streets. And based on the way Pierre seemed to be handling his own birthday party, I don’t know if I wanted to be out after dark. Eight had a way of turning on its head when things like this happened.

“Can you fucking believe this, Birb?” I looked back from the window to where she’d been standing, and saw her already bee-lining for the door.

I could’ve stayed with the rest of them, maybe stuffed my pockets with a few more of those little sandwiches. And a part of me was glad she was leaving everyone else to throw herself back into whatever hole she’d dug. She tried so hard to make herself unlovable, pretty soon she was going to wind up buried under all of it.

But then she said something about going home to the damn cat.

It was one of those moments where you look around, and you think – we’ll remember this. The way the glasses had scattered across the hardwood. The way one minute it’d been music and drinks, people passing trays of food and Pierre making a speech. The next a new world, one where we looked out at all that smoke and thought, maybe not then but soon after, things aren’t going to be the same after this.

And I don’t want it to be the last thing that I said to Birdie was harsh as it was. Or that I’d not taken the chance to get to the bottom of why I’d gone and punched the guy from Eleven in the face. Because I didn’t want her with someone else, even if I hadn’t tried hard enough to be with her.

“Birdie, come on, hey, wait up a minute, would you?” I called out, throwing on my jacket and rushing out with her. “Great party Pierre, real swell, hope this works out for you. You’re old as fuck now!”