Untitled Book, Chapter One

“One hand in the air for the big city,” Alicia Keys sang from Ally Smith’s phone. Ally pulled it out of her pocket, and cut Alicia off just as she told everybody to put their lighters in the air. “Hey, sis.”
“Hi, Ally.” Ally heard the sound of dishes clinking together.
“Washing up?” Ally paused in the window of a department store, studying a dress. It looked good… her eyes strayed to a little price card by the mannequin.
No. No, she’d pass on that dress for now, thank you.
“Yeah, I keep coming in late, so I’ve left the dishes for a while.”
“Dishwasher?”
“Busted.”
“When are you getting it fixed?”
“Warren’s gonna take a look at it.”
Ally rolled her eyes. “Is he now?”
“Hey, he’ll really do it this time!” Warren was Cicely’s next door neighbor.
“Yeah, so he says. And when he does get things fixed, he fixes them wrong and you have to pay to get what he broke fixed, more than you would’ve had to pay for what was broken in the first place. Just call a repairman, Ceecee.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Ally knew the dismissive tone in her voice, and knew she was going to forget it the second she was off the phone. “I expected to get your voicemail, did you get the day off or something? Did Hill finally drop dead of a heart attack?”
“God, do I wish it.” Jackson Hill was Ally’s evil boss. It wasn’t that he was a sweet man, really, he just had a temper, or that his wife had died recently and he hadn’t been the same man since, no, not at all. No, the problem was that there are sometimes complete and utter bastards in the world. There are the people you say are bastards and then there are the actual bastards. Jackson Hill was a complete and utter bastard for real. “No, I’m on lunch.”
“When you say ‘do I wish it’, do you mean day off or heart attack?”
“Both. Hey, if you expected to get my voicemail, why did you call me?”
“On the off chance I didn’t because I’m mind-numbingly bored.”
Ally rolled her eyes. “Oh, Ceecee, how I feel your pain.”
“Hey, you should feel my pain. I am in unbearable states of agony right now.”
“Do you have multiple problems or just the boredom?”
“Boredom.”
“Then you’re only in one state of unbearable agony.”
“Know-it-all. Hey, can you take a drive and watch Cassie in a few nights? I’m playing at the bar.” Cicely was a shop girl by day and musician by night. Ally had called her Bruce after Bruce Wayne, defender of Gotham, after she first got the job. Then Ceecee had started calling Ally Lois Lane after a certain comic book reporter Ally loathed with every bone in her body, and Bruce had been dropped. At least, dropped for a little while. Ally was thinking the time was coming to raise Bruce from the dead.
“Yeah, guess so. How’s Cassie?” Cassie was Cicely’s eight-year-old daughter. Cicely’s boyfriend had gotten her pregnant when Cicely was 16, and when he found out, he skipped town. Cicely occasionally got checks in the mail every year or so. She always burned them.
“Same little girl. I’m reading her Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
“Does she like it?”
“Adores it”.
“Don’t watch the movies.”
“What is your thing about the movies?”
“They suck.”
“So? What do you think you’re gonna watch?”
“Labyrinth.”
“Again? How many times have you seen that movie?”
“Too often.”
“Ally, when it gets to the point you can quote every word, you need to slow down.”
“I like it.”
“You just like David Bowie.”
“The man’s a rock god.”
“I mean you have a major crush on him.”
“I know what you meant. I refuse to admit or deny it.”
Ally checked her watch and gave a sigh of frustration. “I’ve gotta go, my lunch break’s almost up.”
“Hey, I thought Hill didn’t believe in lunch breaks?”
“He’s required to give them by law. Just makes them as short as possible. Gotta go, I’ll try and make it in a few nights, aye?”
“’Kay, thanks, you’re a lifesaver. Love you.”
“Love you.” Ally quickly switched off her phone and dashed through the streets.