piercing through her cloud of lack-of-sleep-induced exhaustion and dread was a sense for how unique a situation this must've been for antonio. how, maybe, revealing. true, she'd never really seen him in what she imagined to be his usual state for herself, but she'd heard things. things from foe, family, and friend (were co-mobbies also friends?) alike. snippets, like brief flashbacks in a black and white film. notorious, lofty, quick-cut. in a situation where there was truly nothing to be happy about, she was at least fascinated in bearing witness to an antonio she'd quickly come to pity.
this patriarchal, unfeeling society made pity an ugly thing; a thing to sneer at and reject. pity, though, was sympathy. no—empathy. the capacity to feel—not feel for, but feel—the sorrows of even the most unlikely person. romy watched as he leaned forward in his seat, her fingers tapping idly against the glass she now held, and decided she would give him the answers he sought. the answers she had, anyway, whether or not they were the ones he was desperate for.
she nodded, the two of them leaned forward to varying degrees in their chairs, and inhaled a deep breath. when she exhaled, she let the release carry her back to the back of her seat. romy's eyes settled on something over his shoulder, just perceptively past meeting eye-lines, like she was already rewatching the late night play out on some invisible screen.
"i closed up and left salty sometime around three-thirty. though, it's probably worth mentioning that, the entire time i'd been closing up, things were quiet. i mean," she squinted, as though aware of the thought for the first time, "i hadn't even been playing my own music," an odd happenstance, "and everything was just covered by this blanket of calm." despite its novelty, romy didn't linger on the thought, blinking it away like a windshield wiper did a sheet of rain. "i'm sure by now you're aware of the alleyway right next to the place. there are a few parking spots on the opposite end of it, all lined up, and, if you get the timing right—which is to say, before the evening or after 1AM—you can usually get lucky with an open spot or two. otherwise it's constantly full. it's maybe four spots total." her head turned just a smidge, eyes meeting his for a quick beat as if to say, yeah, i've analyzed those odds, too. she'd analyzed everything. whether or not the killer could've found a lucky spot, if they'd figured they wouldn't and had only dumped poor josephina's body and the weapon there in a drive-by.
"anyway, i'd parked there, so that's where i was heading. but nothing was evident when i first ducked in there. nothing near the mouth that meets the main street, nothing scattered along the ground. no scuffling or car sounds, either." true, she'd been looking down at her phone, but romy wasn't new to being out very late. she always had some level of eye out and guard up. "it—" the scene, "was all really contained. deeper in, maybe halfway. like it wasn't trying to gain attention—at least not right away. the furthest thing out, by maybe a few feet, was a bloodied knife." she hadn't noticed it at the time, but, having stumbled backwards over it, she'd found a smear of darkened red on the sole and side of her shoe the next morning. it'd left a singular mark on the hardwood floor near the entryway of her apartment. the one pair of steps she'd taken inside before discarding the shoes and collapsing on the couch.
"josephina," romy continued, pace of speech slowing as she sounded out her name with delicacy, "was close to the wall. really close. i keep close to the wall when walking through, so no one who happens to be walking by on the street sees i'm in there, and i nudged her with my foot. walked right up to her." a likely place to be, considering the close-range weapon. the yawning shadows not touched by the light of the street lamps. no sprinting-away-only-to-be-shot-right-down-the-middle. the blonde took a deep breath through her nose, the muscles in her face tensing. her heartrate kicked up a notch and she could feel the familiar subtle string behind her eyes before she habitually blinked it away. "her throat was slit, though i couldn't tell you any more detail about it than that. there was—so much blood, already down her chest and on the street. and she was, like," romy's voice fell into a near-whisper, "crumpled down on the ground. like a discarded doll. like she'd hit the wall and slumped down. eyes wide open."
had she been wearing shoes? makeup? pockets with the potential for anything to be in them? she didn't know. as horrific as the sight was, romy wished now, sitting in a nice hotel room chair and clutching a cold drink, that she knew—that she'd bucked the fuck up and looked for something. a hush settled between them for a few seconds as romy mulled over this, then she shook her head and took a lengthy sip of her drink that cut the liquid in half. finally, she looked back at antonio. "that's really as there is to tell," she shrugged weakly, "i sat there for... two, three minutes before the cops rolled up. i kept watching her palms, like i expected them to twitch or something. but nothing."
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