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They bandaged Charlie’s wrist, and she worked the rest of the day with the brand throbbing with pain.
During their thirty minute break for lunch, they hurried back to the office to clean up and eat. Harry was waiting for them at the door.
“You two,” he said, “come in and sit.”
“We’re on lunch, Harry,” Ozzy said. He pushed through the door, pulling Charlie along in his wake.
“I’m not gonna dock your hours.” Harry said, “Get in here.”
They followed him into his office. It was a small room, with only a desk and two chairs. There was a single shelf along the window. The dust was almost an inch thick on it. The plaque on the desk with the name “Harold Steamsmith” looked far older than the man himself. There was black where the metal plating had worn away and tarnished the layer beneath.
Harry sat behind the desk and leaned back. His wooden chair squeaked. He paused, just looking at them, as a passing train shook the windows in their frames and sent streams of dust showering down from the shelves.
“Good work this morning,” he said, “a lot slower than normal, but after a visit from the royal police, I expected you both to head home for the day.”
Charlie tried to smile, “Thank you, Sir.”
Harry, small talk observed, wasted no time in interrogating them. “What did he want with you?”
Charlie and Ozzy exchanged glances.
“To invite us to a party,” Ozzy said finally.
Harry raised his eyebrows at them, “A party?”
“A remembrance day party,” Ozzy went on, “for us.”
Harry let out a long sigh. “And did you accept it?”
“He didn’t give us a choice,” Charlie burst out. Fury licked inside her chest as she glared at Harry, daring him to question her further.
Harry just nodded. “What day will your Remembrances be?”
Ozzy said, “The 17th of fall.”
Charlie could have punched him. Why couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut and not tell people things? She glared daggers at him until Ozzy glanced at her and winced, looking away.
Harry sat forward in his chair, “The anniversary of the King’s imprisonment? That’s what this is about?”
Neither of them responded. Charlie redoubled her glare at Ozzy.
“Were both of you born on Fall 17th?” Harry asked incredulously.
Now Charlie was surprised, “You didn’t know? We had to put it in our hiring papers.”
“I don’t look at your files,” Harry said, “I never pay attention to that stuff. I didn’t need to 100 years ago when this railyard was built, and I don’t need to now.”
Charlie couldn’t believe that. Harry always had everything put together so well. He must have known.
“If I’d realized that that was your birthday, I wouldn’t have hired you,” Harry laced his fingers together. They were trembling. “That damned royal mage has done enough damage to this city already.”
Ozzy glanced at Charlie and they frowned at each other. What did he mean? Charlie had never heard that Precipice had been more affected by the king’s imprisonment than the rest of Regalis. The royal mage that had betrayed him and imprisoned him didn’t have any special connection to Precipice.
Charlie started to ask him what was going on, but Harry loudly cleared his throat and started flipping through his order forms, drowning her out. “What days will you be gone?”
“Umm,” Ozzy pulled out his invite, “They’re taking us from the 15th through the 22nd.”
“I think we’re supposed to leave earlier than that,” Charlie opened her envelope and pulled out the invitation. She fished out the ticket she had seen inside the envelope before. “The ticket is for the 13th.”
“Less than two weeks away,” Harry said sourly.
Charlie tucked the ticket back into the envelope.
“Get out, both of you. Take your lunch.” Harry threw down the file onto the desk.
Ozzy stepped towards the door, but Charlie stayed put.
“What about the time off?” She asked.
Harry turned away from her. “Your lunch break is almost over.”
Charlie thought about staying put, but he was facing the plain brick wall of the office, and he showed no signs of turning around again. She turned and pushed past Ozzy through the door.
“Should we look for new jobs now, or do we wait until he actually fires us?” Ozzy asked. “I’m thinking about applying to be a librarian. You know, since I’m all brain and no brawn,” and he flexed his arms so hard his coveralls looked like they might tear.
Charlie clenched her jaw and didn’t reply. How could he joke about this?
“Oh come on,” Ozzy teased her, “it’ll be alright. He’ll never actually fire us. He needs us too much.”
“The line of men waiting to work as day-laborers every morning doesn’t say that,” Charlie said.
“Yeah. I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up.” Ozzy said, “I’m trying to look on the bright side.”
“Right. The bright side.” Charlie growled at him, “You know if we get fired we won’t have access to the company store anymore?” Everyone in the railyard was paid using company money, which meant that the only place they could buy food or clothing or anything else that they might need was the company store. They could exchange company money for the King’s Money at the store, but the rate of exchange varied by the day, and it was rarely in their favor.
“Crap,” Ozzy said under his breath, “I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“Well you’d better start thinking about it,” Charlie said, “and praying that the exchange rate is in our favor in the next two weeks.”
“Or get really used to eating canned beans,” Ozzy stuffed both his hands into his pockets.
Charlie made an exaggerated gagging noise, and Ozzy laughed.
The joke was a lot less funny at the end of their shift, when they were both standing in front of the canned beans. Charlie’s hair was down around her shoulders again, and they were both out of their coveralls and rinsed reasonably clean, but the grease and dirt still clung to their hands, and the smell of sweat and oil still hung on their bodies. Some days, Charlie was sure it had sunk through her skin and into her bones.
The store itself was a bright, clean place. The shelves were lined with everything someone could possibly need, from fresh vegetables and cuts of meat atop blocks of imported ice to jackets and winter hats and toothpaste and shaving cream. It was all company branded, of course. The little red logo of the Regalis Railroad Company was stamped on everything. They had even painted it onto the apples and potatoes.
“What’s our worst-case scenario?” Charlie asked Ozzy as they stared down the rows of metal cans.
“I am not thinking about that,” Ozzy said under his breath, “it’s not going to happen.”
“But if we’re fired tomorrow,” Charlie said, “first thing in the morning, then—”
“I’m not thinking about that.” Ozzy repeated.
“You have to think about it,” Charlie hissed at him. “If you don’t think about it, and then it happens, you’ll be screwed.”
“It’s not going to happen, though.” Ozzy said.
“Ozzy, you—”
He let out a long, annoyed sigh and walked away from her. He picked up an apple and a loaf of bread and headed toward the cash register.
Charlie glared after him. Sometimes, she thought Ozzy didn’t take life seriously. He said all the right things, but when it actually came time to face a difficult reality, he just walked away from it. One of these times, ignoring the problem wasn’t going to solve it.
She turned her attention back to the beans. They weren’t the only stable food on offer, but they were the cheapest. She fingered the coins in her pocket. It was almost $100 total. Not a lot for two weeks of work, but it was the best anyone could get in Precipice. Rent for her bed was $10 a week, so she needed to cash out $20 at least. If she only ate 2 meals a day, then she needed 28 meals worth of food. A can of beans could be one meal, maybe two if she had bread, but bread wouldn’t last in the tenement building. Someone would steal it, and if they didn’t, then the rats would.
She started picking up cans.
Ozzy raised an eyebrow at her when she carried the first armful up to the counter. “Really?” he said.
Charlie ignored him as she threw down the bandages and went back for the second armful of food.
She ended up with two canvas bags full of food, a box of bandages, a bottle of disinfectant, and $23 cash. She had spent every company dollar she had.
“You’re overreacting,” Ozzy told her. “Harry won’t fire us over our birthdays.”
Charlie didn’t reply. Ozzy hadn’t seen Harry’s hands shaking. A man like Harry didn’t shake. He didn’t tremble. If Harry was shaking, then things were really, really bad. Bad enough that Harry might need to fire them to cover his own ass.
Ozzy trailed her down the street while she dodged people walking towards the train station. Some of them grappled to keep hold of children and luggage, and some were in too much of a hurry to look out.
Charlie paused to wave at Dray. He was hunched on his bench, his back practically molded to the metal slats. His coat has discolored stripes on it from where the metal had pressed for so many years. He had been on that bench every evening for as long as Charlie had been alive. Once, when she was just starting out, she had brought him a bottle of soda from the company store and asked him why he was always there.
“I’m waiting for my wife,” Dray had said.
“Is she arriving on a train soon?” Charlie had asked. It was only her first month of work, and she knew the trains could be unpredictable at times. Especially for common folk.
Dray had given her the saddest smile. “I hope so,” he said. “I have been waiting for her every day for the last 40 years. This is the place we agreed to meet in our next life.”
“Oh,” Charlie had said.
“She’ll come eventually,” He told her, “All I have to do is wait.”
At the time, Charlie had found his faith in his partner heartwarming. Now it just made her sad. What if she never came looking for him? What if she did, but it turned out she had fallen in love with someone else.
A large man in railyard coveralls bumped hard into Charlie’s side as he tried to squeeze between her and a couple swinging a child between them. “‘Scuse me,” he grunted. Charlie teetered unsteadily for a moment before she caught herself, cursing the man under her breath.
Ozzy shouldered up next to her and took one of the bags. He slung it over his shoulder before he looped his arm around her waist.
Charlie thought about shoving him off, winding the fight up further. She thought about grabbing the bag back from him and snarling that these were her supplies, so he could screw off. But she did not want to fight just for the sake of it. Fighting with Ozzy about this nonsense wasn’t productive. Not if she wanted him on her side. Which she did.
Instead of snapping at him, she said, “Are you coming to my mom’s then?”
“Your mom’s?” Ozzy’s arm around her tensed as he drew away.
“Well I can’t keep all this in the tenement,” Charlie said, “and she still has a room for me.”
Ozzy cleared his throat. He had always been jumpy about spending time with her family. Charlie didn’t blame him. A birth-parent didn’t mean much after your Remembrance Day, after all. You might end up being lifetimes older than they were, or remembering you’d had a dozen children before your current lifetime. In a single day, your relationship with every member of your family could be upended. A lot of people left their birth-family soon after their Remembrance and never returned. For all kinds of reasons.
On top of that, any romantic relationships before your Remembrance Day were pretty much a waiting game. One of the biggest mistakes you could make was getting romantic with someone and then remembering after the fact you’d been married to someone else for over a century.
Charlie and Ozzy had always been sure that wasn’t their situation. In fact, Charlie had always been certain they were lovers in a past life since the moment she laid eyes on him. However, neither of their families believed them when they told them that. So, Ozzy had a lot of good reasons to keep her birth mom at arm’s length. Charlie also had a lot of reasons she stayed away from his family.
Ozzy said, “I’ll go with you to drop this stuff off.”
Charlie blinked, surprised. Then she smirked. “Aww,” she said, “You’re trying to apologize for telling me I overreacted. That’s so sweet.”
“I am not,” Ozzy said, but his ears were turning pink. “After you stash this stuff I’m taking you to get dinner.”
“I’ll need to stop by my room first and change.”
“Me too,” he gave her a squeeze, then let her go as they cleared the crowd around the train station. “Hey, according to you, we might be dead in two weeks. We might as well have fun while we wait.”
Charlie made herself smile. Ozzy might be lying to himself that everything was going to be okay, but she might as well bask in his optimism while it lasted.
“I never said we might be dead,” she said. “I said we might be fired.”
“Same thing, right?” He teased.
She rolled her eyes and didn’t reply. She had said something about being fired being the same thing as dying once when they were first hired. He had never let her forget about it.
“Charlie,” Ozzy said after a few steps. “Promise me something?”
“What?” She asked.
He stopped and grabbed her arm. Right there on the street with the afternoon shift-workers flowing around them. Several people had to swerve to avoid them. One woman even hissed a curse at Ozzy. Charlie was about to tell him off too, but the look in his eyes stopped her short.
“Promise me we’ll stay together,” Ozzy said. “No matter what. No matter who we were before. No matter what we remember.”
Charlie’s heart swelled painfully in her chest. “Ozzy,” She said, “that’s not something we can promise.”
Ozzy stepped closer to her. His eyes were dark and intense, and they locked with hers no matter how badly Charlie wanted to look away. “You know how I feel about you,” He told her, “I’ve told you before. I know we’re meant to be together.”
Charlie had to swallow past the lump in her throat. “We are standing in the middle of the street,” she said.
“Promise me,” he said again, even more intensely.
“Yes!” Charlie blurted, “Yes, okay! We’ll stay together after Remembrance Day. I promise.”
A smile broke across his face, and at the same time, the sun finally emerged from behind the clouds it had been hiding behind all day, so it seemed like the smile on his face literally lit up the world all around them.
“I love you,” Ozzy said.
Charlie’s face heated. She heard someone “aww” near them. “I know!” She said, “I love you too, now can we please go?”
“Yeah,” Ozzy had a dreamy smile on his face. He took her hand as he stepped back. Charlie started walking, yanking him along. Her bag of cans bounced painfully against her hip as she rushed out of the street and into an alleyway. It was dark between the tall buildings.
Once they were out of sight, Charlie turned and grabbed Ozzy’s face in her hands. She yanked him down and kissed him hard, ferociously.
“You’re an asshole,” She said as they parted. “What was that?! Are you trying to make a spectacle?”
“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”
“Oh screw you,” Charlie stepped back from him.
“But I mean it,” Ozzy said. “I want us to stay together.”
“That’s not even a question,” Charlie said. “I’m sure we knew each other before. We might have even… Well we wouldn’t be the only lovers who deliberately died on the same day.”
She thought of Dray and his wrought iron bench in the train station, waiting for his wife to come back to him. What if she and Ozzy were like them: a pair of lovers through many lifetimes. Her stomach filled with butterflies at the thought.
“I hope we were lovers,” she said. “But even if we weren’t, I’m yours.” Was it wrong to lie to him about this, if she wasn’t certain it was a lie? She would be his forever, like she promised, as long as she could be. As long as there wasn’t someone else or somewhere else she had to go to instead. But she didn’t know that for sure, and in this moment her heart was only for Ozzy. So it really wasn’t a lie. Was it?
He just smiled at her. A loopy, happy smile.
Charlie yanked them both down to earth again. “Come on. We can moon about after we drop this stuff off at Mom’s.”
