A man with a knife waits outside The Bar on Whiskey Road.\u00c2\u00a0 He sweats though it\u2019s not hot, though he\u2019s in shadows.<\/p>\n
A girl sits within a circle of candles three levels under the streets.\u00c2\u00a0 She breathes deeply of an unnatural orange scent.\u00c2\u00a0 You can\u2019t grow oranges in Midnight.\u00c2\u00a0 You can buy them.\u00c2\u00a0 They ain\u2019t cheap.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a police officer doing his rounds, circling the same few streets over and over again, not bothering with the alleys, or with the subterranean sections of the city.\u00c2\u00a0 His mind\u2019s not on his work.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u2019s the tenth anniversary of his father\u2019s death.\u00c2\u00a0 It was another world, another city, from which he long ago fled.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u2019s still afraid his brothers will catch up with him.\u00c2\u00a0 Make him pay.<\/p>\n
The mayor, a former boxer called The Duke, sits at an oversized mahogany desk.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u2019s just poured today\u2019s scotch.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a woman in an apartment listen to Ella and Bessie and Janis.\u00c2\u00a0 She cries silently.\u00c2\u00a0 These will be the last tears she sheds for her, for what they had, for what they might\u2019ve become.\u00c2\u00a0 She\u2019s burning her lover\u2019s letters in a black pot.<\/p>\n
A child counts the cracks in the ceiling and wonders if one day the whole mountain will just collapse.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a young man leaving a bar with a woman and a promise of illicit delights.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u2019s the latest, Scarlet, designed and manufactured beneath opium dens right here in Midnight.<\/p>\n
A ghost drifts aimlessly through the vacant corridors of a narrow building that, in the early Twentieth Century, was a library.<\/p>\n
A baker stands over vats of sugar and cream.\u00c2\u00a0 She wonders if it\u2019s worth the effort, if perhaps she could become somebody else.<\/p>\n
Melinda, with her camera, cannot remember when she was innocent, but still she seeks out the Fairgrounds and tries to recapture something she believes she captured once before.<\/p>\n
Silhouettes pass by translucent windows in the Historical Society building.\u00c2\u00a0 The doors remain locked.<\/p>\n
A boy and a girl, right now, are meeting for the first time at a mutual friend\u2019s house.\u00c2\u00a0 Theirs will be a love for the ages, worthy of poetics, balladry, and legend.\u00c2\u00a0 No one else will believe it.<\/p>\n
Father O\u2019Leary sits in a room under St. Lazarus\u2019 Cathedral reading something old and written in Hebrew.<\/p>\n
In another city, a woman dreams of Midnight\u2019s Masquerade Ball as it happens.\u00c2\u00a0 She loves the masks and the costumes, all the bright colors and romance and intrigue.\u00c2\u00a0 If she\u2019s not careful, she\u2019ll be consumed by the City of Night.<\/p>\n
An old man, who has some difficulty walking, who scavenges for food, who lives in the crevices and hidey holes, leaves pennies in random places.\u00c2\u00a0 He gets a roll from the bank every Friday.\u00c2\u00a0 He leaves the coins heads up so that whoever finds them can have the luck he never found for himself.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a doctor performing unnecessary surgery for the thrill.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a boy eating ice cream.<\/p>\n
An illusionist pulls flowers from the air and gives them to a woman who, with some little pursuit and persuasion, may one day become his magical bride.<\/p>\n
Midnight, City of Night, breathes like any other city.\u00c2\u00a0 You\u2019d almost believe it was safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"