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Clo wrapped her hands around his neck and squeezed. Her head tilted to the side, she watched with nothing but fascination as his lips parted and he struggled to take that next breath, that next, lifesaving gulp of oxygen. In the moments following, as his limbs flailed, as his short nails clawed at her wrists, she frowned at him. Before the struggle became too great for him, she released her hold on his neck and ended their little game. He hadn’t been enough fun. They hadn’t had enough fun. He coughed, struggling to take in the oxygen he’d so desperately wanted only seconds prior, and she sat beside him on the ground. He couldn’t even pause in his heavy breathing to yell at her, to curse her, to threaten her. They stayed like that for several minutes, him trying to regain his composure and her trying to decide what it was she’d expected out of the situation. She’d simply expected something more, something greater, and he’d disappointed her in the way many things had grown to disappoint her. He was high, half out of his mind, and in his haze, he reached out to touch her shoulder. Clover stared at his fingers, the slightly crooked digits, and then followed the line along to his face. Without saying anything, Clo dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out twenty dollars. She threw the crumpled bills at the man, the notes hitting him in his chest, and then hauled herself to her feet. He scrambled to collect the bills before the light wind took them away. They hadn’t made an arrangement, but their exchange felt like one.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?”

Messy. She’d grown so messy, so careless. And, one night, maybe that would get her killed. But not that night. The man, clearly homeless, stared up at her from his knees. His skin ashen and cold to the touch, he looked as if he’d known a harder life than Clo could even imagine. She didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want him to hear her accent, didn’t want him to recall her voice, but she spoke anyway. He wouldn’t remember, she told herself. He’d taken so much that he probably wouldn’t remember any of the night. “I’m done,” she said, as if she could simply wipe her hands clean of him and disappear into the night. And she could. She intended to. Instead of showing relief, even joy, the man began to weep. He scrubbed the filthy money across his eyes as if he’d been graced with the softest of tissues, and then he crumbled the bills. He waved a fist at her, communicating emotions she couldn’t quite understand. “Don’t you want to live?”

“I have nothing,” he said. “I have nothing.”

Confused, Clover didn’t know what to say to him; more importantly, she didn’t know what to do for him. He had nothing. At one point, she’d had nothing. She’d felt the same crushing emotions, the ones she’d only just misunderstood. Anger. Disappointment. Sadness. “Don’t you have a home?” She expected him to say no, but he nodded. Slowly, hesitantly, he’d nodded. “Go home,” she suggested. “I’m not in the mood to kill,” she finally admitted. He’d disappointed her in the way that she’d disappointed him. Her thirst for blood seemed almost absent, or maybe she’d just grown accustomed to the endless ache. She could feed from him, dismember him, and leave him to rot in the sunlight, but he didn’t deserve such a storybook ending. She took those first few steps away, her boots crunching on dry leaves, and he looked as if he were going to go after her, to beg her to take his life away. She read what he wanted in his blue eyes, but she denied him. “Go home,” she repeated.

Clo could have gone home, but she didn’t want to face anyone yet. The old man had been one giant puzzle. What kind of person escaped death only to cry out for the same thing? A mental illness. A suicidal desire. Clo understood those things, but he didn’t fall into either category. He seemed fine, and yet mental illness wore many masks. Clover turned back to stare at the man, but he hadn’t moved. Still on his knees, his head bowed, he stared down at the ground. He looked like another pitiful excuse of a human being. She drew the gun from its holster, the weapon previously concealed by her black cardigan, and fired off a single shot. The bullet tore through the front of the man’s skull and blew out the back of his head. He collapsed onto his side, the money still clenched in his hands. She didn’t understand the ugly feeling which circled around her, tightening around her as if it were a python. Something told her not to go home. Again, she brushed the idea aside. She put the gun away and took off toward the Newborough station. She left the slums behind as if she were washing some unseen filth from her hands. When she awoke from her dazed state, she found herself in Cherrydale, such a long way from the southern section of the city.

As she slowly navigated her way through the district, she felt as if she were exploring foreign territory. Clo hadn’t spent much time in the northern half of the city, preferring the slums to anywhere else. When she came upon the theater, she took note of the few groups of people gathered outside of the entrance. They had lit cigarettes, popcorn buckets, and concession-stand sodas. “What’s playing?” She asked the first group of people, the ones closest to the entrance. Oddly enough, they all smiled at her. They told her that it was black-and-white night at the theater. The place ran black-and-white movies from dusk to dawn.

“We just saw The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner,” one woman piped up.

“We’re seeing A Streetcar Named Desire next,” another added. “I just love Marlon Brando!”

After the group dissolved into their own little conversations, Clover turned and made her way into the building. She’d expected a lot of film fanatics, possibly a full house, but the place only had about seven people in line for tickets, four people in line for the concession stand, and a group of six exiting theater two. Clo stood in line, but she had to read the overhead signs to get an idea for which film to see. White Heat. Train robberies. Gun fights. Police chases. She needed a good black-and-white film. Anything to take her mind of the strange old man she’d only just killed. Anything to get the echo of the gunshot out of her ears.

The line lurched forward and slowly thinned out. Clover watched as couples joined hands and wandered over to numbered showing rooms. When she reached the front of the line, Clo reached into the right pocket of her sweater and produced a few bills. The boy behind the counter looked bored, whether with her or with his job in general, she couldn’t tell. “White Heat,” she said, not waiting for the boy to say anything. Something told her he would have continued to stand there, his blank stare enough to force them both into an awkward stretch of silence. After he took her money and deposited the slightly wrinkled bills into his register, he waited for the ticket to print. His register stopped midway and he let out a frustrated sigh. Clo wanted to reach across the desk and drive his head into the register, thinking that would solve both problems, but she didn’t get the opportunity. The register finished printing the ticket and the teen quickly snatched it and tore it off.

“Theater three,” the boy said, placing the ticket atop the counter and sliding it over toward her. “Enjoy your movie.”

She didn’t know why she muttered a quick thank you, but she did. As a human, she’d been to the theater plenty of times. Every time, she’d treated herself to a bucket of popcorn and a large soda. Clo didn’t realize she’d stepped up to the concession stand until a bubbly brunette asked her what she wanted. “Um,” Clo said, showing off her mastery of the English language. “Just give me a large popcorn, extra butter. And an orange soda. Large.” Clo hardly had any cash left on hand. She pulled out her last bit of money and dumped the bills and change onto the countertop. “This should be enough.” She said it as if she didn’t know the exact amount she needed. She’d ordered her usual -- well, the usual from years ago -- and the girl just smiled, almost knowingly.

“Here you go!” Chipper as ever, the girl slid a large bag of popcorn across the counter and then plopped down a full cup of soda. “Jesus, did you see that kid? She just kicked that guy. Kids are so vicious these days!” The girl had a hand covering her mouth. Clo turned to try and catch a glimpse of the offending child and her victim. “Gosh, that guy looked like a creep though,” the girl said, feigning a shudder.

“I’ll let him know you said that,” Clo smiled. She grabbed her popcorn in one hand, her soda in the other, and wandered off toward theater three. Another attendant stood at the entrance to theater three. The guy yawned, one fist half covering his mouth. He didn’t even get the opportunity to ask for Clover’s ticket before she ripped her own in half and stuffed it into the tiny pocket on his uniform shirt. “I took care of it myself. Thanks.” The guy narrowed his eyes at her and fished around in his pocket to get the ticket stub out. She didn’t wait for him to verify whether or not she had the right to enter the theater. He didn’t chase after her, so something must have been right.

When the doors swung shut behind her, locking into place with a dull thud, Clo immersed herself in the dark interior of the theater. She heard a few whispered conversations scattered about the dark room, but other than that, she didn’t take note of much else. If it weren’t for the overwhelming stench of her buttered popcorn, she might have noticed the familiar scent much sooner. Serpentine. Someone smelled like the interior of Serpentine. No, someone smelled like Jesse. No, someone smelled like Fforde. Clo paused in the aisle, holding up a couple from moving forward. They were about to complain, she could tell, so she turned and shoved her bag of popcorn into the man’s arms. “Here, use it to hide your junk while she jerks you off,” she wanted to say, but she moved on without a word.

Clo had to follow the scent from the aisle along several rows of seats. When she pinpointed the exact location of the scent, she found herself staring at a hooded figure. She wanted to say something, but her words failed her. The movie started, the black-and-white logo for Warner Brothers slowly fading away the screen. James Cagney. Virginia Mayo. White Heat. Clover walked down the aisle and dropped into the seat next to the hooded figure. In the dim lighting, she made out the infamous mustache, and then, with the light leaking from the screen and shining from the floor’s LED lights, she made out the rest of his facial features. Balthazar. Clo held out the drink, as if offering him a sip, and then she slipped the cup into the cup holder between them. “I see I’m not the only one looking for a James Cagney kind of night.”

The two had seen one another in passing, and they’d officially met in Serpentine, but they’d never really held a conversation, not at length. They weren’t best friends. They weren’t enemies. Clo didn’t know what to make of him, except she tried to be better with him, for him, for Jesse. She put everything into not hating him. She put everything into avoiding paranoia. She’d tried so hard to like Rhett -- no, she’d tried hard enough not to hate him. If Rhett meant something to Jesse, then Balthazar meant more. That’s how family worked, right? “Do you even like black-and-white movies?” The question seemed so insignificant, after she’d asked, but she didn’t know what else to say, what else to ask. She wanted to tell him that she was trying, that she wanted to try, but she eyed him with suspicion. “Tell me you won’t turn into a ghost, that you won’t bail when things get tough,” she wanted to say, but, instead, she toyed with the straw sticking out of her cup. “My parents introduced me to these kinds of movies. I don’t mind them. This is one of my favorites. This and Double Indemnity.”

Maybe she meant to lose something there, right then, right in the darkened movie theater. All of her memories. All of her problems. She leaned back into her seat and mimicked his posture. She propped both feet up on the seat in front of her, uncaring that her short boots had dried mud on the bottoms. Clo stopped toying with the straw and repositioned the cup in the cup holder, as if she’d reach for it later to try and get a refreshing drink. She listened to him list off names. The ghost of a smile appeared on her lips when he mentioned Crawford and Hepburn. She loved Katherine Hepburn, always had, but she decided not to interrupt him. She nodded along at his words -- she did agree with some of his choices. And she wanted to be polite, to show she listened, even if the darkened theater made her physical cue harder to see. “I have a lot of love for Cagney, but I also like Virginia Mayo. It’s why I chose White Heat. She’s stunning. I can appreciate her classic beauty. In the end, that’s the whole point of her character. To be beautiful, to be a classical bad girl,” Clo said, her eyes traveling from the screen so that she could stare at the person next to her. “Fred MacMurry was great in Double Indemnity, but I never did follow his career. I’m a big fan of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The two of them were a power couple. I love Katherine Hepburn. Paul Muni was brilliant in Scarface. Cary Grant,” she said, sighing the last name. “Everyone has to love Cary Grant.”

She shifted in her seat, sliding further down in the chair until she reached a more comfortable, reclined position. Clo turned her attention back to the movie then, but she’d already missed most of the train-robbing scene. The guy had just been scalded with hot steam and they’d escaped the scene of the crime. Train robberies, how very old school. Black-and-white movies made her reminisce about her childhood, oddly enough. She mostly thought about her parents, rather than her sister. Her mother had been obsessed with Cary Grant. Clo supposed her own appreciation for the late screen hunk had something to do with said obsession. Her father had always liked Marilyn Monroe, which never came as a surprise. On one hand, Clo found her memories comforting; on the other hand, she found them so out of place. What did memories of her human life have to offer her? Nothing. Nothing but pain. Missed opportunities. Regret.

“So why are you here, is it really to watch a movie?” The words came from her mouth unbidden, but she didn’t try to collect them and shove them back down her throat. She allowed them to hang in the air, to gather in the way that her blood might have gathered, and disperse. “Personally,” she said, pausing only so she could hear Cagney have a total fit on the screen, “I assisted in a suicide, and I’d rather not take that home.” Honesty felt a lot better than deceit. She knew that. And, more importantly, she knew that honesty begot honesty. “It’s not the same as hunting and killing. It’s different. It’s not stealing anything. It’s finding a volunteer. I don’t want that. It’s sickening.” Cagney (“Cody”) and Wycherly (“Ma”) had finally gotten over Cagney’s explosive episode and the movie went on as usual. The whole movie revolved around Cagney, really, even though Mayo had been billed as a co-star. She was pretty. That was the only reason she was there. Clover felt that way sometimes, as if looks kept people around. It was a shame.