Post by Kyle Shane on Mar 11, 2019 17:42:53 GMT -5
He checked the flight information board again, craning his neck to the hanging board, and then looking down with disgust. It just would happen that as he had to catch a flight in to the show that mattered to him, a storm would have all planes grounded. It was the universe pushing back. Every time he began to get a little too full of himself, events transpired to check him just that small bit, put his ego into perspective. It was, well, for lack of a better term, Shane luck. And now he was sitting in Laguardia, hunched down by the wall where he could plug his dying phone in. And all he could think at the moment is that he coulda avoided the storm, if he hadn't made the hop (spur of the moment, bought with free travel miles) to Boston to find himself scaling a brownstone wall like a demented Assassin's Creed protagonist at 3 am and let himself into the girl's apartment. He heaved a heavy sigh, his lip chewed expressively, and he looked down at his phone, on it's charger like life support.
He kept his hoodie pulled low against his face, trying his best to travel incognito. Sometimes the job allowed that, sometimes it didn't. Just now, he was in a mood to be alone. He glanced up as he heard boarding calls, hoping against logical hope that they would announce his flight, but for now, he just sat down, hunched against the wall, cattycornered to a Panda Express and a kiosk that sold magazines and convenience store essentials. A fine way for a high-falutin World Champion to get around, isn't it. He sighed. Shane luck.
Back up towards the entrance of the beast, she is holding her shoes in one hand. Her slim toes wiggle a little, pitifully, and she's hoping that the TSA agent checking her out will give her just that dignity, because it's cold, and she's just a short brown girl and there is absolutely nothing on her that necessitates such a thorough and invasive scan with the wand. The TSA agent, mouth puckered, looks at the girl, then to his buddy, giving a slight chuckle, and waves the wand over her midsection again. "Belt?" And Array huffs. "Keep your arms spread ma'am," he says, authoritative yet indolent, bass yet boorish. "Can you please just hurry it up, I have to get down to my gate and that's down in section A..."
"Ain't no flights taking off any time soon in this storm, honeybunch, unless the pilot is stupid," says her TSA agent, and he's groping her pants leg and purposefully coming around her backside to look at her from that angle. She wants to sock him, but she stands stiff as a board. He grabs at her thigh, and she snaps irritably down at the crown of his head, "You know, I'm not trying to SAY profiling, but - " And he, smiling as his round, chubby head peeks up, removes a pair of nail clippers from her pocket. "What was that, honeybunch?" Second time he'd called her that in as many minutes. "Can't let you have these on the plane... I could take you in the room for a more thorough search... if you like..." And his leer, and the look he cocked over his shoulder to the TSA agent manning the X-ray, soured her stomach. She wasn't making Section A now.
Through the security checkpoint, waiting on the main thoroughfare... He checks his iPhone. Patrick had uploaded the ticket information and the screenshots. He had her face now. He patted the slim, cool cylinder hidden in the pocket of his coveralls. As he scanned the crowd for her face, he cursed. She was supposed to be taking the flight out of Laguardia back to Boston, and if he didn't catch her here in the confusion of the airport he may never have a chance to infiltrate like this again. His employer had been very specific with his commands. He had provided him with a maintenance outfit and clued him in on the best entry and exit points. It should have been easy and anonymous. But he couldn't keep the charade of pushing his janitorial supply cart around idly for long, not until -
A tug came on his arm. It was a young looking mother, bearing a chubby cheeked little boy in her arms, cradling him as if he had the plague. The fat little kid had flecks of hot dog colored miasma around his mouth. "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but Tryztane had himself a little accident... Didn't you baby, it's okay, it's the nice man's job to clean it..." And she swept her eyes back up to his. He grimaced, and let out a perturbed exhalation of air.
In the food court, frenzied, harried eyes were searching. He was disheveled, his cheeks slim to gaunt, losing much of his movie-star look in the intervening weeks since his exit from the set. He was sure he should have been flagged a million times now, but he sat there, in the food court, his wild eyes cutting from side to side with a tic. His eyes were what were giving him away, it was what broke the illusion, the becoming of Kyle. Kyle's eyes were ringed red, with bags of exhaustion. Kyle's hair (wasn't stringy no matter how much he tried to mousse it) and mop-like. Kyle wasn't wearing a sweat-stained hoodie. But that did not matter. Because he was going to become Kyle Shane. When he got on that flight out to South Carolina, he was going to get into the arena, affect the method acting he had trained himself into, and inhabit the role of Kyle Shane in front of a pay-per-view audience. As he sat there at the food court round table, his hand absently fondled the bulge in the pocket of his hoodie. And then, he got up from the table, throwing his burger wrapper in the trash.
It baffled and titillated him, nobody noticed him. Nobody came up to him, asking for a selfie or saying that they had enjoyed him in "that one, uhm, what was that movie called'... nobody even gave him a second glance as he slipped back into the crowd, headed towards the side of the building with numbers and letters running up to A. Why would they? He wasn't Kyle Shane. Not yet.
So many disparate elements...
Combustible meets accelerant. Push meets resistance. Resistance breeds friction. Friction causes a spark.
All of the pieces that were independent of each other from the start, when you put them together, they can create a flash of illumination. A flash of brilliance. The flash can open everyone's eyes. Or, it can be a devastating bomb, and it can completely backfire in the hands of the man who flicked the lighter, lobbed the Molotov; take a limb, leave third degree burns, and unforgettable scars.
Back against the wall, he tries to cheer himself up. So it wasn't a total loss, right? She wasn't there. And she wasn't there, and Alastair wasn't there. (Actually, according to Access Hollywood, Alastair had maybe had a little meltdown on the set of a particular movie, which made his damn day because he didn't really want to sit through a lawsuit with the writer of that particular script.) And if she wasn't there, then good. You know? She was out, working her career, making moves, building a brand. The last thing she wanted was for him to keep intervening in her life. Right? Of course right, he counselled himself, and he unplugged, snatched his phone and charger and holstered his bag on his shoulder, passing the food court. As he did, he nearly bumped into a tall, skinny drink of water in a dark hoodie, but he sidestepped and mumbled "Sorry chief" to no one in particular.
Except here in this long dark layover of the soul, he had to be honest with himself; it was all feeling empty. Bleak. What the fuck was this all even for? Sometimes, he feels like this is all his life has become, standing in front of a trophy case. He stands before it and defends my records from people that say they don't count, but he can't - can't touch the records anymore, and the oldest records don't seem to matter. And it doesn't ever seem to be enough, right? The trophy case will never not feel empty, uncompleted. The quest for perfection in a job is adulthood. The quest for perfection in a set of skills, that's humanity. But a quest for perfection in what's seen by your eyes as a game? To attain a perfect record, the most title defenses, the most trophies? Is that all there is to a life? But if it's not, and I'm hungering for something deeper with her, is it fair of me to keep asking that of her? He wished he could say. He wished... Fuck. He wished he could stop thinking, honestly.
And then as he steps around a man in janitor's coveralls angrily mopping up an unruly, unwieldy pile of sawdust. He passes by a laughing, pig-faced kid with hot dog slime and ketchup caked around his mouth and on his bib. He tips a sidelong, "Sorry bout your luck man" grimace to the unlucky shit who drew the straw of cleaning up that mess, and continued on down the concourse. Sections and gates stretched before him, going all the way to A, and he tracked the gates with his eyes. He was going south, so...
As he continued roaming around, in no particular hurry to get to a gate with a plane not leaving until tomorrow morning, the girl, increasingly harried and worn down, is leaning over the flight attendant's little podium. "Listen, my ticket says A38, and I just made it on time, you don't want to know how much trouble I had to give your agents, who were very rude, by the way..." The man, a thin older gentleman with the resting bitch face dealing with customer service and travel for X number of years wears into you, handed Array back her packet unsatisfied. "I'm very sorry miss but that flight has already boarded for takeoff. You needed to be here at 11:45."
"I WAS here at 11:45, I just had to get from down there," pointing forcefully, "To HERE, and let me tell you I was not on the track team in high school, and I am very tired, and I have a flight back home to Boston because I have rehearsal starting at 8 am, so can you please just give me some good news."
The salty, effete flight attendant looks her up and down, rumpled clothing, groped pants, hair out of place, frantic eyes, and runs a tongue under his lip. He points back towards the death march of the front desk, "I'm sure you can cash in your points for a replacement, but with the storm - " "-It won't be leaving until morning, I hear you, I hate you. This is why I'm never flying United again," she complains, and then turns, taking up her bag, thinking over and over that this can't be, she needed to nail this rehearsal, there was an important director coming to this show and she needed to be ready - and she. God. She fucked up. She let all the tension out of her shoulders, feeling herself crumbling. She was trying so hard to make all of this work. If she hadn't gone out to see stupid Alastair at that stupid movie shoot. God dammit. No, it was more than that. Who was she? Was she the kick ass, take names girl who fought for her dream, fought for respect when producers tried to Me Too her. Was she the girl who turned away from someone who she had chemistry with when it had started getting too bad? Was she a perfectionist who wanted to collect these glowing reviews of her work?
But what did a good review matter? What did someone giving your line readings a perfunctory "Her words flowed well, weren't disjointed, had heart" mean at the end of the day? You couldn't take admiration for your spoken words home with you and look at it. She had gone out chasing her dream, but she was not too careful with who she had to share it with. And now she had nobody to share this tough night with, either. Wasn't that just... luck. She sighed, and she went back down the concourse, back towards the entry. She may hit the food court, she thought absently, or maybe she would go back up the escalator to the lobby and see about ticket options. Or -
Her reverie was cut short by a young wife's wail, cutting over a group of people's head, "Oh, Tryztane, NO!! NOT AGAIN!" Then, a smaller, and softer "Sir? Can I trouble you one more time..." but she was lost in her head at that point, feeling lost in this crowd.
"Whoa - dude" came the stretched out, croaky bro cadence, a slack jaw peering around a Slurpee cup straw.
"Aren't you -"
"Broooo, can we get a selfie? Huh? Champ?"
Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, he thought, cursing that he had skirted too close to the food courts, but, hazards of the job, he took off his hoodie and gave them his cockiest smile. "Sup bois. You watch Pure Class Wrestling?"
"I mean, off and on - " "It's on a channel that Direct TV doesn't get -" "I'm always working at sometime between Thursday overnight and Friday evening" head rubbing, looking elsewhere, a bunch of excuses. The two boys, surely the Cheech and Chong or Jay and Silent Bob of their high school classes, scruffy with little bits of patchy beard hairs and baggy clothes and the unmistakable smell of pot. That they were even in the airport terminal was a miracle. But he indulged them, because why not. And if it turned out they were holding, well he had some time to kill before a flight. They took the selfie, and he even watched in brow furrowed amusement as they threw up West Side symbols, cuz lolwut.
"So what's up with you and that Gerard Angelo dude?" was the inevitable question that came out of the eager sorta-fans mouths. And what, really, else could be said? Gerard had had a competent argument at the very beginning but he'd let it fall apart due to his conspiracy theory handling. And since then they'd had to face each other across the ring forced to tag with two other men they both disliked, they were probably knowing Pure Class Wrestling's wacky obsession with booking tag matches going to have to team up WITH each other in some kind contrived love hurting thing, and try as he might to taunt and mock Angelo's premise about him needing help to win the dude was as convinced of his righteousness as a fanatic. And he was of the impression that he lived inside Kyle's head, which... was... true. But not for the reasons Gerard wanted it to be.
One stoney pony looked at Kyle and said, "Dude Gerard is gonna kick your ass so hard, like he's a made man. A Hollywood A-lister. Rolling with all the hottest girls and getting all the fine pussy. He's gonna bring some real style and flash back to the World title."
"Kid," he shot back with some restrained amusement, "Gerard is whiter than I am. Just first off - "
He isn't aware of the open mouthed stare from across the food court, the red-ringed eyes burning as they cross the ocean of people and spot that spiky quiff. No... it couldn't be, he thought, seeing him perfectly now that his hood was down... No... here?
"Dude, Gerard is owning your ass so hard," says the louder mouthed stoner fuck, smiling as if he's getting his goat, "What are you going to do to stop him cut one of your wack ass fifty minute long pysch out promos, you fucking wank." And he leans back in to the kid's facing, biting back just as hard, saying, "Gerard can beat me about the same time he can win an Icey, which, fucking, oops, how many Iceys does he have on his mantle? I'll bet he has just about as many Golden Globes."
His jaw quivers, and he steeples his fingers over his nose and face, exhales, thinks about how he's going to approach the distance between them while he's over there yelling at some stupid stoner kid. Because of course. Maybe when he becomes a version of Kyle Shane he won't be quite so... pedantically childish.
He claps his hands together in front of the kid's face to the beat of each word. "Delete. That. Selfie. Now. Delete it from your phone, you are not fucking posting that to your Instagram and hashtagging me." The boy pops and locks his way into giving him a middle finger, "Hashtag this, beyotch."
Sweat is beading on his head. His red eyes search the crowd. He's wondering how many people are looking at him now, a tall man with sweat running down his face with one hand in his pocket. Somewhere, off to his far left, he hears a young woman shrieking "NO TRYZTANE, DON'T LICK THAT OFF THE FLOOR, NOOOOO-"
So the question is, who's the one lighting the match? Who's the one throwing the cocktail? Who poured the mix, gathered all the elements? Or maybe the elements gathered, slowly, over time. Building up so gradually that you never would notice, until they swirled together. And it's less of a flash than it is a big bang. Maybe the universe is just like that. Maybe it puts all of these elements there in it's own time, not being sure which ones will react in which time, but sure enough in it's planning that they'll all have a part to play. Like four people in one airport, all of them for a different cross section of people. Or two men in one moment of history, where they interact with a set piece and it breaks. Maybe the explosion that happens when these meet at their intersection point is what it's been all about, and the universe just codes in it's variables until it makes that match, strikes that spark.
Sitting on the side of the terminal by the wall, on a bench, she hangs her head. She has her phone in one hand, and she looks at it, concentrating. New York isn't so... very far from Boston, and if she can get a rental car (but this late at night?) Maybe she can drive it red eye and get there before dawn. Probably, yeah, but her performance? No... maybe... maybe daddy can wire her the money to - No, daddy's stopped being an option long ago, girl, pull your head out of your ass. Maybe K -
No. She doesn't want to. She can't. He isn't going to make her career, and it's been such a hard road with him. Honestly as much as she could even forgive him (Alastair couldn't, hence the restraining order) the continued insistence on trying to force things together, that was the problem. Kyle was forcing it. When it had clicked between them it never had to be forced, and now he was trying to fit himself into all his old roles with her. But she never had any place in his life, any agency in those old roles, she was just a NPC love interest, for all intents and purposes a Princess fucking Peach. That wasn't her role anymore... and whatever else, was... not something she wanted to examine sitting on a bench in Laguardia freaking out with anxiety. She also was hangry, worn out, embarrassed from the TSA gangbang and just fried, so much so that she was wanting to get up, march over to the mother of the fat little boy who was now eating his own body matter, and slap her. She tried to block all the noise out, closing her eyes.
She thought of friends in NYC, maybe she could call and - God, stop the NOISE, she thought, peeking one eye open, scanning the nearby terminals, certain she heard a voice on the wind shouting "DELETE. THAT. SELFIE." but no, that wasn't possible, it was -
That man, in the janitors coveralls. He wasn't even paying attention to little Trimpstain or whatever, he was gripping the mop in both hands and twisting it, looking stonily at her.
Contact! That was the woman described. His eyes followed her as she nervously shouldered her carry bag. Oh no, did she make him? No, but she was looking at him suspiciously as she walked diagonally across to the women's restrooms. He started to wheel the cart full of janitorial supplies over there, and, on her knees, a young mother, tears streaking her face, looks up stupidly, her cow eyes rolling at him and asking, "But aren't you cleaning up his - " He looks down at her, his mouth a laconic line, and says "Bathroom check."
"Dude! You are like real life immature!" the stoner kid cries foul, as he's chasing after a taunting person who really should know better (but, in the final analysis, will always choose the option to be a shithead) "Gimme my phone!!" But it's no use, as six foot two inches of gangly limbs are playing keepaway and holding it overhead. "I'm gonna take it in that bathroom over there, think I'm gonna flush it!"
Seeing a problem, the man in the coveralls touches a Bluetooth headset, activating a line. "Patrick. We got a problem here..."
And the red-eyed man, he follows along, his extremities numb. He had not planned this out very far ahead. And he cursed himself that he had not allowed the consideration of improvising, but he hadn't seen running into Kyle Shane in the freaking airport coming. He touched the cool ceramic shape in his pocket. It was a prop he had just had to liberate from the movie studio, because he had been intending to carry it all the way on a plane to South Carolina and sneak into Kyle Shane's dressing room with it. But the script had been thrown out and they were calling for a rewrite... and his chances of ever being a leading man, someone Array would look in the eye, were going down the drain...
As he makes like he's going to juke into the bathroom with the kid's phone, he has a flash of self-awareness that brings him back down. Why does he always do this? It kind of does muddy the message, and he hadn't planned on being such a child about it. It was almost like that idea he had of going to the WGWF's Logistics warehouse, it seemed like a hilarious idea on paper, but now he was second guessing and wondering if some of the jokes being mapped out weren't too off the cuff for what he was attempting, and. He stopped. Alright. He'd had his fun. He turned back to the kid, a face screwed up full of regret, and he nodded, starting to apologize, and that's when he noticed someone drawing close to them, striding with a purpose. And drawing something out of his pocket. "Huh? - Hey, you look like -"
"I liked him in that one uhm, what was that movie called - "
"GUN!"
People around them broke and ducked as that call went out, and began flocking out of the way in panic. The red eyed man who really wanted to be the next Kyle Shane (in the next casting, maybe) was poised, flourished and holding the pistol out like someone in full form to play John Wilkes Booth. But the trigger he pulled didn't set off a spark, or a roar like a cannon. It didn't ignite a conflagration. The pieces weren't put in place that way. It fired a puff of dust in the shape of a bullet, a blank cap banged. Yes, sometimes, the universe puts blanks. That's just the way it works. Kyle looked up from between his hands, annoyed at the blank. He came forward, battering the ceramic gun out of Alastair's hand, and Alastair, gripped by frenzied strength, bull rushed Kyle back and drove him into the side of the wall underneath the men's room sign. On the other side of the divide, the man in the coveralls was snapping into his headset as he removed his tool, a long tube snapped onto a crude trigger, forming a silencer, and he put them together with deadly, hitman efficiency.
"No, Patrick. You sent me to kill the girl. What is your brother doing here?" He listened to the squawk from the other end of the line, raspy from it's hospital stay. "No, I'm not tracking him, Kyle Shane is here! ...Listen, I don't care what stupid 'lesson' you intended to teach him, any dealing with Kyle Shane in person would be extra." As he spoke he poked the silencer into the women's bathroom, fully entering it, and he sighted the barrel and scanned the corners of the room. The damn girl had come in here, but she wasn't in the open. This job had gone fully fubar. "Nothing I can do now, I'm exposed. I hope you'll front the money for this." And he ended the call. He poked the gun at the closed stall doors, and craned his head under the bottom of the doors, looking for a set of feet.
Outside, Kyle was kicking a frothing, roaring, completely off his mental game actor off him. The terminal was chaos. People were running every which way, panicked, airport security and police were caught in the flood and trying to direct traffic and not as yet, knowing where it was coming from. A teenage kid in a skull cap who looked every much like he knew his way around the munchies was squawking that Kyle Shane hadn't given him his phone back. An actor from Australia was scrambling around on his hands and knees, his fingers grasping at the floor. A young mother was scooping her son up against her shoulder and running with him, as behind her back, he was licking a tasty brown substance off his fingers. It was chaos.
In the ladies bathroom, the man in coveralls ruthlessly explored. He stared at an occupant, making her flee the bathroom, and he searched under a stall. Then the next. He got all the way down to the end and despite the lack of feet under the doorway he could see a shape between the grooves in the stall walls. He readied his put-together silencer and stood in front of the stall.
Inside the stall, Array was using her core strength to hang between the panels and lift her feet up onto the handicap rails. But she knew that the man who was chasing her was outside the door. She only had a moment's split second panic, why was this person after her, but she shut it out. She set her hands, and kicked out with all of her strength as she swung out, hitting the stall door hard enough to send it smashing into the hitman and knocking him off balance. She clumsily dismounted, slipping on toilet paper, and he was up, snarling after her as she ran for the terminal.
"Alastair, you're making me violate a court-ordered restraining order," Kyle choked out as the maniac's fingers were closing in around his windpipe. His vision was starting to go red, with shooting pulses behind his eyes. It was around this time that two security officers approached. The first, a burly black man with a police badge, eyed the two remarkably similar looking men, mouth open to ask what the trouble was. Caught in the frenzy of his performance falling apart with no more time to rehearse how he would become Kyle Shane. Caught up in a tornado now. He was fully embracing it. Kyle Shane WAS chaos. Kyle Shane was an agent of completely unlikely, ridiculous happenstance. There was no better way to embrace the imago of the Kyle Shane persona than to get into this melee. So he drew his ceramic prop gun with a hand freed from Kyle Shane's windpipe, and pointed it at the officer. The officer hesitated, seeing only the gun.
She comes out of the bathroom at that moment, not seeing the tableau at the men's entrance twenty yards away, just fleeing like the hounds of hell were at her heels. The man in the coveralls, not used to this much public exposure, was still committed to getting the kill now that she had attacked him, and not thinking straight. He readied his makeshift gun, but he couldn't get a clear draw on her as they both ran, and he froze as he saw her starting to slip between another, independent drama involving a standoff with the cops and two other blokes.
The airport security man's head turned as he spotted the girl fleeing. His radio was crackling, asking for updates. The chaos that had reigned, causing the panicked mob, had made helter skelter of everything. There was a crazy man waving an oddly fake looking gun around, there was now a lady, possibly part of the freaked out people running for her life; being chased? And then he saw the dark man after her, carrying a second gun.
Alastair saw the second gun of the hitman too, at the same time as he was running towards him, and, not understanding, he let go of Shane's throat. He thought this was some new hero, some airport dog there to take him down, and he stood there, defiantly, holding a pistol he had lost sight of being fake. He was in the moment. He was totally owning his role. "You stop right there, this is my show, I'm just going to kill Ky-"
Two shots from the silencer perforated him right between the eyes. There was only a minimal spatter of blood, and he fell, eyes rolling up and in as if both trying to see the bullet hole at the same time. His quarry, leaning against the wall, was choking. And the girl, she was fleeing, trying to skirt around the cadre of airport security that had come to investigate. The lead was now drawing his gun now that he wasn't under fire. "What in the hell is going on here?!" He demanded. The coverall man grimly assessed the situation, seeing the girl hanging just out of reach over the black security guard's shoulders. He raised his silencer, firing off a few shots, making the security guards scatter.
Kyle looked down at someone who, until recently, had been trying with varying degrees of success to become a version of him. Alastair had an open eyed, open mouthed look of surprise eternally on his face now, as he stared up at the lights, and a thin rickle of blood came from the hole in his head. And Kyle wanted to smirk about it, but honestly, it felt hollow, and a little sad that Alastair had gone down this way, even if he was a prick about the whole restraining order thing. Bye Alastair, he thought somberly, and in the moment of chaos that was all the eulogy he could spare as he found himself in the middle of a shootout between airport security and a weirdo with a handmade gun. But there, fleeing from the shots, ducking behind an Orange Julius stand in the middle of the terminal was a shape he never thought he'd see, not here.
She had lived a hell of a life in her twenty three years, thank you very much. She'd ripped off biker gangs and had to run from them, she had sold drugs while trying to keep herself afloat after she had been left to her own devices at seventeen, so the fact that she was hyperventilating, the grip of a panic attack banding tight around her lungs, wasn't a knock on her agency, it was just reality, she rationalized to herself as she ducked behind the Orange Julius kiosk and tried to make herself small. She tried to control her breathing. The man in the coveralls had sniped off one of the cops, but they were radioing for reinforcements. A bullet chipped away part of a counter over her head. She yelped. And then, a shape, moving quickly into cover, parked itself to her left, it crouched and peeked over the counter, watching the shootout. Then, he looked down at her. "Hey, kid. Everything the same?"
The moment she heard their inside joke, she looked at him, panic on her face. "Kyle?!"
He ducked down beside her, sitting next to her. Her breathing was slowing, mercifully, but she couldn't stop looking at him. "What are you doing here? Are you - " and then, forgetting the noise buzzing over their heads, her face transitioned into a flat, arch look of annoyance, "Kyle, were you following me?" He looked hurt, and said, "No! I was - look, I had gone to your apartment a couple nights ago, but you weren't there, and I felt your presence there and I wanted to see you last night - "
"- But I had gone to the Tyler Zane movie set to confront Alastair, and then I was catching my flight back to Boston to get to rehearsal - "
" - And I was trying to catch a flight because I have to be in South Carolina for work, and -"
They had both pieced together the tangled mess of irony that had brought them to this point in time, and it was so blackly funny. Array's face remained stone, but Kyle was looking over at her, trying not to smile, and she snorted, trying not to laugh, and then they broke out into both of those. "Shane luck," Array said, not wanting to laugh but having to, and he rolled his eyes and raised his hands heavenward. It was pure serendipity.
His eyes focus, and he grows more serious, looking at her urgently, "But Array, I just wanted to tell you that throughout the separation, that I've come to terms with a lot. I've experienced what I think is a real growth, breakthrough, sorta. And I've realized that Kyle Shane really is missing something without his heart. That was what I was trying and failing to tell you so many times, in my broken, creepy way. And I - God, now that we're together, in this time and place, thanks to the universe putting all of these elements together..."
A bullet spanged off a trash can near them and Array ducked back. Her voice rose with disbelief, "I don't think now is the best time for this...?!"
He earnestly took her hand, getting closer to her. The police were converging, there were more, and they were drawing their guns on the man in the coverall. He had hid behind the alcove leading into the men's room, but, even as he was running low on ammo, he still looked around the corner, ready to draw. Behind the Orange Julius stand, Kyle moved himself so that he was facing her as much as he could while maintaining cover. "I'm a big believer in the fact that the universe gives things a nudge towards the way they should be. It just means that you have to be brave enough to try and grab it, when it comes."
Array sighed, and looked him in the eye, and said, "But are you sure this time? And you won't get cold feet, and start pushing me away when things get too rough? Because you've had thoughts like this before, but you can't keep backing out when you want."
"It's the only time," he came to, after a second's deliberation, "Because I've been thinking for some time now that what I have isn't... enough. My life has been empty, and all I have is me and my feelings. And those have pushed away everyone I care about. My son, Krista... you... And it's left me with nothing but an empty trophy case." When he says the words trophy case, she tilts her head at him, confused. And he just gives a quick head shake, never mind that.
She sits back, crossing her arms over her chest, her eyes looking off into the middle distance, searching through a million complicated feelings. The security team had crowded near the entrance, and were closing in on their man. Behind the stand, she starts and stops for a moment, then admits her own truth, "Alastair and I worked for a little while. In fact, in the beginning he was the sweetest guy. And I thought it was so ironic, I met Alastair, because I got hired on to play a part in a story that was about you. But that's why I walked away from it. Because it was about you. Kyle, so much of my life has had to revolve around you. Because you put me in the spotlight at such a young age, I had to live, fully exposed and in the open of that spotlight. I always was Kyle's girl, even when we were apart. I wanted something for myself, that wasn't Kyle's story. And I was starting to have that. Finally got my own apartment. I got the role in that first play, and that was magic for me. And me and Alastair, when it worked, it was working - but then it started to not, and I think I knew why -"
" - Because he was Australian and fucked koalas?" She elbowed him in the gut, "Sorry, I'll stop." And she continued, looking at him, "Because he was trying to be you. In a very real sense, he was trying to replace you, and when he began taking on your characteristics, I got scared. Maybe he was just getting too into the role, whatever. He got scary. And you can be scary, Kyle. Despite the jokes, you bring - an intensity to our relationship that requires a lot of emotional work."
He can't say she's wrong (I mean, he did sorta break into her apartment), but he looks up, a million warring expressions on his face, but flitting between acknowledgement and reproached. She takes his face in her hand, "But that's what, in the final analysis, keeps me coming back, and why Alastair was trying to make something that we didn't have. Alastair couldn't replicate you because you and me are just the right two elements, when put together, it makes fire, baby. And you just can't fake that."
They got closer together, and he rested his forehead against hers. The police and security force working in tandem rounded the lip of the alcove into the men's room, and in that little L-shaped corner drew on the hitman in coveralls. He held his gun aloft, but when he pulled the trigger - nothing.
"God, when you left, when Johnny left, when I was all alone in that apartment, I thought I didn't have anything left," he said, a rush of emotion he couldn't quite put his finger on, and she rested her head against his chest. "Really? Because you seemed so - in your promos - I didn't think you needed me anymore..."
"I do. I do need you. I need you, Array..." And she looked up at him, then, tears in her eyes.
They embraced each other, there, sitting side by side behind the kiosk.
In the men's room, the officers stand, looking down at the hitman, laying in a pool of his blood, and an officer calls it in to the crackling radio that the suspect is down.
The storm outside had passed, and the two of that sat together in the terminal as rescue and EMT workers began making their way on the scene. For a while, they were ignored, as any hurt or wounded in the stampede of the frightened mob or anyone hiding came out, were worked on by rescue personnel. The cleanup effort bustled around, letting two young people just coexist in each other's arms and hold each other tight, their now and then saying something to each other, but mostly just sitting there and breathing, their hearts and breath linked in beautiful harmony.
It can be terrifying, but beautiful in a way. The universe knows what it needs, and like a makerless machine it produces the variables and sets them into motion. Sometimes it's destructive, sometimes the process is entropic in it's nature, and it puts multiple variables on a collision course into ruin. But sometimes, just sometimes, for everything the universe takes away, it finds a way to bring some other elements together in return, and give them one beautiful, shining moment. It's serendipity at it's finest.
He kept his hoodie pulled low against his face, trying his best to travel incognito. Sometimes the job allowed that, sometimes it didn't. Just now, he was in a mood to be alone. He glanced up as he heard boarding calls, hoping against logical hope that they would announce his flight, but for now, he just sat down, hunched against the wall, cattycornered to a Panda Express and a kiosk that sold magazines and convenience store essentials. A fine way for a high-falutin World Champion to get around, isn't it. He sighed. Shane luck.
Back up towards the entrance of the beast, she is holding her shoes in one hand. Her slim toes wiggle a little, pitifully, and she's hoping that the TSA agent checking her out will give her just that dignity, because it's cold, and she's just a short brown girl and there is absolutely nothing on her that necessitates such a thorough and invasive scan with the wand. The TSA agent, mouth puckered, looks at the girl, then to his buddy, giving a slight chuckle, and waves the wand over her midsection again. "Belt?" And Array huffs. "Keep your arms spread ma'am," he says, authoritative yet indolent, bass yet boorish. "Can you please just hurry it up, I have to get down to my gate and that's down in section A..."
"Ain't no flights taking off any time soon in this storm, honeybunch, unless the pilot is stupid," says her TSA agent, and he's groping her pants leg and purposefully coming around her backside to look at her from that angle. She wants to sock him, but she stands stiff as a board. He grabs at her thigh, and she snaps irritably down at the crown of his head, "You know, I'm not trying to SAY profiling, but - " And he, smiling as his round, chubby head peeks up, removes a pair of nail clippers from her pocket. "What was that, honeybunch?" Second time he'd called her that in as many minutes. "Can't let you have these on the plane... I could take you in the room for a more thorough search... if you like..." And his leer, and the look he cocked over his shoulder to the TSA agent manning the X-ray, soured her stomach. She wasn't making Section A now.
Through the security checkpoint, waiting on the main thoroughfare... He checks his iPhone. Patrick had uploaded the ticket information and the screenshots. He had her face now. He patted the slim, cool cylinder hidden in the pocket of his coveralls. As he scanned the crowd for her face, he cursed. She was supposed to be taking the flight out of Laguardia back to Boston, and if he didn't catch her here in the confusion of the airport he may never have a chance to infiltrate like this again. His employer had been very specific with his commands. He had provided him with a maintenance outfit and clued him in on the best entry and exit points. It should have been easy and anonymous. But he couldn't keep the charade of pushing his janitorial supply cart around idly for long, not until -
A tug came on his arm. It was a young looking mother, bearing a chubby cheeked little boy in her arms, cradling him as if he had the plague. The fat little kid had flecks of hot dog colored miasma around his mouth. "I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but Tryztane had himself a little accident... Didn't you baby, it's okay, it's the nice man's job to clean it..." And she swept her eyes back up to his. He grimaced, and let out a perturbed exhalation of air.
In the food court, frenzied, harried eyes were searching. He was disheveled, his cheeks slim to gaunt, losing much of his movie-star look in the intervening weeks since his exit from the set. He was sure he should have been flagged a million times now, but he sat there, in the food court, his wild eyes cutting from side to side with a tic. His eyes were what were giving him away, it was what broke the illusion, the becoming of Kyle. Kyle's eyes were ringed red, with bags of exhaustion. Kyle's hair (wasn't stringy no matter how much he tried to mousse it) and mop-like. Kyle wasn't wearing a sweat-stained hoodie. But that did not matter. Because he was going to become Kyle Shane. When he got on that flight out to South Carolina, he was going to get into the arena, affect the method acting he had trained himself into, and inhabit the role of Kyle Shane in front of a pay-per-view audience. As he sat there at the food court round table, his hand absently fondled the bulge in the pocket of his hoodie. And then, he got up from the table, throwing his burger wrapper in the trash.
It baffled and titillated him, nobody noticed him. Nobody came up to him, asking for a selfie or saying that they had enjoyed him in "that one, uhm, what was that movie called'... nobody even gave him a second glance as he slipped back into the crowd, headed towards the side of the building with numbers and letters running up to A. Why would they? He wasn't Kyle Shane. Not yet.
So many disparate elements...
Combustible meets accelerant. Push meets resistance. Resistance breeds friction. Friction causes a spark.
All of the pieces that were independent of each other from the start, when you put them together, they can create a flash of illumination. A flash of brilliance. The flash can open everyone's eyes. Or, it can be a devastating bomb, and it can completely backfire in the hands of the man who flicked the lighter, lobbed the Molotov; take a limb, leave third degree burns, and unforgettable scars.
Back against the wall, he tries to cheer himself up. So it wasn't a total loss, right? She wasn't there. And she wasn't there, and Alastair wasn't there. (Actually, according to Access Hollywood, Alastair had maybe had a little meltdown on the set of a particular movie, which made his damn day because he didn't really want to sit through a lawsuit with the writer of that particular script.) And if she wasn't there, then good. You know? She was out, working her career, making moves, building a brand. The last thing she wanted was for him to keep intervening in her life. Right? Of course right, he counselled himself, and he unplugged, snatched his phone and charger and holstered his bag on his shoulder, passing the food court. As he did, he nearly bumped into a tall, skinny drink of water in a dark hoodie, but he sidestepped and mumbled "Sorry chief" to no one in particular.
Except here in this long dark layover of the soul, he had to be honest with himself; it was all feeling empty. Bleak. What the fuck was this all even for? Sometimes, he feels like this is all his life has become, standing in front of a trophy case. He stands before it and defends my records from people that say they don't count, but he can't - can't touch the records anymore, and the oldest records don't seem to matter. And it doesn't ever seem to be enough, right? The trophy case will never not feel empty, uncompleted. The quest for perfection in a job is adulthood. The quest for perfection in a set of skills, that's humanity. But a quest for perfection in what's seen by your eyes as a game? To attain a perfect record, the most title defenses, the most trophies? Is that all there is to a life? But if it's not, and I'm hungering for something deeper with her, is it fair of me to keep asking that of her? He wished he could say. He wished... Fuck. He wished he could stop thinking, honestly.
And then as he steps around a man in janitor's coveralls angrily mopping up an unruly, unwieldy pile of sawdust. He passes by a laughing, pig-faced kid with hot dog slime and ketchup caked around his mouth and on his bib. He tips a sidelong, "Sorry bout your luck man" grimace to the unlucky shit who drew the straw of cleaning up that mess, and continued on down the concourse. Sections and gates stretched before him, going all the way to A, and he tracked the gates with his eyes. He was going south, so...
As he continued roaming around, in no particular hurry to get to a gate with a plane not leaving until tomorrow morning, the girl, increasingly harried and worn down, is leaning over the flight attendant's little podium. "Listen, my ticket says A38, and I just made it on time, you don't want to know how much trouble I had to give your agents, who were very rude, by the way..." The man, a thin older gentleman with the resting bitch face dealing with customer service and travel for X number of years wears into you, handed Array back her packet unsatisfied. "I'm very sorry miss but that flight has already boarded for takeoff. You needed to be here at 11:45."
"I WAS here at 11:45, I just had to get from down there," pointing forcefully, "To HERE, and let me tell you I was not on the track team in high school, and I am very tired, and I have a flight back home to Boston because I have rehearsal starting at 8 am, so can you please just give me some good news."
The salty, effete flight attendant looks her up and down, rumpled clothing, groped pants, hair out of place, frantic eyes, and runs a tongue under his lip. He points back towards the death march of the front desk, "I'm sure you can cash in your points for a replacement, but with the storm - " "-It won't be leaving until morning, I hear you, I hate you. This is why I'm never flying United again," she complains, and then turns, taking up her bag, thinking over and over that this can't be, she needed to nail this rehearsal, there was an important director coming to this show and she needed to be ready - and she. God. She fucked up. She let all the tension out of her shoulders, feeling herself crumbling. She was trying so hard to make all of this work. If she hadn't gone out to see stupid Alastair at that stupid movie shoot. God dammit. No, it was more than that. Who was she? Was she the kick ass, take names girl who fought for her dream, fought for respect when producers tried to Me Too her. Was she the girl who turned away from someone who she had chemistry with when it had started getting too bad? Was she a perfectionist who wanted to collect these glowing reviews of her work?
But what did a good review matter? What did someone giving your line readings a perfunctory "Her words flowed well, weren't disjointed, had heart" mean at the end of the day? You couldn't take admiration for your spoken words home with you and look at it. She had gone out chasing her dream, but she was not too careful with who she had to share it with. And now she had nobody to share this tough night with, either. Wasn't that just... luck. She sighed, and she went back down the concourse, back towards the entry. She may hit the food court, she thought absently, or maybe she would go back up the escalator to the lobby and see about ticket options. Or -
Her reverie was cut short by a young wife's wail, cutting over a group of people's head, "Oh, Tryztane, NO!! NOT AGAIN!" Then, a smaller, and softer "Sir? Can I trouble you one more time..." but she was lost in her head at that point, feeling lost in this crowd.
"Whoa - dude" came the stretched out, croaky bro cadence, a slack jaw peering around a Slurpee cup straw.
"Aren't you -"
"Broooo, can we get a selfie? Huh? Champ?"
Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, he thought, cursing that he had skirted too close to the food courts, but, hazards of the job, he took off his hoodie and gave them his cockiest smile. "Sup bois. You watch Pure Class Wrestling?"
"I mean, off and on - " "It's on a channel that Direct TV doesn't get -" "I'm always working at sometime between Thursday overnight and Friday evening" head rubbing, looking elsewhere, a bunch of excuses. The two boys, surely the Cheech and Chong or Jay and Silent Bob of their high school classes, scruffy with little bits of patchy beard hairs and baggy clothes and the unmistakable smell of pot. That they were even in the airport terminal was a miracle. But he indulged them, because why not. And if it turned out they were holding, well he had some time to kill before a flight. They took the selfie, and he even watched in brow furrowed amusement as they threw up West Side symbols, cuz lolwut.
"So what's up with you and that Gerard Angelo dude?" was the inevitable question that came out of the eager sorta-fans mouths. And what, really, else could be said? Gerard had had a competent argument at the very beginning but he'd let it fall apart due to his conspiracy theory handling. And since then they'd had to face each other across the ring forced to tag with two other men they both disliked, they were probably knowing Pure Class Wrestling's wacky obsession with booking tag matches going to have to team up WITH each other in some kind contrived love hurting thing, and try as he might to taunt and mock Angelo's premise about him needing help to win the dude was as convinced of his righteousness as a fanatic. And he was of the impression that he lived inside Kyle's head, which... was... true. But not for the reasons Gerard wanted it to be.
One stoney pony looked at Kyle and said, "Dude Gerard is gonna kick your ass so hard, like he's a made man. A Hollywood A-lister. Rolling with all the hottest girls and getting all the fine pussy. He's gonna bring some real style and flash back to the World title."
"Kid," he shot back with some restrained amusement, "Gerard is whiter than I am. Just first off - "
He isn't aware of the open mouthed stare from across the food court, the red-ringed eyes burning as they cross the ocean of people and spot that spiky quiff. No... it couldn't be, he thought, seeing him perfectly now that his hood was down... No... here?
"Dude, Gerard is owning your ass so hard," says the louder mouthed stoner fuck, smiling as if he's getting his goat, "What are you going to do to stop him cut one of your wack ass fifty minute long pysch out promos, you fucking wank." And he leans back in to the kid's facing, biting back just as hard, saying, "Gerard can beat me about the same time he can win an Icey, which, fucking, oops, how many Iceys does he have on his mantle? I'll bet he has just about as many Golden Globes."
His jaw quivers, and he steeples his fingers over his nose and face, exhales, thinks about how he's going to approach the distance between them while he's over there yelling at some stupid stoner kid. Because of course. Maybe when he becomes a version of Kyle Shane he won't be quite so... pedantically childish.
He claps his hands together in front of the kid's face to the beat of each word. "Delete. That. Selfie. Now. Delete it from your phone, you are not fucking posting that to your Instagram and hashtagging me." The boy pops and locks his way into giving him a middle finger, "Hashtag this, beyotch."
Sweat is beading on his head. His red eyes search the crowd. He's wondering how many people are looking at him now, a tall man with sweat running down his face with one hand in his pocket. Somewhere, off to his far left, he hears a young woman shrieking "NO TRYZTANE, DON'T LICK THAT OFF THE FLOOR, NOOOOO-"
So the question is, who's the one lighting the match? Who's the one throwing the cocktail? Who poured the mix, gathered all the elements? Or maybe the elements gathered, slowly, over time. Building up so gradually that you never would notice, until they swirled together. And it's less of a flash than it is a big bang. Maybe the universe is just like that. Maybe it puts all of these elements there in it's own time, not being sure which ones will react in which time, but sure enough in it's planning that they'll all have a part to play. Like four people in one airport, all of them for a different cross section of people. Or two men in one moment of history, where they interact with a set piece and it breaks. Maybe the explosion that happens when these meet at their intersection point is what it's been all about, and the universe just codes in it's variables until it makes that match, strikes that spark.
Sitting on the side of the terminal by the wall, on a bench, she hangs her head. She has her phone in one hand, and she looks at it, concentrating. New York isn't so... very far from Boston, and if she can get a rental car (but this late at night?) Maybe she can drive it red eye and get there before dawn. Probably, yeah, but her performance? No... maybe... maybe daddy can wire her the money to - No, daddy's stopped being an option long ago, girl, pull your head out of your ass. Maybe K -
No. She doesn't want to. She can't. He isn't going to make her career, and it's been such a hard road with him. Honestly as much as she could even forgive him (Alastair couldn't, hence the restraining order) the continued insistence on trying to force things together, that was the problem. Kyle was forcing it. When it had clicked between them it never had to be forced, and now he was trying to fit himself into all his old roles with her. But she never had any place in his life, any agency in those old roles, she was just a NPC love interest, for all intents and purposes a Princess fucking Peach. That wasn't her role anymore... and whatever else, was... not something she wanted to examine sitting on a bench in Laguardia freaking out with anxiety. She also was hangry, worn out, embarrassed from the TSA gangbang and just fried, so much so that she was wanting to get up, march over to the mother of the fat little boy who was now eating his own body matter, and slap her. She tried to block all the noise out, closing her eyes.
She thought of friends in NYC, maybe she could call and - God, stop the NOISE, she thought, peeking one eye open, scanning the nearby terminals, certain she heard a voice on the wind shouting "DELETE. THAT. SELFIE." but no, that wasn't possible, it was -
That man, in the janitors coveralls. He wasn't even paying attention to little Trimpstain or whatever, he was gripping the mop in both hands and twisting it, looking stonily at her.
Contact! That was the woman described. His eyes followed her as she nervously shouldered her carry bag. Oh no, did she make him? No, but she was looking at him suspiciously as she walked diagonally across to the women's restrooms. He started to wheel the cart full of janitorial supplies over there, and, on her knees, a young mother, tears streaking her face, looks up stupidly, her cow eyes rolling at him and asking, "But aren't you cleaning up his - " He looks down at her, his mouth a laconic line, and says "Bathroom check."
"Dude! You are like real life immature!" the stoner kid cries foul, as he's chasing after a taunting person who really should know better (but, in the final analysis, will always choose the option to be a shithead) "Gimme my phone!!" But it's no use, as six foot two inches of gangly limbs are playing keepaway and holding it overhead. "I'm gonna take it in that bathroom over there, think I'm gonna flush it!"
Seeing a problem, the man in the coveralls touches a Bluetooth headset, activating a line. "Patrick. We got a problem here..."
And the red-eyed man, he follows along, his extremities numb. He had not planned this out very far ahead. And he cursed himself that he had not allowed the consideration of improvising, but he hadn't seen running into Kyle Shane in the freaking airport coming. He touched the cool ceramic shape in his pocket. It was a prop he had just had to liberate from the movie studio, because he had been intending to carry it all the way on a plane to South Carolina and sneak into Kyle Shane's dressing room with it. But the script had been thrown out and they were calling for a rewrite... and his chances of ever being a leading man, someone Array would look in the eye, were going down the drain...
As he makes like he's going to juke into the bathroom with the kid's phone, he has a flash of self-awareness that brings him back down. Why does he always do this? It kind of does muddy the message, and he hadn't planned on being such a child about it. It was almost like that idea he had of going to the WGWF's Logistics warehouse, it seemed like a hilarious idea on paper, but now he was second guessing and wondering if some of the jokes being mapped out weren't too off the cuff for what he was attempting, and. He stopped. Alright. He'd had his fun. He turned back to the kid, a face screwed up full of regret, and he nodded, starting to apologize, and that's when he noticed someone drawing close to them, striding with a purpose. And drawing something out of his pocket. "Huh? - Hey, you look like -"
"I liked him in that one uhm, what was that movie called - "
"GUN!"
People around them broke and ducked as that call went out, and began flocking out of the way in panic. The red eyed man who really wanted to be the next Kyle Shane (in the next casting, maybe) was poised, flourished and holding the pistol out like someone in full form to play John Wilkes Booth. But the trigger he pulled didn't set off a spark, or a roar like a cannon. It didn't ignite a conflagration. The pieces weren't put in place that way. It fired a puff of dust in the shape of a bullet, a blank cap banged. Yes, sometimes, the universe puts blanks. That's just the way it works. Kyle looked up from between his hands, annoyed at the blank. He came forward, battering the ceramic gun out of Alastair's hand, and Alastair, gripped by frenzied strength, bull rushed Kyle back and drove him into the side of the wall underneath the men's room sign. On the other side of the divide, the man in the coveralls was snapping into his headset as he removed his tool, a long tube snapped onto a crude trigger, forming a silencer, and he put them together with deadly, hitman efficiency.
"No, Patrick. You sent me to kill the girl. What is your brother doing here?" He listened to the squawk from the other end of the line, raspy from it's hospital stay. "No, I'm not tracking him, Kyle Shane is here! ...Listen, I don't care what stupid 'lesson' you intended to teach him, any dealing with Kyle Shane in person would be extra." As he spoke he poked the silencer into the women's bathroom, fully entering it, and he sighted the barrel and scanned the corners of the room. The damn girl had come in here, but she wasn't in the open. This job had gone fully fubar. "Nothing I can do now, I'm exposed. I hope you'll front the money for this." And he ended the call. He poked the gun at the closed stall doors, and craned his head under the bottom of the doors, looking for a set of feet.
Outside, Kyle was kicking a frothing, roaring, completely off his mental game actor off him. The terminal was chaos. People were running every which way, panicked, airport security and police were caught in the flood and trying to direct traffic and not as yet, knowing where it was coming from. A teenage kid in a skull cap who looked every much like he knew his way around the munchies was squawking that Kyle Shane hadn't given him his phone back. An actor from Australia was scrambling around on his hands and knees, his fingers grasping at the floor. A young mother was scooping her son up against her shoulder and running with him, as behind her back, he was licking a tasty brown substance off his fingers. It was chaos.
In the ladies bathroom, the man in coveralls ruthlessly explored. He stared at an occupant, making her flee the bathroom, and he searched under a stall. Then the next. He got all the way down to the end and despite the lack of feet under the doorway he could see a shape between the grooves in the stall walls. He readied his put-together silencer and stood in front of the stall.
Inside the stall, Array was using her core strength to hang between the panels and lift her feet up onto the handicap rails. But she knew that the man who was chasing her was outside the door. She only had a moment's split second panic, why was this person after her, but she shut it out. She set her hands, and kicked out with all of her strength as she swung out, hitting the stall door hard enough to send it smashing into the hitman and knocking him off balance. She clumsily dismounted, slipping on toilet paper, and he was up, snarling after her as she ran for the terminal.
"Alastair, you're making me violate a court-ordered restraining order," Kyle choked out as the maniac's fingers were closing in around his windpipe. His vision was starting to go red, with shooting pulses behind his eyes. It was around this time that two security officers approached. The first, a burly black man with a police badge, eyed the two remarkably similar looking men, mouth open to ask what the trouble was. Caught in the frenzy of his performance falling apart with no more time to rehearse how he would become Kyle Shane. Caught up in a tornado now. He was fully embracing it. Kyle Shane WAS chaos. Kyle Shane was an agent of completely unlikely, ridiculous happenstance. There was no better way to embrace the imago of the Kyle Shane persona than to get into this melee. So he drew his ceramic prop gun with a hand freed from Kyle Shane's windpipe, and pointed it at the officer. The officer hesitated, seeing only the gun.
She comes out of the bathroom at that moment, not seeing the tableau at the men's entrance twenty yards away, just fleeing like the hounds of hell were at her heels. The man in the coveralls, not used to this much public exposure, was still committed to getting the kill now that she had attacked him, and not thinking straight. He readied his makeshift gun, but he couldn't get a clear draw on her as they both ran, and he froze as he saw her starting to slip between another, independent drama involving a standoff with the cops and two other blokes.
The airport security man's head turned as he spotted the girl fleeing. His radio was crackling, asking for updates. The chaos that had reigned, causing the panicked mob, had made helter skelter of everything. There was a crazy man waving an oddly fake looking gun around, there was now a lady, possibly part of the freaked out people running for her life; being chased? And then he saw the dark man after her, carrying a second gun.
Alastair saw the second gun of the hitman too, at the same time as he was running towards him, and, not understanding, he let go of Shane's throat. He thought this was some new hero, some airport dog there to take him down, and he stood there, defiantly, holding a pistol he had lost sight of being fake. He was in the moment. He was totally owning his role. "You stop right there, this is my show, I'm just going to kill Ky-"
Two shots from the silencer perforated him right between the eyes. There was only a minimal spatter of blood, and he fell, eyes rolling up and in as if both trying to see the bullet hole at the same time. His quarry, leaning against the wall, was choking. And the girl, she was fleeing, trying to skirt around the cadre of airport security that had come to investigate. The lead was now drawing his gun now that he wasn't under fire. "What in the hell is going on here?!" He demanded. The coverall man grimly assessed the situation, seeing the girl hanging just out of reach over the black security guard's shoulders. He raised his silencer, firing off a few shots, making the security guards scatter.
Kyle looked down at someone who, until recently, had been trying with varying degrees of success to become a version of him. Alastair had an open eyed, open mouthed look of surprise eternally on his face now, as he stared up at the lights, and a thin rickle of blood came from the hole in his head. And Kyle wanted to smirk about it, but honestly, it felt hollow, and a little sad that Alastair had gone down this way, even if he was a prick about the whole restraining order thing. Bye Alastair, he thought somberly, and in the moment of chaos that was all the eulogy he could spare as he found himself in the middle of a shootout between airport security and a weirdo with a handmade gun. But there, fleeing from the shots, ducking behind an Orange Julius stand in the middle of the terminal was a shape he never thought he'd see, not here.
She had lived a hell of a life in her twenty three years, thank you very much. She'd ripped off biker gangs and had to run from them, she had sold drugs while trying to keep herself afloat after she had been left to her own devices at seventeen, so the fact that she was hyperventilating, the grip of a panic attack banding tight around her lungs, wasn't a knock on her agency, it was just reality, she rationalized to herself as she ducked behind the Orange Julius kiosk and tried to make herself small. She tried to control her breathing. The man in the coveralls had sniped off one of the cops, but they were radioing for reinforcements. A bullet chipped away part of a counter over her head. She yelped. And then, a shape, moving quickly into cover, parked itself to her left, it crouched and peeked over the counter, watching the shootout. Then, he looked down at her. "Hey, kid. Everything the same?"
The moment she heard their inside joke, she looked at him, panic on her face. "Kyle?!"
He ducked down beside her, sitting next to her. Her breathing was slowing, mercifully, but she couldn't stop looking at him. "What are you doing here? Are you - " and then, forgetting the noise buzzing over their heads, her face transitioned into a flat, arch look of annoyance, "Kyle, were you following me?" He looked hurt, and said, "No! I was - look, I had gone to your apartment a couple nights ago, but you weren't there, and I felt your presence there and I wanted to see you last night - "
"- But I had gone to the Tyler Zane movie set to confront Alastair, and then I was catching my flight back to Boston to get to rehearsal - "
" - And I was trying to catch a flight because I have to be in South Carolina for work, and -"
They had both pieced together the tangled mess of irony that had brought them to this point in time, and it was so blackly funny. Array's face remained stone, but Kyle was looking over at her, trying not to smile, and she snorted, trying not to laugh, and then they broke out into both of those. "Shane luck," Array said, not wanting to laugh but having to, and he rolled his eyes and raised his hands heavenward. It was pure serendipity.
His eyes focus, and he grows more serious, looking at her urgently, "But Array, I just wanted to tell you that throughout the separation, that I've come to terms with a lot. I've experienced what I think is a real growth, breakthrough, sorta. And I've realized that Kyle Shane really is missing something without his heart. That was what I was trying and failing to tell you so many times, in my broken, creepy way. And I - God, now that we're together, in this time and place, thanks to the universe putting all of these elements together..."
A bullet spanged off a trash can near them and Array ducked back. Her voice rose with disbelief, "I don't think now is the best time for this...?!"
He earnestly took her hand, getting closer to her. The police were converging, there were more, and they were drawing their guns on the man in the coverall. He had hid behind the alcove leading into the men's room, but, even as he was running low on ammo, he still looked around the corner, ready to draw. Behind the Orange Julius stand, Kyle moved himself so that he was facing her as much as he could while maintaining cover. "I'm a big believer in the fact that the universe gives things a nudge towards the way they should be. It just means that you have to be brave enough to try and grab it, when it comes."
Array sighed, and looked him in the eye, and said, "But are you sure this time? And you won't get cold feet, and start pushing me away when things get too rough? Because you've had thoughts like this before, but you can't keep backing out when you want."
"It's the only time," he came to, after a second's deliberation, "Because I've been thinking for some time now that what I have isn't... enough. My life has been empty, and all I have is me and my feelings. And those have pushed away everyone I care about. My son, Krista... you... And it's left me with nothing but an empty trophy case." When he says the words trophy case, she tilts her head at him, confused. And he just gives a quick head shake, never mind that.
She sits back, crossing her arms over her chest, her eyes looking off into the middle distance, searching through a million complicated feelings. The security team had crowded near the entrance, and were closing in on their man. Behind the stand, she starts and stops for a moment, then admits her own truth, "Alastair and I worked for a little while. In fact, in the beginning he was the sweetest guy. And I thought it was so ironic, I met Alastair, because I got hired on to play a part in a story that was about you. But that's why I walked away from it. Because it was about you. Kyle, so much of my life has had to revolve around you. Because you put me in the spotlight at such a young age, I had to live, fully exposed and in the open of that spotlight. I always was Kyle's girl, even when we were apart. I wanted something for myself, that wasn't Kyle's story. And I was starting to have that. Finally got my own apartment. I got the role in that first play, and that was magic for me. And me and Alastair, when it worked, it was working - but then it started to not, and I think I knew why -"
" - Because he was Australian and fucked koalas?" She elbowed him in the gut, "Sorry, I'll stop." And she continued, looking at him, "Because he was trying to be you. In a very real sense, he was trying to replace you, and when he began taking on your characteristics, I got scared. Maybe he was just getting too into the role, whatever. He got scary. And you can be scary, Kyle. Despite the jokes, you bring - an intensity to our relationship that requires a lot of emotional work."
He can't say she's wrong (I mean, he did sorta break into her apartment), but he looks up, a million warring expressions on his face, but flitting between acknowledgement and reproached. She takes his face in her hand, "But that's what, in the final analysis, keeps me coming back, and why Alastair was trying to make something that we didn't have. Alastair couldn't replicate you because you and me are just the right two elements, when put together, it makes fire, baby. And you just can't fake that."
They got closer together, and he rested his forehead against hers. The police and security force working in tandem rounded the lip of the alcove into the men's room, and in that little L-shaped corner drew on the hitman in coveralls. He held his gun aloft, but when he pulled the trigger - nothing.
"God, when you left, when Johnny left, when I was all alone in that apartment, I thought I didn't have anything left," he said, a rush of emotion he couldn't quite put his finger on, and she rested her head against his chest. "Really? Because you seemed so - in your promos - I didn't think you needed me anymore..."
"I do. I do need you. I need you, Array..." And she looked up at him, then, tears in her eyes.
They embraced each other, there, sitting side by side behind the kiosk.
In the men's room, the officers stand, looking down at the hitman, laying in a pool of his blood, and an officer calls it in to the crackling radio that the suspect is down.
The storm outside had passed, and the two of that sat together in the terminal as rescue and EMT workers began making their way on the scene. For a while, they were ignored, as any hurt or wounded in the stampede of the frightened mob or anyone hiding came out, were worked on by rescue personnel. The cleanup effort bustled around, letting two young people just coexist in each other's arms and hold each other tight, their now and then saying something to each other, but mostly just sitting there and breathing, their hearts and breath linked in beautiful harmony.
It can be terrifying, but beautiful in a way. The universe knows what it needs, and like a makerless machine it produces the variables and sets them into motion. Sometimes it's destructive, sometimes the process is entropic in it's nature, and it puts multiple variables on a collision course into ruin. But sometimes, just sometimes, for everything the universe takes away, it finds a way to bring some other elements together in return, and give them one beautiful, shining moment. It's serendipity at it's finest.
