Chapter Four: One Man's Sin
by thelittletree
It wouldn't have surprised Elira if Vincent had not come to work the next day. The surprise came when she found him in his usual spot by the door when she unlocked it for her employees at a quarter to nine. He nodded as he walked briskly past her into the forge as if he'd left the shop the night before as usual and was just seeing her again since then. Somehow, through her shock, she was able to nod politely in return before retreating behind her desk.
Benita was the next to show, followed by the men. Terry arrived last of all, coming in at almost exactly nine. Elira gave him a warm smile as he entered, but he glanced away. He then entered the forge, his expression guarded. Elira tried to ignore the knot this encounter put in her stomach.
There were no recent orders for guns to be approved; there was no paperwork to do; there were no deposits to take to the bank, and no customers to call. There wasn't even a wet boot mark on the floorboards to clean up. Elira sighed, trying desperately to think of something she could do that wouldn't require entering the forge. But there was nothing, and she couldn't just sit all day at her desk. Not when there were orders to be filled, as well as shotguns to be fashioned for the upcoming hunting season. Putting down the pen she had been twirling in her fingers, Elira stood, mustering her courage to enter the place that, once her refuge, now felt like an emotional battlefield. But everything that had happened last night hadn't all been her fault. It wasn't her fault if Terry was so obsessed with her that he flew into fits of jealousy about things that weren't his business. That was his fault, his own problem. And it wasn't her fault if she had made Vincent uncomfortable.
Well, maybe that was her fault. But she really believed that she'd made some kind of breakthrough with him, as if she'd somehow gotten to the inside and made a connection. For a moment, she'd felt that he'd accepted her into his world, even if she'd trespassed to get there. It had made her feel special, unique, and that had taken away some of the loneliness that still haunted her life.
She just hoped that Terry's untimely phone call hadn't altogether severed any hopes of furthering the connection.
The forge was still fairly cool as the furnace warmed slowly, the red coals promising a familiar heat by the middle of the morning. Vincent was in his usual seat beside the furnace, already working on a small pistol. Elira wondered idly if he didn't get hot sitting so close to the coals in his heavy-looking black clothing, but her mind wandered as she noticed Terry staring at her. She looked his way but he met her eyes for no more than a second before lowering his gaze to the shotgun he was assembling. His movements were short and fast, like Vincent's, Elira noticed, but with a certain hastiness that could've almost been classed as carelessness. He assembled the gun the way he had been taught, but with no apparent knowledge of how it worked, as if it wasn't a weapon that could be used to kill someone. Elira found herself strangely disgusted by Terry's casual laxity.
"Hey," she began quietly after a moment. "I'm sorry I got angry over the phone last night. I guess I've just been stressed out or something. I...I haven't really been myself lately. It's like...I'm finding things about myself that are nothing like what I thought I was."
Terry gave a snort. "Yeah? Well, I hope these things you're finding out don't change you any more along the lines I've seen, or you'll wind up chasing everybody off." He looked up at her meaningfully as he said the last few words, his jaw set and eyes smoldering.
. Elira knew Terry well enough to guess that he was only using irate words to hide his pain, but they made her angry nonetheless. Reining her temper as best she could, she raised her chin resolutely and said, "You know, I was trying to apologize. That was really rude."
Terry raised his eyebrows and gave a laugh of feigned shock. "Oh yeah? Since when did being concerned for a friend constitute rude behaviour?" He looked around, directing his question at everyone in the forge. Benita and Vincent ignored him, but the other three nodded their heads and muttered their agreement.
"Since you became my 'keeper' instead of my friend," Elira shot back, her anger rising to the surface.
Benita gave some quiet, unintelligible encouragement from where she was sitting.
"I'm not trying to be your 'keeper', or whatever. I just wanted to know what was going on because I was worried! Isn't that what friends do?"
"Friends worry; they don't obsess about who's in your apartment doing what!"
There was a sudden clattering of metal against wood. Elira glanced with the others to where Vincent sat, the pistol he had been working on lying awkwardly on the table. He didn't raise his head or pick the gun up from the table where he'd dropped it. He just stared at an undefined point in front of him, his hands resting protectively over the weapon as if he didn't trust his grip.
"What's wrong with Vincent?" Terry asked spitefully. Elira didn't look at him, but she could feel his eyes boring into the side of her head. "Is he flustered? Is he uncomfortable with our topic?"
Elira kept her eyes on Vincent's bowed head, her teeth clenched on all of the retorts that were more than eager to pop out of her mouth. But through her anger, she felt a sort of pity. She wondered if Vincent thought she had revealed their encounter to Terry. He'd never seemed to care before what anyone in the forge thought about him. But if someone were to find out that beyond his cold exterior was a feeling, hurting human being, as frail as anyone else, maybe it would embarrass him. She hoped she'd have the chance sometime soon to assure him that Terry didn't know. No one did, or ever would.
Terry turned his attention from Elira to Vincent as he sat unmoving at the table. "What's bothering you, Vince? Huh, buddy? What were you and Elira doing in her apartment last night?"
Elira felt her temper boil over. Vincent had nothing to do with this. It was between Terry and herself, and Terry should've known that. But, there he went again, hurling insults concealed as questions as if Vincent were a bullseye. "Leave Vincent out of this, Terry! He didn't do anything."
"I'm not asking you, I'm asking Vince. Huh, Vince? What'd ya do up there? Sit around staring at each other?"
Elira felt like screaming at Terry, but she realized this was childish and controlled the impulse. "He came up to see the book, Terry. That's all. I told you that over the phone. You're blowing it all out of proportion!"
"Am I?" Terry banged the palms of his hands on the table as he leaned forward heavily. "I bet you two were up there doing more than just reading! I'll bet he was doing what any warm-blooded man in this sector would've done in that same situation!"
"You mean what you would've done!" Elira shouted, not caring anymore about governing her temper. "And so what if we were doing something more than reading? What are you going to do about it? Call the police? I still think a girl has the right to have a man in her apartment in this sector!"
Terry's eyes burned with a fury Elira had never before seen in him and for a moment she was afraid he was going to attack her physically. But instead, he slammed his fists down with such force that the table bounced off the floor before he stalked out of the forge. Elira heard the squealing of the bell above the door as he fled the shop. She looked at the floor, still angry but feeling ashamed of her words. She didn't want to hurt Terry. She just wanted him to back off.
After a moment of silence had passed, Benita muttered, "Well, that was better than anythin' I ever seen in a soap op'ra."
Normally, Benita's lighthearted phrases brought a smile to her lips, but not today. Elira looked at her for a moment, then slipped out of the forge. Sliding down onto the bottom step of the stairway between the shop and her apartment she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
Terry didn't return for the rest of the day, and when Elira called his house there was no answer. After an hour of sitting at her desk toying viciously with a pen, waiting for him to come back, she re-entered the forge and lost herself in her work. The morning passed in a blur.
As lunch time approached, Elira began to let her mind leave the realm of metallurgy; she wanted to talk to Vincent and tell him that Terry didn't know anything about last night. As she hammered on an old cylinder for a handgun, feeling better with every blow, she thought about how to best broach the subject. During the lunch hour was the prime time, she decided, when everyone else had left the shop. She just hoped Vincent would still let her talk to him after what had happened.
But it wasn't to be. Not even ten minutes before twelve the bell over the door chimed. Taking off her plastic face shield, Elira entered the front room of her shop to discover one of her old customers, a man who had recently opened his own weapons store at the other end of the sector. A few years over thirty, and a family man, he enjoyed talking. A lot. Elira sat on her stool nodding and smiling for over an hour while he talked about his store and his kids and his wife and his health. And she could hear Vincent still working away in the forge. The customer finally departed when, at almost a quarter after one, Benita poked her head out of the forge and demanded Elira's presence loudly.
At precisely nine that evening, once his day's work was packed up and put aside, Vincent left the shop, not even stopping to give Elira a parting nod.
Elira closed the store more quickly than usual that night, almost shoving the last of her straggling employees out the door, before running down the sidewalk after Vincent. He already had a few blocks on her and was walking at a fairly quick pace, so it took her a few minutes to reach him.
His head was bowed as he walked swiftly, his midnight hair billowing out behind him, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat. It struck Elira suddenly that he was an imposing figure, tall as he was and all dressed in black; he looked like the kind of man a girl would run away from instead of toward. But Vincent, unlike any member of the criminal element, had no interest in murdering anyone. Actually, Elira realized, he really had no interest in anyone period. If she were to be hit by a truck and killed while running after him, he probably wouldn't even look back, uninterested in the tragedy except for the passing acknowledgment that he would be working under someone else from now on. Well, maybe not. Maybe he would feel some loss in that the person who'd reached out to him, made a small connection with him, was now dead. Maybe.
Or maybe he'd be glad she was gone, since it would free him from her endeavor to get closer to him. Elira frowned, holding her coat closed against the wind as she jogged down the sidewalk; this train of thought was getting her nowhere. She didn't know enough about him to guess at what went on in his head. And, really, none of what she was thinking had relevance to anything she wanted to say to him. She cursed inwardly as she finally came up beside him, breathing heavily, with no idea of how to begin.
Once she'd caught her breath she cleared her throat and looked up at him. He ignored her presence. She folded the two zippered edges of her coat over one another and then crossed her arms to keep them closed together, her mind racing as she tried to think of some way to break the ice. But everything was ice: Vincent's expression, the atmosphere surrounding them, even the words that came to her lips only to be swallowed back down seemed frozen.
Finally she gave a small, nervous chuckle. "You know," she began, her voice sounding squeaky in her own ears, "you ought to show me how to use a gun, O experienced one. That way, I'll be able to follow you after work without the fear of being jumped." She chuckled again but the sound dwindled into a cough when Vincent didn't give any acknowledgment to her statement. After another moment of silence, she re-cleared her throat and decided to try the head-on approach.
"Look, I'm sorry about what Terry said to you earlier. It was uncalled for. He's just a...a bully. A really...obsessive bully. He was just angry at me and had to strike out at someone. And you happened to be in the way. I'm really sorry. And I wanted to tell you that he doesn't know anything about last night. I didn't tell him a thing."
Vincent didn't say anything. In fact, he didn't say a word all the rest of the way to the train station. It was only when he was stepping onto the platform, with Elira watching from behind and resolved to not getting a response, that he said, "You shouldn't apologize for another's mistakes. Every man's sin is his own." And then he disappeared into the train.
Elira stood looking after him until the train's rumbling on the track was no more than an echo. Another cryptic response. Every man's sin is his own. Was he referring to, more than Terry, to himself? She shook her bowed head in confusion.
And then she lifted her face, realizing that he'd taken all blame of the situation away from her. He didn't believe it was her fault. Maybe their 'encounter', as she'd started referring to it, last night hadn't been as repugnant to him as she'd thought.
With a smile on her face, she left the platform and started home. And, as if her contentment had lifted her out of the sector to where she was walking on air, invisible to all on the streets below, not one suspicious-looking character even attempted to grab her. As if they were afraid they would burn their miserable hands on her happiness.
Terry came to work the next day, his expression sullen and hard as stone. Elira wanted to greet him but the words died in her mouth as he passed her desk. And, during the next few days as he continued to work for her, almost as silent as Vincent, she began to see what people meant when they said that there was a thin line between love and hate.
Over the next couple of weeks, whenever Elira entered the forge she refrained from looking at Terry; it pained her heart to see him, once a close friend, now an enemy. She filled the orders, made hunting weapons, and tried to ignore him when he passed Vincent and shoved him, or pushed him into the table. The first time it happened, Vincent turned to her and shook his head ever so slightly. It wasn't her fault, and he wasn't going to make a big deal of it. She faked ignorance for the sake of the connection she saw in his eyes that day.
Benita, however, was not as forgiving, and was too straightforward to pretend not to see. Often, she sprang up to Vincent's defense amidst the chuckles of the other men, yelling, "Terry, yer a sad sight!" or "Leave'im alone, ya bully!" But Terry paid no attention to Benita; she bore no part of his wrath.
Coming to work was like pulling teeth for Elira. It bothered her to the point where it made her sick to her stomach with dread and drove her to insomnia by the dreams it induced. Because, no matter how many times Vincent could shake his head, she still felt that it was her fault. She didn't love Terry the way he wanted. And Vincent was paying the price without saying a thing in his own defense, as if it wasn't unfair. As if he deserved everything he got.
Sometimes, Elira thought she hated Terry.
And sometimes, Elira thought she was growing increasingly fond of Vincent. She found herself respecting him for literally 'sticking to his guns' when Terry bothered him, ignoring the taunts when most other men would've gathered up every last scrap of their immaturity and fought. And she began to like the quiet, thoughtful, mysterious manner that had once annoyed her.
Perhaps Benita was right; maybe there was something attractive about a mysterious man. Though, she told herself again and again, she wasn't attracted to him *that way*. The fact that she found herself thinking about him an awful lot, found her eyes straying to him while she worked in the forge, just proved that she liked him, admired him.
Nothing more.
Even when her fingertips tingled sometimes when she remembered how his skin had felt to her touch. Even when her breathing became shallow and her heart rate quickened every time she thought about his arms around her waist.
These things didn't mean what they meant for other people. She and Vincent were different. His touch had just been a surprise because he was so aloof. And it had made her feel the way it had only because she hadn't been in anyone's intimate embrace for so long. That was all.
She just ignored it when she began to want to touch him again. Because that was hard to explain away. Other than that, she had no problem believing the things she told herself.
Until the day he smiled at her.
It wasn't a big smile, just a twitching at the corners of his mouth after her greeting and his courteous nod. Elira wondered dreamily for the rest of the day how such a small gesture could affect her mood so drastically. It didn't make any sense; it didn't fit with her reasoning. She even found herself smiling for the first time in weeks, humming a tune she'd heard on the radio that morning. Benita had commented on the change of her disposition for the better but instead of explaining, Elira had only smiled wider and continued working on the recent order forms.
Terry appeared to notice it, too. After a couple of days he seemed to realize that he was no longer making her miserable and he stopped bothering Vincent. He would just sit sullenly at his table. Elira tried every once in a while to talk to him, just light conversation like they used to, but he ignored her. And Elira would again feel miserable. Until Vincent left that night, giving her *that* smile before stepping out the door.
And she would get home, feeling as if someone had been playing at tug-o-war with her emotions. She wished that things would just settle down so she could be absolutely happy or absolutely miserable; this jumping between them was so very tiring. And while she was wishing, she wished that she didn't live in sector four so that, on the evenings when she felt she couldn't stand it one more minute, she could go on a safe, evening walk to clear her mind.
But she did live in Virna, sector four.
She needed to get some fresh air before she'd had enough. She needed an escape, if only for an hour. One hour to clear her mind. That's all she was asking for she told herself, drifting off to sleep one night after a particularly hectic day. Surely someone, fate or God, would see fit to grant her this. Just one hour...