Lake Effect

{working towards being urban fantasy, but currently self indulgent with a touch of unexpected lesbians. This is the kind of story that I'm leanring about as it goes along. Destination: unknown.)



It was snowing in Chicago. Again. The snow fell in Chicago like the world couldn’t go on without it, like monsoons in bleached and barren dessert plains. It snowed like it thought it was salvation, heavy and dirty and never white for long. And the wind...the wind was always there. They called Chicago the windy City for Victorian era politicians who were all grandeur and hot air. The name stuck around for other, more obvious reasons.

You tended to fall in love in winter in Chicago, because another body at least meant that you were warm.

In Millennium park, in the light from tall park lamp posts cast enough light that she wasn’t so sure she was going to get raped, tonight. With too cool hipster teenagers in skinny jeans passing a clove back and forth among half a dozen of them a few park benches away, it was hard to feel threatened. The snow was coming down in Chicago, but the city’s sky had a permanent orange ting, even now at close to four am. One million city lights reflected against low floating, thick winter clouds. It looked just a little bit like sunrise all night long.

Everyone looked homeless in the middle of winter, or at least anyone sensible with a long way to walk. Hiking boots, two sweat shirts, and thick gloves, it was hard to tell she was female. The thought made Marilyn smirk, lips stained pink from lipstick she’d put on hours ago but failed to reapply. One up on the rapists, then. Always keep the guessing. You kept your mace in your pocket with the safety off and just went on happily believing that you were immortal. It had worked so far.

It tended to work right up until it didn’t, anymore, and even then it didn’t matter. You were immortal or you were wrong, and if you were wrong, you didn’t have long to regret it. Flash, bam, sparkle, what more is there to a quickly burning life?

She rolled to her feet, dusting snow flakes off her jacket and giving the cluster of hipsters a cheerful grin as she passed. Music, cigarette smoke, the last rambling echos of a contact high...it was night in Chicago, but it wasn’t unfriendly. The El rattled comfortingly a few blocks away and some anxiety eased in her chest.

She was twenty eight years old, today, and had buried a father, a mother, and a twin in ten years. One decade, just one, and it felt like a dense chapter in an otherwise unremarkable life. Twenty eight, and nothing to show for it but a few ill-advised tattoos and a taste for good bourbon.

Jamie, reading her palm one night and tracing her life line with the tip of one perfectly polished nail had said, “You’re destined for light and for fire, you know.” She was beautiful in the light cast by the cheap torchieres in their apartment, freckles standing out on her cheekbones, the trail of three perfect birthmarks raised on the curve of her jaw. Her hair had been tucked up under a violently purple handkerchief, cokebottle glasses making her eyes look huge. 

Marilyn had calmly retracted her hand, running the tip of a stocking clad foot up Jamie’s calf and inner thigh. “So was Joan of Arc,” she said, mouth a slanted, smirking line. “Why don’t you just tell me about our happy ending, baby. And use that radio voice of yours.”

Jamie had blushed, so young at only twenty-three years old, but a rising star in the radio world, smooth voice and her softly sculpted vowels and nouns. She had blushed, but she had talked soft and smooth, and she was steady, sure, right up until Marilyn had her against the counter in the kitchen with her skirt around her hips, Jamie’s perfectly polished fingers curling desperately around the handle on the kitchen drawers, shuddering and shaking and pressing her hips forward against Marilyn’s restraining hands. Her voice was high and perfect then, and one of her ankles was bobbing against Marilyn’s back, and Marilyn remembered thinking yes and perfect, and Not one of your listeners gets to hear you like this, baby, not one.

But that was how it worked sometimes, Marilyn thought, leaving tracks in Millennium park, passing the bones of Millennium stadium, abandoned and empty, great metal struts arching like the remains of a great beached whale. Over the bare branches of trees, the quicksilver of the Bean was almost visible. In the next puddle of light, she fished a cigarette out of her pocket and lit up with satisfaction.

It was winter in Chicago, and sometimes that made you fall in love.