How she ended up face down in a pool of sleet and mud is anyone's guess, but it was not where she predicted she'd wind up at the end of her first night out. Her first walk alone on the streets since the....

Frostflakes clung to her lashes and their cold stung her eyes as she crawled forward to brace herself on her elbows and get to some normal....make that, some ordinary position, not that sitting in the middle of a street at three in the morning was ordinary, but it was better than being in an ungainly sprawl on the intersection of two main avenues with your skirt over your head and snow in your eyes. Now, what had happened....

Arcadia took her time to get to her feet, uncertain of her footing with one heel broken and the other shoe....gone. It was as if standing would send the order of the world upside down and face forward again. Vertigo. She couldn't say why she thought that, or why the very idea of her still being alive and moving perturbed her so. Had she been dreaming of her death, unconsciously aware of its reality as she lay there. Arcadia hadn't yet seen the shards of glass sticking out of cheek or the knife sticking out of her back. Literally. Numb with the cold, pain's disguise, and shock did lovely things to ones sense of feeling. Not to mention your complexion. But it did little to undo the disquiet she sensed as she turned around and stared down both long, lonely, empty street.

"Hello?"

It was the most obvious thing in the world, to reach out. The first pricklings of pain condensed in her mind. Slid down to each nerve ending, reminding her body of what the mind had forgotten when she had fallen.

What had....



"Hello, Arcadia. Good to see you!" The voice was male. Okay. Who the hell was that! Uh...

The knife pulled from her back. The voice repeated its greeting. Arcadia swayed, moaned, her weight going forward, she swung around.

Oooof!

That hurt!

Down for the count. Vaguely aware of her ankles being bound and the scratch of the road as she was hauled along.

The streets were still empty, except for a black figure dragging a limp figure down one of the quiet avenues of West End, whistling all the way.

The Fedora was not only a bar. It was where Arcadia was instructed to go and what on most occasions she was instructed to wear. The rest could change as long as the lines were straight and her eyes didn't meet those not meant for them. But the hat had to be worn. There was an angle. There was a brand. There was always a red sash around the middle - wine red, the exact shade. The milliner was from Italy - selected by The Caller, groomed, educated and informed of his local dame. Arcadia could only visit his shop.

"Arcadia, lovely to see you!" - it was like the opening to a play he read every month, sometimes he played with how he said his hello, which words he exaggerated, and he may change his hello but Arcadia's was always the same - she smiled but her eyes did not meet his and her gloved hands were already half way into the transaction - filing bill after bill from the leather clutch in her hands. While waiting, she would go to the window and light a cigarette. The hatter would dust off the good and present it to her when ready. She didn't meet his eye, but nodded at the hat, confirming its perfection, and returned to the view outside and her cigarette. Then, Arcadia would hand over the second half of the bills, one note at a time, take up the box it was wrapped in, nod, though still not meeting his eyes, thank him softly, and leave. That was how it went every single visit. Clockwork. He would exclaim her name and it would never stretch beyond that - no pleasantries, no curious questions. He would receive a phone call exactly two days before her visit with the request - then in she would come, exactly two days later, for her new hat.

The Caller was precise with his instructions and he paid very well. Discretion was never free. Even the milliner charged for that, but mostly, it was out of fear.



Sometimes, as he watched her shapely figure walk out the door into the afternoon in that de ja vu this scenario now was, with the embers of her cigarette in one hand, the hat box the other, the fedora pulled into that certain angle over her eyes, he wondered what price Arcadia paid" How steep did she live" If it could be called living at all. After each call he told himself "never again? because the persuasive, handsome, voice on the other end of the phone always left him feeling spooked. The money was good and The Caller was a regular client. His best client.

Sometimes, he wanted to leave a message in the fedora for Arcadia. "RUN" he imagined it would say. But he had a feeling that she never could do that. That it was not so simple. Though The Caller had never been overtly threatening, on some deeper level, the milliner knew a customer was not all he would lose did he leave the dame a message in her hat.