Time went by and she befriended a couple of kind of wasted looking semi-drunk semi-retired guys who said they used to be semi-professional wrestlers and who were often stood out front of her building or half-sat on the steps. One of them – who liked to be known as The Jones – said he was connected to some guys in Disorganised Crime. She let slip some stuff about how Citrus betrayed her and in time, as trust grows in these situations, The Jones promised that he would say a word in some ears and then see what kind of legal or illegal things could be done to intervene in the narrative. The Jones was a drunk but to hear him talk he knew some stuff about what he called Story Structure. He once did a Correspondence Course, that’s what he boasted, though in truth he never completed it. Charlene needed development he said, she needed fleshing out and he made her feel special when he said that, and his hand brushed her thigh and she liked the way he picked the dirt and stuff from out behind his fingernails using a plastic disposable knife as he talked. Even more than development, The Jones said to Charlene when they sat on the steps one night and watched helicopters searching for Insurgents, even more than development, she needed closure. The thing with Citrus was an opening, an incomplete thread, an orphan event. A life could get shapeless with too much of those, or the air could all escape from it and leave a person deflated. She needed some closure and The Jones said he’d help her find it, even though he was like three times her age, immune to her limited charms and totally beyond an erection.

*

Summer turned into December. Charlene took a job with a firm that removed Asbestos from the ceilings of buildings that were bombed out and due to be knocked down. You had to provide your own protective clothing and masks, you had to figure out your own hours and rota with the absentee foreman and there were no actual wages – it was basically working for tips. But it was a job at least and she got by.

The Jones out front of her building was always talking to her about sub-plots, denouements and character arcs, but by this point, with the fake snow falling in droves and the sound of Bing Fucking Crosby amplified all over town, she found him tedious and repetitive; all she wanted was a chance to get even on the Citrus thing.

*