Giust (Closing)

“What were you thinking?”

Ysabel stands on the sidewalk arms akimboed, face hidden in the shadows under the streetlights. A thin mist not quite rain seeps slowly out of the air to sheen the pavement and the cars parked up and down the street. Jo still in her long grey dress barefoot sheathed sword in her hand comes down the steps from the porch of the big white ramshackle house on the corner, its windows behind her all lit up with candles and Christmas lights. “I was thinking,” she says, “we’d take a taxi. Borrowed a phone from the drummer. I mean even if I was ready to walk home like this, you wouldn’t make it in those heels.”

Her beaded gown clattering Ysabel folds her arms together as Jo steps onto the sidewalk. “How are we going to pay for a taxi?” she says.

“That’s supposed to be my line,” says Jo, holding up the gold credit card. “So maybe I’ll cop yours and say don’t worry about it.”

“Where did you get that?” says Ysabel, taking the card slowly from Jo, turning it over and over again.

“The Duke gave it to me. Said it was one of the–”

“The Duke?” says Ysabel, sharply. “The Hawk was here? Tonight?”

“Yeah,” says Jo. “I was talking to him, in the library. Which is where I was I guess when the whole thing happened, which, I mean, I’m sorry, but–”

“This is a big deal,” says Ysabel. She isn’t looking at the card. She’s looking away across the intersection at a darkened green house on the opposite corner behind a low stone wall.