Kismet

By Thalia

It was Saturday, the graveyard shift, and really, only drunks typically came in at this hour. But when the doorbell chimed on this night at three AM, Nick looked up from the physics book in his lap and his eyes widened. This was no local drunk looking for a place to piss and a pack of smokes, but he wasn't QUITE sure what to make of her, either.

A quick glance outside revealed a rusty, boxy-looking car that once must have been a pretty shade of blue. But it looked dusty and old, and the mirror on the passenger door was broken off. And to match the battered car was a girl with too-old eyes on her striking, otherwise-young face, and Nick watched silently as she shifted wavy, green-dyed hair behind one ear and stalked up to the counter, holding out a crumpled bill. "Twenty on two," she muttered, and he mechanically entered the amount in the system. She stepped outside to turn on the pump, and then re-entered the gas station to buy a drink.

"What're you doing out here at this hour?" he blurted out, his voice carrying across the still and silent station. "It's not really safe, you know."

"This is just a stop," she returned, her voice weary. He had the feeling that when she wasn't tired, it would be proud and curt. He swallowed as she carried a bottle of coke and a pack of Wrigley's double-mint to the counter, and rang up her purchases.

"Going somewhere, then?" It was a rather inane thing to ask, but Nick was tired, and when his eyes had met hers for a moment as he'd handed back her change, she had looked as though something in her was starving for comfort. A moment of someone's time. Someone to listen. He was a struggling college boy working full-time to pay his tuition in a city that became dangerous at night, and she was... well, a mystery in a wrinkled prep school uniform and incongruous combat boots, her luxuriant curls dyed the colour of Christmas holly. Her gas had finished pumping, but he said nothing about it. "I'm Nick, by the way. Welcome to the East Side." Here, the city was divided into East and West sides, and the statement was meant to set her at ease. And for a moment, he almost thought he'd succeeded. A shadow of a smirk crossed her cherry lips for a moment, before vanishing like a wisp of smoke.

"Rhiannon, and if you call me Betty-Ann, I'll kick your ass," she introduced herself, and were it not for the bullet-proof glass separating them, he would have shaken her hand. At his questioning look, she sighed. "My foster mother called me that after her grandmother. Betty-Ann. That's not the name my mother gave me."

"Rhiannon," he repeated, testing the way it felt on his tongue. "That's a pretty name. Where are you from?" She had the look of a tired traveler, despite the hint of defiance in her eyes.

"It doesn't matter," she said evasively, crossing her arms over her chest. "This is just somewhere in between the place I left and the place I'm going to."

He nodded, and watched her irritably fiddling with her hair, adjusting the tie that held it back in a ponytail. A muttered curse escaped her lips when the tie broke, and she tossed it in the general direction of the trash can. It landed on the ground. "Well, I hope you have a nice trip," he said awkwardly.

"I'm running away from the stupid hypocrisy of everything," she blurted out, staring almost beseechingly into his face. She had eyes the colour of green glass, fringed with dark, feathery lashes. "They're all touchy-feely 'Oh, Betty-Ann, you can do anything you put your mind to' and really, what they mean is 'Oh, Betty-Ann, you can do exactly what is expected of you'. What a load of bullshit. And who WANTS to be a socialite with rocks in her ears and a pet pooch the size of a burrito anyway? I'm NOT going to marry some rich guy and pose for society column pictures!"

No-- she was too striking and spirited for that sort of glossy, vapid existence. Nick only nodded, encouraging her to continue. Dimly, he wondered if this was what the spellbound felt like in those sci-fi novels that his sister was so fond of reading.

A fragmented story about a dream to be an artist and a friend who'd moved to California, and he simply listened. When she finally fell silent, it was almost four, and she seemed to recall herself. "Oh! I should've been gone ages ago," she muttered almost in embarrassment. "Hope I didn't waste too much of your time."

"I didn't mind," he told her honestly and solemnly. "I'm sorry... I hope everything goes well." Really, what else could he say? What else did he have a right to say?

For a moment, those beautiful, iridescent jade-green eyes softened, and she smiled. He caught his breath, unable to pull his gaze away, and then the moment was over. Raising her chin, she grabbed her things off the counter and took a step back. "Thanks for listening, at any rate," she said politely and impersonally. "Good-bye," she tossed over her shoulder as she walked out the door.

And then she turned away, straight-backed, hair blowing in the wind. She got into that heap of a car and drove away into the darkness, headlights shrinking into tiny points of white light in the distance. And there it was-- the most beautiful and lonely thing he'd ever seen in his life.

He watched until she disappeared before coming out of his booth in a daze, and stooped down by the trash can. On the floor was a broken hair elastic. Nick wasn't sure what made him pick it up and put it in his pocket. Uncomfortably, he reflected that he really needed to stop working such late shifts.

~*~

Eight years later he never works past seven o'clock any more and flies business class to California for a conference. Three days and three nights of being wined and dined, and then he decides to go off and see the sights by himself.

He ends up at a small art gallery-- privately owned, by no means the grand and extravagant one frequented by tourists-- and steps inside, looking curiously at modern steel sculptures and brightly coloured paintings. The work is mostly local, with a less grandiloquent feel. He moves through the rooms, and then suddenly, he stops dead in his tracks.

Facing him like a ghost is a portrait in profile, a boy with dark hair at twenty years of age. It is himself eight years ago, a solemn but not compassionless expression in his features as he listens to a strange girl's story at three o'clock at night. The brush-strokes aren't perfect, but there's something more than technical about it. In the plaque by the picture's side is a simple name: Rhiannon.

Shaking slightly, Nick finds the museum curator, an old, slender man with thick bifocals and a sweater vest. In a bright, falsely casual voice, he asks about the picture, and the curator smiles nostalgically.

"Oh, that... a young waif of an artist once stopped me just as I was closing up shop, about six years ago. She looked as though she hadn't eaten in days, and begged me to buy that... her 'best' painting, as she told me. I did, out of pity for her, and lo and behold, the very next day there's a flock of people wanting to know who it is and all about the artist. Last I heard she's gotten a steady commission somewhere close to Los Angeles, but that was three years ago."

Her 'best' painting. Nick found that he couldn't speak, and he couldn't think of any reason why she would draw him of all people. She had been the one to say that he was just somewhere in between the place she'd left and the place she was headed to. The curator polished his glasses and chuckled in a reedy, grandfatherly manner.

"Whoever it is that this Rhiannon gal drew... she should go and thank him. He gave her her big break, eh?"

Nick didn't think the thanks were necessary, not really. It was just a matter of fate, or kismet. A college boy working a part-time job and a runaway girl pursuing a dream. He fingers an old, battered elastic in his pocket and smiles wryly to himself.

Perhaps he'll extend his trip a little bit. Los Angeles is a very big city. And he wants to see... just maybe... what colour her hair would be now.