Grey Suit Black Tie

Standards

I held a gloved hand, black silk leading to the elbow and pointing on towards bare shoulders. We waited in the cab for most of the morning, hoping he would leave. I thumbed through the driver’s manual left in the back seat, with my body rolled and knees up against the paneling. The sun treated us like ants through the glass but we didn’t mention it, afraid to complain as if it would disappear as the words left our mouths. You could see the wind despite it and the wind had been a haunt for months there, bringing in the rain or the threat of rain, keeping the clouds as company, a roof to my temporary home. I wondered if this was how it always was just miles from the center, if the open soil allowed for sun to hit it.

She shook as a ghost staring out of the window, refusing to flinch as the dirt from Cullen’s open grave, as the priest stood, trying to look unmoved. The gathered were small; two young boys accompanied by their mother, an Uncle or friend of the family, and the man - a man standing in his suit and ruffled hair, a bouquet to his side. We heard the muffled song sync with the humming car. I hummed along. These gospel standards are more from your country. I just know them from movies. I quieted, hoping the silence would help her feel further away from the scene squared off by the pane of the window. All that really kept us from the hill was the door, the curb, and the few steps of grass but, I assumed the hum and the heat catching my neck from vents and the sketchy sun kept her back. That and the grip on my hand.

She said he’d lost it in the war, mental in the way some do, and was put in Her Majesty’s Prison, Belmarsh. Rumor was he started the riots, three million pounds in damages, which led to the queen changing the places name, as if she locked the inmates in herself and started laying bricks to keep them all together. I wondered out loud why they would let him out. She took her first look away from the hill.

We rode the train back in the afternoon, her head tuned out the opposite window. This time I knew that she wasn’t looking for anything. Pushed her shoes into the corner of the coach, drawing numbers out on a napkin. She told me her grade school class buried time capsules. Miss Cullen said some scientists would find them and treat us all like Aztecs. She was sure no one would ever dig them up.