The Heart of the Night

Written for io9’s #ThursdayTales and over the word count limit suggestion, this story is my second fan fiction (the first will be published for #SaturdayShortStories) and is based on Dark City by the niner known as kalaeth.  Before the jump is 988 words.  After the jump is a bonus: the ending!

Emil knotted the silk thread and slid on another pearl.  Three of four strands were finished and this was the final one.  In the room Stella had named the vault, all was dark save for the lamp illuminating the table.  Mechanically, he made another knot, checked his handiwork, added another pearl.

Stella was so beautiful.  Her laugh was infectious, issuing from her lovely mouth as the clearest and most joyful sound Emil had ever heard.

One day she came to him smiling, asking if he knew the penalty for stealing glances at girls without saying hello.  She laughed at his stuttering inability to respond before sashaying away, sassily tossing her great waves of auburn hair.  She could have been a Gibson girl but she left her hair loose and wore, inexplicably, trousers.  Stella was fascinating.  College-educated and with no intention of becoming a housewife, she was a girl who shouldn’t even have existed, as far as society was concerned.

Sloe-eyed and possessed of exquisite bone structure, she became the perfect canvas for Emil’s creations.  After a tortuous apprenticeship under a man who for several years had all but spat on his every effort, Emil graduated into the world as a jeweler with a reputation garnered largely because of his instructor.  Men before Emil had failed to endure Mr. Raines’ grueling routine and unbending dedication to absolute and unerring quality.  It was only after he was able to satisfy those demands that Emil was allowed to create his own pieces and when he did the quality and beauty of his work astounded even his dour instructor.  If it hadn’t been for him, Emil guessed, he’d never have met Stella.  Stella with the perfect wrists and long graceful neck.  Stella with the delicate pianist’s fingers and gorgeous earlobes.  Somehow she fell in love with the fumbling jeweler and became his wife.  As a wedding gift he gave her a pair of black pearl earrings.  The rare gems instantly became her favorite and she induced him to promise to make her a necklace to match them.

To say the marriage was a beautiful, wondrous experience all the time would have been a lie.  Stella was happy to model jewelry and work in his shop behind the counter.  Emil, however, spent more and more time in the vault, designing bespoke pieces for his increasing number of wealthy and famous clients.  As the Twenties roared in, Stella took up dressing like a flapper and her lush body filled out those tiny dresses in a way that caught the eyes of many a man.  Her husband did not care for his one bit and he barred her from wearing such clothing and from working in the shop.  Relegated to the house, Stella chafed against the restriction.  Her hair greyed and some of the sparkle went out of her eyes.  Her laugh was softer, muted somehow.  She took to pinning up her hair and she looked a little more like a Gibson girl but it was only for convenience; she had a child to chase around now.  Emil had emerged from the vault long enough to give his wife a child though he was making a bracelet when his daughter was born.  By the time Diana was in college Stella had long realized she’d never been her husband’s first love.

“Let’s go to dinner, Emil.  We haven’t been out together in so long.”

“I can’t tonight.  I have to finish this ring and there’s still the set I need to make for-“

“When am I going to be worth as much attention as your precious damn jewelry?”

“How do you think I pay for this house you live in, Stella?  It’s not free!”

“You hardly talk to me any more.  The most attention I can get is you groping me in the middle of the night when you finally come to bed.  I’m more than that, Emil.  You used to love to talk to me.”

“We’re talking right now aren’t we?”

At a speakeasy one night, she sipped a gimlet and listened to people playing music that would never be heard in a legitimate establishment.

“Shame, isn’t it?”  A man had slid onto the stool next to her.  He pulled out a silver cigarette case, offered her one.

“What is?”

“These guys.  They make such great music but they had the misfortune to be born the wrong color.”

“Is it really misfortune?  I don’t see many of us being able to compose something like this.”  She slurred a little.

“I’m Peter.”  They shook hands and drank in silence for a while and he invited her to dance.  To his surprise she accepted and they spun around the tiny dance floor to soft jazz.  She did not, however, accept his invitation to come to his home.  Disappointed but chivalrous, he sent her home in a cab with his telephone number in case she changed her mind.  Drinks and dancing with Peter became routine and Stella bloomed, once again suffused with life.  Emil barely noticed.

Stella became pregnant.  Emil was unhappy about this, not wanting the hassle of raising another child.  This combined with his inattention hurt Stella so much that she withdrew completely, made her bed in another room.  Unable to mollify his wife, he began secretly working on a gift for her in hopes she could be reconciled to him.  He wondered how he let this happen and promised himself he would win Stella’s respect again.  She didn’t seem to notice and though she had stopped going out as her belly grew, she wasn’t talking to him if she didn’t have to.  One afternoon she was napping when the doorbell chimed.  Minutes later her bedroom door flew open.

“Who the hell is Peter?”

Stella sat up awkwardly, startled awake and momentarily disoriented.  “What?”

“Peter.  He sent you these.”  He threw an enormous bouquet of flowers at her.  “’I miss you, beautiful.  Nights aren’t the same without you.  Peter.’” he read sneeringly.  He crumpled the card and threw it at her, nostrils flaring with rage.

“Emil-“ She was cut off by the backhand he delivered to her and wide-eyed with horror she started to stammer and cry, trying to explain.

Emil ripped the covers from her, snarling and nearly apoplectic.  “You- I give you everything,  This house, this..this bedroom you moved into!  Everything!  I give you everything and this is how you thank me?”  Spittle flew from his lips and spattered softly onto her face and gown.

“Emil no, I-“

“Shut up!”  He looked down at her protectively covering her belly with her arms and then slowly lifted his eyes to hers, his face twisted into a mask of fury.  “You whore!  Is that whose baby this is?  Why you won’t let me touch you?  You were going to have me raising another man’s child?  You bitch!”  He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her from the bed.  “Get out.” he said with deadly calm.

“Please just li-“

“Get out!”

He didn’t stay to watch her leave.  He stormed down the stairs and into his vault, slamming the door.  When Stella banged on it, weeping, he locked it.  “Why don’t you go call your boyfriend?”

The afternoon was dreary and Stella had gone out in search of a pay telephone.  She didn’t dare call Peter from the house.  He told her to wait at the restaurant across the street for him to meet her.  The wind stole the card from her fingers and sent it skipping down the sidewalk and into the street and Stella’s awkward bending to grab it before it could get away again threw her off balance and into the street.

Emil was roused from his workshop by the persistent banging on his door by the police.  They took him to the hospital.  The man he saw standing by Stella’s door was assuredly Peter and he leapt at him, swinging a savage punch that caught him in the ear.  Officers restrained him and Peter touched his ear, wincing.

“What the hell is that about?”

“You must be the bastard that knocked up my wife.”  Emil spat in his face.

Peter looked confused, then glanced into the hospital room at Stella before turning back to Emil.  “You’re Emil, then.”  He pursed his lips and shook his head.  “Listen, mister.  I didn’t knock up anybody’s wife.  She was lonely, sure, but she didn’t want me.  She just wanted some attention, and then she blew me off when she got pregnant.  That’s your baby, if you even care.”  Stunned, Emil slumped into a chair.  “You got a beautiful woman like that and you give her the cold shoulder, you oughta be glad all she would take from a guy like me is companionship.”  Disgusted, Peter walked off.

Not much could be done, except to keep her comfortable and perform an emergency Caesarian Section to deliver the child.  The doctor stepped out and met Emil’s eyes, then shook his head sadly.  The blow took him to his knees.

Emil’s fingertips slid along the gleaming spheres as he inspected his work once more.  It was perfect.  He placed it on the display bust and admired it with grim satisfaction, then sat back down at his worktable and unlocked the safe.  It was a beautiful piece: four strands of natural black pearls accented with diamond-studded spacers and a single diamond in the clasp.  At the throat was a sparkling ruby the size of a newborn child’s heart and as red as the blood on Emil’s hand after he pulled the trigger.