I’ll See You In My Dreams - Part Two [FICTOID]

Now the trips tp the plant city became twice daily events, first before going to work, then when she returned.  It made the days with their fat European and American tourists bearable.

One those rare occasions when she needed to venture forth into the real city, she looked for the vendor but never saw him again.

Of course, she thought, recognizing a Scheherazadian tale when she saw one.

“You’re getting too old,” her pimp told her one day.  He showed up at the café -- he never showed up at the café -- and ordered a coffee for himself but didn’t offer to buy anything for her.

“I’m not yet thirty,” she lied.

“Still too old,” the pimp said.  “They want younger meat, fresher meat.  You’re not longer welcomed at the hotels.  Sorry -- “  He wasn’t sorry.  “ -- but that’s the way these things go.”

She looked at him then ordered a cup of tea for herself.  As soon as the waiter delivered it she hurled the scalding drink in the pimp’s face.

She went home.  She didn’t know what to do.  She possessed no money beyond a handful of bills and coins, her pimp never letting her earn enough to save for a day such as this.

Rent would be due at the end of the week but as soon as her pimp recovered from his burns he would track her down and extract his revenge.

She went up on the roof to visit her plant.  When she got there she saw it seemed dead and dried.

Touching it, she felt transported to her fabled city…

…only now the fabled city lay in the autumn of its existence, the bright colors faded, the fountains dry and dusty.  No one moved ab out on the streets, but here and there lay corpses of its inhabitants, now dried out husks that fell apart when she touched them.

It’s time, she thought.

They found her on the sidewalk far below the roof of her tenement, an empty flowerpot clutched in her arms.

© Buzz Dixon