Coffee + Snow

Nail Polish and Nicotine Stains - Chapter One

The John looks down at his feet. He had obviously seen her black eye and in the light of day her height and male body was more perceptible. She looked a mess.

Carrying a big canvas bag of dirty laundry Michelle walked on trying to ignore the discomfort of her one time client. She didn’t know what he was so afraid of until she saw his wife come out of the news-agents clutching a travel-card and a flake.

The john kept his eyes firmly on his wife as Michelle passed buy, heels clicking on the concrete beneath. Her life wasn’t what you would call hard. Her identical twin brother would keep a roof over her head even if he was prone to fits of violence and skimming her tips.

He wasn’t a bad pimp but kept her working the spot by Stoke Newington train station. Quiet residential streets at a right angle to the main road provided a good place to pull up and work her customers.

She had some regulars but it was common knowledge that hookers prowled around that spot and there was always fresh awkward middle aged men out for some sexual satisfaction.

Michelle dumped the canvas bag she had been carrying on to the bench by a free machine. The launderette her regular haunt after Michael refused to spring for a new washing machine.

She had saved enough money for a new one but when he had found her savings stash he took it and went on an almighty bender. He came home stinking of whiskey and skunk and an unsettling twitch in his left eye that said to her he had been snorting his fair share of coke.

He had beaten her black and blue that night. She is still unsure what she had done to deserve this. But apparently saving money was a no no. As he spat on her face her legs bent under her sprawled on the living room floor he had told her never to keep money from him again.

And she wouldn’t. At least where he could find it.

Michelle sat looking at all her underwear spinning around on a fast cycle and had a craving for a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked for two days and was trying to quit. She grimaced and immediately felt her black eye send a dull pain throughout her face.

She rooted through her handbag and pulled out a lighter and then finally a soft pack of Camels. She prided herself in being able to find all the most obscure brands of cigarettes from the most random corner shops around the borough.

She shook out a fresh cigarette and walked outside in to the bright but chilly autumn air. She lit up and leaned against the window, arms crossed with one foot out further than the other, her skirt fluttered as a breeze swung through the high road.

Michelle’s eyes were fixed on a wall across the street, it intersected with the raised railway line and in bold fresh paint she read the letters H.E.R.S. She pondered them for a moment, the Wild-style of lettering almost unreadable to the common passer by.

In the bright crisp autumn air the letters shone out high above the high road. She looked for any tags next to the burner that were obviously by the same author. A signifier of a crew or buddies that helped fill in outlines but she saw none.

“Hers” She mutters to herself as she stubbed out the camel on the runner for the shutters that grace every shop on this road. She sees the flecks of paint on the runner and wonders if there is any fresh paint on the shutters as well.

She had built up quite a picture of the crews and various falling outs and beefs between writers in her borough. The fury spelt out in letters and line outs, throw ups over burners and hate expressed in ink over toys pathetic attempts to get up.

She turned and went back into the relative warmth of the launderette, arms still crossed clutching at her overcoat. Doris the little old lady who ran the launderette was busying herself with a service wash, someone’s duvet, she folded the double duvet with speed her small figure dwarfed by the huge expanse of off white, slightly yellowed from age. It was soon reduced to a manageable size and forced into a large plastic hold all.

She looked up as she closed the dryer door but found nothing to occupy herself with. Times were tight and there weren’t many service washes these days it seemed. Just a slow dribble of the walking dead spending pennies to get their underwear in a respectable state once again.

Some stopped bothering. Doris let out a sigh and raised a smile as she noticed Michelle now sitting with her legs crossed in front of her machine.

“Getting cold…” Doris said with a strangely positive tone. If there was one thing you could guarantee with the British was talk of the weather.

“Colder than a witches tit” offered Michelle with a raised eyebrow. Too much? Doris seemed to suddenly freeze for a moment, obviously catching a glimpse of Michelle’s black eye. That or she took particular offense to the phrase, the first was more likely.

Doris shuffled along with the hold all and disappeared into the back. It wasn’t easy explaining her relationship with her identical twin. So alike but so different at the same time. Although they looked identical their gender preference and mannerisms made them worlds apart.

No one seemed to mistake one for the other, but when they were out together they would invite people to make a double take.

Growing up hadn’t been easy. They were treated the same as babies even their parents finding it difficult to tell them apart. They were always made to dress the same and given the same haircuts.

But for all their similarity their parents had quickly noticed a marked difference in their personalities. Michael was always looking after Michelle, standing up to bullies and over curious kids in the playground.

Michelle had welcomed Michael’s protective wing and would spend hours watching the girls play with all the other kids. She had been forced to dress like her brother but would go to great lengths to swap treats and snacks, toys and books for pieces of clothing with the girls.

Their parents always slightly bemused when Michael would bring back girls blouses and jackets that she had swapped on the playground through a complex system of exchanges. Once she had even managed to swap a Tintin book for a dress, her parents finding it stuffed in to the bottom of her school bag.

They hadn’t approved of this behaviour and would endeavour to return the items, but Michael would get angry and demand that Michael be allowed to keep what she had acquired. Eventually they gave up arguing and a year before Michael was supposed to go to art school they were encouraged to move out.

They hadn’t been easy kids to look after, and being foster parents wasn’t supposed to have been so complex. They remember those twins to this day and even think of them fondly but now they are both eighteen and out of their hair they can’t help but be a little relieved.

It wasn’t easy growing up as she had but she always had Michael to look after her. He had been over protective as a child but that soon turned sour as they matured.

Michael had gotten into drugs and realised that controlling Michelle suited him more that constantly looking after her. He had also grown bitter about looking after his chromosome dodger of a brother.

As kids he seemed to understand but as the teenage years set in he had grown more wary of Michelle’s femininity. He saw what a slut she was and how easily she was manipulated. He wasn’t the first but felt if anyone should be running her life it should be him.

They had goten a council flat together in Banister House and he would make sure she kept the place spotless during the day and walking the streets at night.

His love had turned into hate. He despised what he saw in her. How could they be so alike yet so different?

Michelle watched her knickers spin around tangled with Michael’s boxers with a blank stare. She knew she needed more money. Michael wouldn’t bring in much with his art and she had to survive somehow.

This black eye would cost her in custom and might even invite more violence. The dryer beeped and Michael snapped out of her trance. She loaded the clothes back into the canvas bag and turned to leave. She saw the autumn leaves get picked up by a rolling gust of air.

After the long walk back to the estate and four flights of stairs she was back at the flat, she folded her lingerie away and arranged Michael’s clothes as he liked them in his chest of drawers.

The old pentium box whirred into life as she sat down, 3 unread messages were blinking in her inbox. One had a job centre address. She knew immediately what it was and she bit her bottom lip as she examined the email.

Using the encoding she had given Mark she could make out that he had managed to clone three other job-centre control cards. The ones used by the employees to access the massive social security database.

All she needed was the data. She picked up her phone and began to text Mark. “5pm Thursday my place, he should be out. Bring the skimmer and don’t forget the memory card. I can work with what you have.”

She put the phone down and wondered how much security they could really build into a magnetic strip. It wasn’t the information on the card but how it interacted with the database. It shouldn’t be much more complex than the travel-card hack.

That had netted her a fair few pounds and left transport for London searching for ghosts all over the system. None of her clients had been caught, yet. Anonymity and a free pass to go where you wanted around London had been a popular selling point to her scam, Mark was a happy customer and that’s when he had enquired about the job centre cards.

Michelle turned off the machine and moved to the bathroom to run a bath. It would be another long cold night and she needed all the warmth she could get.