Lila had always liked Manhattan.
She remembered her first visit in short bursts of clarity. Blinding lights against the dark sky illuminated the night, a rat with squinty black eyes stared up at her from the subway tracks and the loud laugh of a woman with red lips and shimmery eyes as she leaned back against a brick wall with a friend, drunk or high or maybe just crazy but she looked so happy.
She remembered a mosaic of golden stars layered across the subway walls, remembered wishing on each star like they were birthday candles. She remembered tiny chipped pieces of the stars on the floor, shining beneath gravel and cigarette butts. She had thought it was star dust, miniscule pieces that fell each time a wish was granted. She raced to the end of the station, hoping the stars would fragment as each step she took became another wish, her mother trailing behind her. She wanted to get on the first car, to see everything first, to discover New York City before anyone else on the train.
She remembered feeling like she was at the top of the world and one step, one push, and she would fall.
She had been ten.
Now, Lila sat on a cold green bench, her wispy hair up in a loose bun, chipped nail polish adorning her fingers. She took a drag of the lit cigarette between her fingers and let the smoke disappear into nothing, before dropping it and stamping it out with the toe of her boots. She had to get to work soon but saw a park and decided to take a cigarette break.
The swings whistled as a breeze blew by and Lila shivered, achingly aware of how useless her thin shirt was in November, the frigid air biting at her exposed arms. Garlic, vinegar and heat drifted out of 'New York's Famous Pizzeria', one of hundreds in a city where all strive to reach fame. The skyscrapers were still bursting with light and yellow taxis advertised perfumes and Broadway shows and strip clubs. People streamed up and down the streets, heads bent down, racing against time to get things done faster than a heartbeat.
That's the thing about New York; it's always busy, always loud, always full of life. Lila had loved it as a little girl and she loved it now, loved that each building held millions of stories, billions of secrets, just waiting to be discovered.
She hadn't come with big city dreams, never thought of singing or acting or modeling. She had come to defy tradition and history, to become the first in her family to do something more with her life, to become someone more than Lila Redrick, receptionist at the family travel agency. It was funny, wasn't it, how her family sent people away to new lands, to new lives, but had never sent one of their own. She refused to raise a family in the same home she grew up in, to die on the same ground she was born on. She wanted something more, to make something beautiful, to contribute to the world. It hadn't happened yet, but Lila was still holding out, still hoping her fairy godmother would grant her that one magic wish.
She had dropped college, told her mother she had gotten a great job as an editor for a fashion magazine, but instead became a barmaid at some cheap hotel called 'A la Maroc' downtown. The pay wasn't bad and she got to live in one of the rooms upstairs; a Russian couple who fought often on her left, a single father of twins on her right. She wasn't a complete liar though. She interned at Mode magazine during the weekdays and lately, her boss had been hinting that she might hire her as an actual writer. It wasn't the worse life and it wasn't the best but it was steadily becoming what she had always dreamed of.
Lila stood, her boots clacked against the grey concrete as she walked out of the park. She headed towards the subway entrance, now reasonably less busy than before, only a few stragglers loitering by the entrance.
She stepped down the stairs and was assaulted by the thick smell of cigarettes, urine and stale air. The walls were stained with illegible graffiti and gold mosiac stars. The concrete floors were marked with blackened gum and empty MetroCards were scattered across the floor like confetti.
After going through the turnstile, Lila walked to the very end of the station, following the gold stars. She passed a man with ratty jeans and oily hair sleeping on the wooden bench and a teenager in all black, bopping her head to the rock music coming from her headphones. She reached a little girl, maybe nine or ten, staring at the litter on the subway tracks. She looked up at Lila, gave her a little smile then turned to look at the stars, her brown hair falling into her face. A woman, her mother, leaned against the wall, reading a subway map.
Lila glanced at the girl and then towards the stars. She wondered whether the girl wanted to be someone else, someone with red lips and smoldering eyes, someone who laughed loudly and intrigued those younger than her, maybe drunk or high, but she looked so happy. She wondered whether the girl ever wished on stars, hoped that they crumbled, dissolved into dust for her wishes.
Lila smiled and hoped she did.
~*~
Spoiler! :
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