Alba and Thalia had the Sunday off from the factory and had some pictures taken. It was nice to have a day out... A day without the set, center, bang.
Thalia took it upon herself to look after Alba because she hadn't been eating much. She said she was worried about Mitch, of course, "being over there," as she put it. Thalia never pressed her, it's not like there was much conversation over the noise of the line... Anyway they both had their reasons for hard work.
She made sure Alba got some breakfast in her today. Then they went shopping. Thalia noticed Alba was looking at some dresses.
"You'll be shopping for something white soon, I know it," Thalia smiled.
Alba smiled back and flipped a dress sleeve at her, "It's not fair... I can't do it with you, you look like a movie star!"
"Oh, can it sister," Thalia snorted, "You'll be positively glowing when he walks off that boat. Why I bet you'll vibrate right out of your skin!"
Mitch would finish his tour. Mitch would come home with a ring in his pocket and a promise in his heart. Mitch would live. Alba told herself that.
Right now he was somewhere her parents would have known. There may be bullets and mortar fire... there may not. Did they kill differently on Sundays? She wondered.
If she knew where he was she could just go there. She could see him, touch his hand or face. She would know he was right, good... alive. He wasn't allowed to say where he was, and besides he'd be packed and marched before that letter even crossed a censor's desk. She'd promised him she wouldn't come because of the danger, of course that was why she wanted to go so badly. She could be there and back in a second.... She could do it as fast as think it.
He was so far away. Everything seemed so far away. She thought of Bérénice and what she was doing. She thought of the letters, and how they'd gotten shorter, had dwindled and then finally stopped... How it had all happened... How she couldn't change it when it happened again.
She thought of how very much she wanted to be doing something. Something bigger. Alba had already been there in a way, she reminded herself... and she wasn't Bérénice.
So she was stuck, waiting. Riveting on the assembly, because the Secretary Pool didn't let you feel the vengeance in your hands. That's what she'd named her rivet gun, "The Vengeance."
Thalia didn't know everything, of course.
Alba never had much use for hate. What good had it ever brought her? None. Set, center, bang. She worked the line for Mitch, sure, and for the other boys - just like all the other girls. She thought about the other-other girls working for the other-other boys, but that certainly felt different.
Sometimes when she drifted away she thought about falling through windows. Set.
She thought about Olaf. About fire and snow. She felt sweat trickle down an arm. Center.
She thought about the wolves... Bang.
Alba and Thalia went to a matinee. She finally saw it in the newsreels, and recognized it for what it was. She recognized she'd missed it. For all the checking, the waiting, the fear... she had missed it.
Sitting in that dark theater, popcorn dangling from her open, frozen lip, Alba understood better how it must have been for Olaf. It happened years ago for her and left her expecting it to happen every day, and here she was seeing it and yet in her mind it was impossible - it couldn't have happened yet. Not yet. The newsreel was - what? A month old? When was her last trip? Five weeks? Six? Had she missed him by days or by hours? With years to prepare, how was she too late? When she got back the first time, Olaf had called it done... history.
Alba thought about the wolves.
On the line the next day, Alba welcomed the numbness in her hands and the pull and the spasm of the gun as it wrenched her shoulders. She thought about the wolves. Bang. She knew that every rivet she drove, she drove deep into their hearts.
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