The Red in a Purple Thistle

           The clash of the shutter, the flash of the bulb. Too loud, too obvious, too novice. Too dangerous. The young woman glanced up, ruby red blood dripping from equally ruby red lips, the blood splatters making her expensive golden flapper dress look like some modern painting gone wrong. But the knife in her hand gleamed brighter than Mars on a clear night amongst the dark alley behind the townhouse, the bloody body forgotten. Her hardened gaze gleamed coldly as it landed on the unfortunate young man crouched behind a dumpster in possession of the camera.

           His dirty forest green tie was loose around his neck, his sleeves rolled up, camera in one hand, rumpled jacket in the other. His face, open and honest, but his gaze just as hardened as the murderess in front of him. Locked in a standstill, the young man quietly and carefully stood up, keeping his gaze on the young woman. As he was about to step backwards, she flicked the knife towards him, piercing the camera, splattering him with the victim’s blood, bright red freckles of a reminder. A warning. His mouth curved into a frustrated scowl before he yanked out the knife and flung it to the ground before backing up and running towards his small studio apartment, jostling passersbys and unlucky couples out for a romantic stroll in the Big Apple.

           The young woman scowled as well, she had gotten her mark, but there was now evidence of her work. Her superior was not going to be pleased with this new development. But she’d tell him anyway. Now all there was to do was to deal with the body. The nameless, faceless, woman bit her lip in disgust.

           It’s always funny how whenever one meets someone, it seems like your chances of seeing them increase significantly. Before you met them, you had never seen them before in your life, however, afterward it feels as if you see them everywhere. This was how the beautiful young murderess and the young photographer found themselves staring at the other in shock once more as they found themselves in the young woman’s favorite café during the young man’s lunch break. Swiftly ordering her sandwich and black tea and paying, the young woman sat in front of the young man at the small window table he had already claimed. She wore a pale orange flapper dress with a beige coat, her lips still a gorgeous ruby red. The young man took a sip of his black cup-o’-joe, careful to not to get a single drip on his gray coat and pants, nor his earthy brown tie.

           “He wasn’t a good man,” the woman finally admitted at she stirred the sugar into her tea.

           “I was aware. My paper was attempting to expose him,” he acknowledged. He continued to ignore the sugar in favor of the bitter brown-black liquid.

           The two continued to eat their lunch, both as careful and clean with their food as possible, not allowing for a single weakness to be visible. Neither speaking, instead allowing the natural chatter of other customers and crash of pots and pans fill in the silence for them. Finishing his meal, the young man made to stand and leave to get back to his workplace, however, the woman remarked, “I saw a picture of him in the dumpster, but not of a woman standing over his body.”

           The man looked to the side towards the cacophony of the busy lunch rush in the café, a thoughtful expression on his face, “Ah, but who would believe that a young woman could take down that man? I thought a mystery would be safer.” With that statement he politely excused himself and swiftly made his way to his work.

           A cheshire grin crossed the woman’s face, which she quickly hid behind a sip of tea that allowed her to school her features. A small blossom of warmth had budded in her chest, perhaps it was from her black tea, perhaps it was from her curiosity, or perhaps it was from something else. Whatever it was, the young woman was intensely interested in the young journalist who hadn’t ratted her out.

           The next time they saw each other was entirely intentional. At least it was intentional for the woman, the young man had been caught entirely unawares. It was outside his workplace at the end of a long and exhausting work day weeks after their previous encounter and she was dressed in a rose pink flapper dress holding two bottles of soda and held one out to his mildly shocked face before he in turn took it, albeit somewhat suspiciously. This was reasonable considering the first time they had met she had killed a man, however terrible that man had been.

           “It’s a thank you for not blowing my cover,” she announced.

           “All I did was prevent a panic,” the man conceded, popping off the tab, seeming relieved at the fact that it had not been already opened.

           The woman shrugged, “Whatever you say.”

           The man glanced at her curiously; she was intriguing and all of his journalist senses were begging to know, to understand more. “Dinner?” flew forth from his mouth before he was able to stop himself.

           The woman paused a moment as she was about to take a sip of her own soda, an titillated look in her hazel eyes. “Bold to ask me to dinner. Are you sure you’ll be safe?”

           The man gazed up at the sky, “If I had wanted safe, I would have gone into something like accounting.”

           The woman chuckled, she couldn’t recall a time in recent memory that she had chuckled. “Then, why not? Dinner sounds enchanting.”

           When the man woke up the next morning he brushed his teeth, shaved his five o’clock shadow that had grown overnight, dressed, made a cup-o’-joe, fried up some eggs, and read the competing newspaper to his own company’s. There wasn’t much excitement; it seemed there were still some tensions left in Europe. There was nothing too well written or exciting in the rival newspaper that his company already didn’t already have covered. He was a man of serious work ethic, he had to be, he didn’t have a choice, had never had a choice. He glanced up at the solitary clock on the wall, he needed to hurry to work. Yanking open the door he had raced to, he managed to see a present on his door step, a single purple thistle and a familiar knife, rusty with blood. And he had thought he had successfully shaken off the woman after their dinner last night. He smirked all the way to work, knife shoved in the deep recesses of his briefcase and purple thistle in his boutonniere.