POV: wayne
Summary
Wayne ducks into an alley just ahead of two men in bowler hats and vests, crouches there, and counts to a hundred before letting himself relax. He has, by his own accounting, handled the MeLaan business well: nothing broken but him, and only three shots of whiskey to start moving again. He has also decided what kind of day this is going to be. It is a funeral. He has worn a nice jacket and matching hat for the occasion, with a flower in the lapel he paid for with actual money. Fancy is as fancy does. Rejoining the procession in Elendel's financial-district sidewalks, all dressed in their *funeral finest*, he keeps his head down and notes that the city has somehow mashed Terris and koloss-blooded and everyone else into a similar ball of cravats and heels. The Malwish airship is still hard to miss in the sky overhead. Maybe today's funeral is for the city itself. Or at least its naïveté.
He arrives at Wayne's standing dinner at the Drunken Spur on Feder Way and Seventy-Third — a Roughs-themed café-restaurant with mannequins in cowboy gear in the window, staff in bright red shirts and Roughs hats and chaps, a host who wears a proper suit. Wayne checks his hat with the host, palms the bell off the stand on the way past as *insurance*, and tracks down Ranette and Jaxy at their table: Ranette in her usual slacks, Jaxy in a white dress and diamond barrettes. He thumps his forehead on the tablecloth. *Mumble mumble. Mumble.* Ranette: *Oh, delightful. Drama.* Jaxy: *Wayne? You all right?*
He tells them he has been officially dumped and that his whiskey is wearing off. *Stupid body, metabolising and neutralising poisons as if I didn't dump 'em in there on purpose.* He wonders if he could cut out his liver and stay drunk forever. Ranette approves of that experiment. Pressed for context, he says it was MeLaan. Ranette tells him he will live; she has seen him get through worse — the time, for example, a cannonball tore him in half and his metalminds happened to be on the head end. Jaxy goes pale. He gets her to humour him and rings the bell three times for a server, then orders the worst vodka the kitchen carries. Ranette reminds him this is an upscale restaurant. *Right. Put an olive in it or somethin'.*
He gives Ranette a back-handed compliment — *you really know how to make a fellow feel better* — and admits, more soberly, what he is grieving. He has not met many people who understood what it was to have to be other people most of the time. MeLaan did. Ranette tries comfort: *You'll find someone better.* (She does not, she says, do comfort.) Jaxy does it the way Jaxy does it: pain is your body and mind acknowledging that this is awful. Wayne tells Jaxy she is a good friend, even if she has terrible taste in women. Ranette notes that he chased her for fifteen years; how is *his* taste, on average? Touché. Sorry, Ranette says. *Stop aiming for the vital bits.*
She tells him she is, in fact, proud of him. He has grown — they have been having these dinners for years now and he has not hit on her once. He promised, he says, and besides she is taken; he is not a poacher. It would not be quite so bad, he adds, if *that day* were not coming up. The day, Ranette clarifies, when he goes to deliver payment to Allriandre. The same day every month: stand in front of her father's image and say what he did. He took her daddy from her. He has to remember what he is. He has to look her in the eyes.
Ranette taps a boot-shaped saltshaker, then asks the question he has not been ready for: what if he didn't see her this month? *I've gotta.* *Why?* *It's my punishment.* *Says who?* *The cosmere.* Jaxy picks it up gently. She has wanted to talk to him about how he treats that girl. He invites the punch — he is mostly numb already, it is a good day for it. Why, Jaxy asks, does he insist on seeing her in person? *So she can punish me.* Does she want to punish him? *She seems to enjoy it when it happens.* Does she really, Jaxy presses — because the way Wayne tells it, she asks him not to come. *She's bein' too nice. I don't deserve anyone bein' nice to me.* Jaxy: nobody, she says, can get inside other people's heads as well as Wayne can. So think like her. Does she really want him to come remind her of her pain each month? Each time he ignores what she asks of him, Jaxy tells him quietly, he takes a little joy from her and turns it into his own suffering.
Wayne shoves back from the table and stalks out, telling them he has lost his appetite. From behind, Ranette's voice chases him: *I told you, Jax. He's not as bad as I pretend. But he's not as good as you want to pretend either.* He trades the bell back for his hat at the host's stand — and pockets one of the man's cufflinks on the swap, *fair trade for them keeping his hat over some bell that barely even worked*.
Out on the sidewalk he walks straight into the two men in bowler hats. They are accountants. He has *far too much money*, the shorter one tells him, and his current lack of diversification is a crime. They want to talk about his investment strategy. He lets them shove him into their car, off to the firm that keeps track of his wealth. *Same difference,* he thinks. As far as anyone he cared about knowing him is concerned today, Wayne is already dead.