The Writers' Circle

The rain was the spiteful kind, creating a staccato soundtrack to Paines' task.  He was used to seeing this street alive with the excesses of a modern city, but tonight the rain had bullied inside those foolhardy enough to search for love or their drug of choice tonight.  Bright lights competed for attention, dancing with the rain where the people should have been.  Paine, old cap pulled down tight, walked carefully along the pavement, like a dislocated shadow.

She slowed, stepping into an alcove doorway of a shop he couldn't remember.  He waited, still and silent.  After a few seconds she re-appeared and they began their waltz again.

A small slack-coated doorman stood in the entrance of "Club Havana".  Like a fat mans' pulse, the music was fast and loud, round and dulled by the rain.  Paine dropped his head as he drew next to the club.  As he did, the doorman blew hard into a white handkerchief , a lone sail in a sea of blackness.  Paine smiled as he contemplated what life might have been like as a pretentious poet rather than what he had become.

She reached the end of the high street, pressed the crossing button and waited.  Paine hung back.  He was 20 metres short of her, an easy distance to make up when he needed to, more important then to be invisible.  A couple of cars went past tailing spray, and she walked across and into her road.  Paine followed, there were no cars, reverential to the job ahead,  so he could walk across, his pace starting to quicken as her flat got nearer.  In his head the rain seemed to sop, as if on cue.  He was  close behind her now, still silent, still unseen.  

She swung into a pathway, behind a hedge so for the first time Paine ha lost sight of her, but he was  so close this only lasted for a second.  He turned quickly into the pathway, not slowing because he knew what to expect, he'd been here countless times before.  She was opening the door , cast only in the light from the street since the security light had broken.

Now she heard him, swinging round to face him, gasping slightly as she saw a man silhouetted against the weak street light, against the rain, against the black.
  
"Paine ?"