I was Odile, and nobody in this city knew it.
In my room the only light came from six small screens. One of them showed Ettore Malandri's office.
I had put the camera in his smoke alarm three months ago. He had never looked up at it.
He came in with his coat still on and put something small on the desk.
My badge. Green tag. My face under the dried blood.
He turned it toward the lamp like a card he was thinking about playing.
Rina: A hundred and six people on the night crews. I got eyes on forty of them.
Ettore: Not the ones in green.
Rina: The green tags are all clean. Backgrounds, addresses, the whole shit pile.
Ettore: Then clean them again.
Rina: For one dumb bitch with a mop. You want me to drag six women in here and sweat them over a tag.
Ettore: I want the right one.
Rina: When I find her I'll hook her jaw and walk her in on her fucking knees.
She said it the way she said everything. Flat. Like a shopping list.
Ettore: I already gave you that order once. I won't say it a third time.
Rina stepped back. I watched her hands. They stayed at her sides.
He picked the badge up again and ran his thumb over the photo.
Like he was wiping rain off glass that wasn't there.
My chest went tight. Stupid. A piece of plastic and I couldn't breathe right.
Ettore: She walked into my building and not one of you saw her.
Ettore: That's not a cleaner. That's a woman who wanted me to look.
Three years I had watched him. From catwalks, from doorways, from cars across the street.
He had never once looked at me.
Now he looked at my face in a cheap tag like it had a pulse.
He slid the badge into his breast pocket and tapped it twice.
Rina said his name like a warning. He didn't answer her.
I turned the feed off at two in the morning and burned my uniform in the sink.
Green shirt. Green tag. The stitched name that was never mine.
I cut the thread out with a paring knife and burned that too.
The smoke smelled like a cookout and made my eyes water.
That shirt was the only thing in this city that knew me.
Rina had twisted my arm on those stairs and I had said sorry to her shoes.
Now her boss carried my face in his pocket.
The man I had killed had a crew and a boss with a cold name. That was a problem for tomorrow.
Tonight I had one thing left to keep.
I picked the casing up and closed my fist around it.
It was mine. It was proof that I had moved and the world had changed.
I put it in my pocket and did not burn it.
On the screen, his office was dark and the lamp was off.
Somewhere across the port, my face was in his breast pocket.
He had not thrown it away.
I touched my own chest, where a pocket would be.
Stupid. I did it anyway.