STV-002
St. Valentine's Ledger
Patron: Nickels Costigan
Date: Aug 7th, 1923 – Gold Coast District
Location: St. Valentine's
Proprietor: Nickels Costigan
Still want me to sing, huh?
After everything.
After Finch. It hasn't been a week since you called me, and I do quote, "son of a bitch," for the crime of singing the song in my heart. You're really still pressing for a curtain call like I ain't sitting on a landmine of verses and vices?
Fuck me, Ginny. I get it. I do. You want to keep your joint running. And it's a good joint, don't get me wrong. Not a lot of other places give folks like us the freedom to be who we are without the buttons or worse pressing down on us. Salem, Pendle, Bamberg, Trier, our kind isn't often appreciated in pleasant society. But to keep the lights on you need acts to draw in the mugs and fleece them for all their worth.
I get it.
I get the con.
I get the angle.
But what happens when my next song is the one that wakes the city beneath us? What if the bridge needs just one more bridge to rise up, stone, blood, and memory?
What if the next song that comes out ain't even mine? That's how he works, Ginny. He gets an audience together and then he makes them listen, right? He makes them hear the words mortals were never meant to hear. He gets inside their heads, Ginny. Then the next thing you know the whole city's on fire again. It's a plague. A blight. And I don't want to be a part of it more than I have to.
'Course, I have to sing.
He gave me this voice and he wants me to use it.
But please, Ginny, not here. Let me go sing in some run down nowhere far away from where anyone could get hurt. Maybe I will sing. Maybe I won’t. But if I do, it won’t be for $3.50 and a drink ticket.
It’ll be because I have to.
Because he makes me.
So don’t put me on the damn flyer just yet.
Not until we know what the setlist costs. You and I, and everyone in Chicago.