6 Nights of Midnight – 6 – The Face of Midnight

If you wanted to name the face of Midnight, where would you look?  To the mayor, Archibald Carrington, better known as the Duke, who may or may not have killed a man when he was a professional boxer?  To the underworld figures, Carlos Vallmitjana perhaps, or the legendary Uncle Knuckles, who is probably not even a real man, or Michael De Luca?  Maybe just an average person on the street, third or fourth generation Midnighter, who has never known the kiss of sunlight?

Would you seek out beauty?  A face appearing on posters and in magazines, in newspaper advertisements and on television?  If that’s your answer, then the name you seek is Angelica.  She’s not without her flaws.  Her cheekbones are too high, her eyes too dark, her lips the stuff of dreams.  She’s too thin, she doesn’t eat, she doesn’t drink, though perhaps she hits the hard stuff, Scarlet perhaps, during her private times.

Angelica lives in a big house with all the clothing and jewelry she can possibly imagine.  When she was fourteen, that was what she wanted.  When she was sixteen, her modeling dreams crashed around her when she lost sight of the Parisian sky.  But Midnight embraced her, and presented gifts at her feet.

Maybe yours is the face of Midnight.  Maybe we should look to the future, to the new arrivals, bone weary from their travels.  Secrets are easy to shed in Midnight, or bury, or lose, and anyone on the run might make a wrong turn and find a new set of problems to replace the old.  In a place like Midnight, you can hide forever.  When you get here, buy yourself a shot of rye, or go for the scotch, give yourself a quiet moment to breathe–just in case it’s your last.

Or perhaps, in seeking Midnight’s face, we should look to the city’s namesake.  Some say Carlton Midnight settled this place two or four hundred years ago in search of a final drink.  If you find his tomb, his face is etched upon it.  And maybe, before coming to the City of Night, he left children behind, children who had children of their own, the last descendant of whom may well be a thief.  And maybe a city like Midnight will call its own children back to it.

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