MARCH I
Winter is easing, and the dusk before the snow melts, he sees her, Red on grey and white.
She stands alone at a corner on Frith street. Waiting. He wonders what for. As she turns to stare, in this direction and that, a tint of neon awakens the blush of her cheeks. Her eyes flicker and frisk behind her. Nothing there but swift mice, sooty, ice buried fag ends and the last, perfect snowfall.
MARCH II
Except him. Shrouded in murkiness of a favourable passage, he waits, lit only by the pinprick of a dwindling cigarette. Even the paper is black. Nothing escapes his lidless eyes, his canny ears or snout, nor the razor bristles of his cheeks.
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But as the crimson of her cape satiates his willing pupils, lingering like smoke, she is gone.
MARCH III
It is dawn, when the key grinds in the lock of his den. A spiral staircase hangs in the air with the dust, making way for a chamber: four dust clad walls, all framing a kind of faded affluence. A state of perpetual decay rules and yet the room seems numb, unchanging, suspended in an existence much like Wolf’s own.
He is everywhere and nowhere, all at once.
APRIL I
The dim bulb of a lone lamp begins to flicker, the only source of light in Wolf’s night-time stupor. His sleep is fitful, as he trips and falls around a dream state not unlike each night before, but somehow distinct from the last. A pigment leaks into the otherwise monochrome blur of each image, growing in prominence. A week later, his visions are saturated. It is all red.
APRIL II
Unwittingly, she is in. The streets narrow, Soho district contracts, its breath held as their ways cross, impending and receding each night. Mortar aches, paving stones jostle, until the streets can shrink no more. Finally, fate corners them. Eyes meet. And so, it begins.
APRIL III
They move from the streets into quixotic seclusion. The days are merely passers-by through a murky window. The chase is now confined to the chess board, distance reduced to breath, solved by the pull of tangled sheets. All can be gained from a tug. Newsprint proves time, and that is all.
APRIL IV
Every game has a winner and a loser.
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Photography by Matthew Tate - Makeup by Amy Lennox - Hair by Red Gaetano
APRIL V
What the city lacks in sightings, it catches in whispers.
Sheets unfurl, soak, twist, dry, their secrets glancing through the hands of the laundress,
to lie down again.
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Videography by Anthony Wood - Makeup by Amy Lennox - Hair by Red Gaetano
MAY I
MAY II
The flicker of a lamp draws Red’s glance. Only visible in the periphery of her vision, but still, a diversion from the haze drenched room. And then darkness. Power cuts. The two month, dormant curtains finally shift. She peers out. Cobbles shine dimly in a waxing gibbous moon. The street, once again, beckons. Foot over threshold. A sting of night air. Red walks alone. The eyes of the district return as fast as they blink, fickle but loyal to any foreboding rumour. She, the Red girl, out? News spreads fast.
MAY III
Waking to an empty bed, The Wolf soon follows. Soho buzzes. To The Phoenix, he slinks, perhaps she will be there. Hidden by heads? Perhaps obscured by crowds? No sign. The only view is from the stage.
JUNE I
"Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love." (John LeCarre)
JUNE I
Shrouded somewhere between ink and paper, as easy to discard as the document itself, truth lurks in the tabloids. An ugly tryst and sour separation. Red retreats and the 'nasty Mr Wolf' slinks back to his den. Suspicions confirmed, relative order restored to restless expectations of the observer.
But even Soho's savviest reporters neglect the obvious.
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Wolves are wolves.
JUNE II
The chase is on.
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