Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Old Traditional

She ripped her way out of the dress, borrowed from Mrs. Monroe. Everything was borrowed from Mrs. Monroe until she herself was Mrs. Monroe. The restaurant would call for Artie to fetch the fur. She shouldn't have left it, she could have sold it. "Stupid," she thought to herself, deciding to make a late trip back to retrieve it. It was worth four hundred dollars, a third of her father's yearly salary as a college professor. She finds a one of his mother's traveling suits and steps out the back door, brown from head to toe and marching.

Long, hurried walk to the Avenue. Drunken streetcar sooty mess the son-of-a-no-good- what in heaven's name am I going to do if he sees me coming back in...Too much time to think on the trip back to the restaurant, she piles a shoulder into Theo before he can turn to open the door for her, out of habit. He steps back instead and lights a cigarillo.

"Really," she says to herself, bowing her head through the bar to the coat check, "The trick is to not have desires, or be numb to them. If I have my hair just so, and wear this dress, he will want to hold my hand. If I use irony effectively, he will want to kiss me. Be smart, and it will get me some small gold thing to wear. There was a cold progression to it. She thinks she's too emotional to pull this off.

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