BONNIE BENNETT. INTERACTION CALL.
SHE ENTERS WITH A WHITE SCARF WRAPPED AROUND THE STATUETTE OF HER UPPER BODY, DRAPED AROUND THE HEAD AND ELEGANT, PILLAR-LIKE NECK. shroud is one word for it. the silk thin and gauzy, her profile little more than a watermark through it: a woman seen through a lake, a mirror, the other side of the veil. she's beautiful. and she looks like a ghost. or at least someone in the stages of becoming one. the signs of life that are still apparent are visible around the entrances and exits, the place a soul leaks out: her eyes pink at the rim, her lips red in the same places. tears and doubts have stained her. the mouth of her husband has too.
dove doesn't believe in the intangible. it's never been part of her nature. she'd grown up in a way defiantly physical, her dangers corporeal, manifest, dangerously present. she had never had the time, or the reason, to believe in what she couldn't see.
that has changed. now all she has is long, empty hours and the shadows that stretch within them.
she fidgets with the silver tails of her sunglasses, watching the little sticks open and close. it feels childish, impolite — she's not a fidgeter by nature; even less so since being ingratiated into the stately culture of her in-laws — but she can't seem to look up and face @pixistic head-on. her eyes are too heavy. the lashes waterlogged.
"thank you for," she tries, but the sentiment dies out before she can find an end. for what? for allowing her in her home, as if this was a social call? for taking her money? there's an attempt to feel used, preemptively cheated, but dove can't summon the false indignity. even being swindled, living momentarily in some kind of false hope, sounds preferable to what she's living now. "—for seeing me."
the glasses come down softly on the table.
"i don't know how to start this."
