Ella Claire Gainsborough {Beauty} (bookshelved) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-01-06 01:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | beauty |
Who: Ella
What: A narrative
Where: 905
When: After this
Warnings: None
Two days passed before she hoisted the dumbwaiter back up to the roof. She'd closed the door when she'd left the locked room with the typewriter and the borrowed notebook, and she'd spent a full day cleaning the typewriter's keys carefully, almost with reverence. The notebook sat unopened on her nightstand; she was waiting to read it, in the way you wait to read something you don't want to come to an end.
She had to convince herself - repeatedly - not to climb back up to the rooftop apartment and bring a journal back with her. She'd already invaded his - Edmond, in her mind - privacy much too much, and she would resist if it was the last thing she did. She told herself this repeatedly, and she even told the dumbwaiter, which sat visible in the guest room as she collected the items she intended to put inside it.
It was a memorial, really, in addition to payment.
The terrarium bottle was originally a wine bottle. It was clear and tall and a little fat at the bottom, and it smelled slightly of rich red wine, a leftover, lingering scent. Inside, she layered sweet-smelling moss and tiny Murano beads; not many of them, but enough that they sparkled against the green of the moss when the light hit. She added one, single red rose; it was carefully dried, every bud still in place, the scent of the dried flower joining the green scent of the moss and the earthiness of the wine residue. Into the bottle, she added the rolled note she had written the night before, and she finished it off with a Murano wine stopper that she had impulsively bought for herself a few months back.
She added an envelope with 200 dollars inside, enough, she assumed, to cover the typewriter, and with this too she included a note.
She placed the items on the dumbwaiter, adding a tied bunch of lavender she'd grown at the last moment, the scent mingling soft-strong. The fat round bottle bottom kept the terrarium steady, even when she tested the pulley, and she lifted it up with painstaking slowness.
Once it reached the top, she tied it off at her end, so it couldn't be lowered without her being able to retrieve it again. She wanted to know if the memorial had been retrieved, and if it wasn't ever found, she wanted to know it was there between their walls, remembering someone she'd never met.