Pamela is made of (hemlockandhoney) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-18 02:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | poison ivy |
Who: Brielle narrative.
What: What she's been up to, and being followed.
Where: All around town.
When: The afternoon before all the forum conversations.
Warnings: None.
Her days were once spent on the other side of the door, but with Ivy's ever-growing silence, a regular visitation schedule seemed unimportant. Brielle knew that she had to press on and be right with herself, whether that meant staying in Las Vegas or not. She wanted to right things with her cousine, but wondered if that was any longer a possibility. At the same time, she had to wonder if Ivy would let her leave, sometimes she could feel the truth crawling up her spine like wild ferns. Leaving was not an option - whatever Ivy was up to on the other side, it was a long term operation. Brielle tried not to think about it, and as such, maybe she missed the signs. Slow developments were easy to overlook, the progressive plunge from interest to obsession. It took courage to dig out the roots of one's own weakness, and courage was not something Brielle was very familiar with these days.
The plants accumulated on her windowsill. Some were store bought and some were rescued from the dying gardens of adjacent neighborhoods. Brielle watered them at night, talked to them on the occasions when she found herself pacing her empty living room on those endless nights when that strange, weightless mania sometimes took over. It wasn't her, but it snuck up on her at such a snail's pace that it felt entirely natural. Like the days she spent walking through the sun, sometimes only half remembering on her way down the hall that she required shoes or clothing more than a night shirt.
On one such afternoon, she took a long walk through the side streets of the Strip. Forgoing the casinos and the tourist traps in favor of craft boutiques and designer stores where her wardrobe once would have come from. Brielle longed for none of it, although she admired the colors and patterns of their window displays. No, these were not things that she desired. Never had really, it had just been the uniform of her life in New York. It was the next storefront that made her shoes and heart stop momentarily. The interior was slick wood floors, the walls boasted brass handrails and a long line of mirrors. Young men and women in scrunched leggings and sweat-cling tanks stretched in a cool down routine. They sat on the floor, pointe shoes flexed out, rolling their tired heads on loose necks. Brielle took a step back from the window and glanced up to the sign above her. Barre Studio.
"You dance." The voice surprised Brielle into another quick step of retreat, those simple words accented in something unfamiliar, Eastern European. The woman's face was grooved with age, but elegant and beautiful nonetheless. The woman dabbed a towel against the side of her neck, refined eyebrows raising in expectation of an answer that had yet to come.
"Oh, no," Brielle laughed softly, tugging her bag higher onto her bonecarved shoulder - how long had it been since she'd eaten? It was a hazy kind of thought that formed then, that sunlight should be enough.
"It wasn't a question," the woman said with that accented laugh. She untwisted a bottle of water with one hand and took a steady sip while the dancers in the studio behind her began to unlace their shoes and gather their things. "Your feet," the woman explained further with a subtle gesture of her bottle down to where Brielle's flats stood on the cement in a slightly fanned out V, the starting position in ballet that was too hardwired to forget, even all of these years later. "Your shoulders," the woman continued with a gesture to Brielle's strict posture. "The look of.. how you say, longing.. you gave the window." The woman smiled, soft in request of forgiveness for pointing out the obvious. "They all give you away."
Brielle said nothing for a long moment, finding the urge to shrink beneath the woman's warm eyes impractical. "It has been a long time," she finally clarified.
"It is never too late to start again, to start over. Every dance is a new life, there is only progress.. not decline." Dancers began to file out the glass doors, some chatting while others hustled off on their own with purpose. They swarmed passed the older woman and Brielle like a stream. "You come by next week?"
"I don't know." Frowning, Brielle glanced down the street, where the sun burned white hot on the pavement and reflected like laser beams from car windshields. "I'll think about it," she finally said with apprehension weighing the words down like iron. The woman smiled with a nod and said nothing more before she vanished back through the doors of the studio. Brielle lingered for a moment, considering the wall of mirrors and then the sign once more before she started down the sidewalk. Her brow furrowed and she dropped sunglasses down before her eyes in preparation for more aimless wandering.
Across the street, a car with tinted windows started its engine in another slow pursuit. The man inside took a sip of his lukewarm coffee and lifted his cell phone after a punched to one programmed number. It rang twice before a crisp, yet decidedly warm voice picked up on the other end, time zones away. "You were right, she's here in Vegas. I'm watching her right now, she's.. walking down the street. Alone. Would you like for me to collect her?" The voice on the other end declined with an audible smile. He'd be there soon enough to gather his wife himself. The divorce papers had been faxed over from his attorney this morning, and he could be heard tearing them up before the phonecall went dead with a heartless click.