Who: Elise narrative. What: A benefit. When: Tonight. Warnings: None.
Private ballrooms always hold the illusion of being so personal. The people milling and kissing cheeks, the swigs of champagne, so much laughter and vehement yet playful conversation. It is somehow distinctly American to her, made even more evident by the way a waiter crosses her nervously to ask if Elise can put out her cigarette. There is no smoking ma'am. "It's cardamom and clove," Elise explains with a smile that tilts her head. No blond spills into her eyes, because she is shellacked and glossed to the point of mannequin elegance. The waiter gives pause, then wanders off in confusion without asking her again. It is not even a triumph, there is very little that feels like conquest or victory to her these days. While it has never constituted as worry, there is a strange cloud of awareness that the passion will be gone soon. The art will leave her one day.. she will just wake up and the will to be in the sense of more than just a body, will be gone.
She already neglects her body. It is not an intentional thing, but the strange lapse of days when mania curves her toward tea, cigarettes, and insomnia. The designers swoon over a swan-like protrusion of shoulder blade, where her backless dress plunges in a mermaid tail of silver sequins. Her agent picked it out for her, he does everything for her these days. When he walks up to her now with a kiss to her cheek, he swipes the black cigarette from her fingers and drops it in a nearby glass of champagne. His mouth is by her ear, "I don't get you, Elise. I'm working my ass off trying to get your work out here to Vegas while you're sitting here moping."
Elise snapped back, insulted with gray eyes gone to gun metal. "I am not moping," her voice flickered on the edge of a German blitzkrieg, and it was clue enough for the agent to back off just a step. "I'm sorry.. I appreciate what you're doing for me here," she countered gently to water down the prior bitterness of temperament.
"I thought you wanted this, I thought you wanted to be successful, Elise."
"I do," she said softly. Rising in her heels while the gallery pamphlets that had once rested in her lap became forgotten and fluttered to the tiled floor below. She didn't even acknowledge them as the agent retreated further with a tired shake of his head, she followed recklessly. Was the benefit over? The ballroom seemed suddenly so empty, with only a few lingering guests.. how much time had passed while she'd sat and smoked alone in the corner? "I am trying," she insisted at his back. "I smiled, I smiled, and shook hands, I did everything!" Her tone crested, and the man turned on her to breach their distant for fresh discretion.