Had Olivia known she was the girl to someone else -- had it been words instead of fragments of thoughts -- it would have broken the reverie. She would have spun on those high, impossible shoes and either her laughter would have roiled off the walls and the floors, rich and loud and thickly amused or she would have been angry, angry for the woman she was and the pallid, pastel thing girlhood conjured up. Now was a week ending on powerlessness, on the dark red marks around her throat and the steak still sat in the fridge, the cell phone turned down to no sound at all. Now was, more likely, a week for anger rather than laughter that was a deep ocean of sound.
But she did not. She did not know anything at all but the colors and the tones, the way a painter's reverie translated itself from bare white walls and stripped floorboards and light cascading like water. Olivia was fascinated only by the art and when she was done, when she had had her fill of light and color and shape, she turned on those silly heels and tap tap tapped right out of the gallery with a smile that didn't look like powerlessness at all.