Ballroom bedroom
She was a candy shop. A gingerbread girl come to life through misguided lust, loneliness, and pure cane sugar, all stuck in the oven until the little bell figured her done. She was butterscotch temptation. She was delicious morsels wrapped in colored plastic, tied off with ribbons of purple and sweet, sweet pink. She was no doll. She breathed. She was nectar and honey. Her eyelashes were frosting on caramel drop eyes gazing expectantly at the door. Her taffy tan skin was coated with sugar, pink fairy floss hair pulled up in two plaits wound atop her head, but stray wisps grazed bare shoulders. Candy apple lips smiled red in the cloverleaf Depression glass, casting the geometry of Art Deco askew, removing the perfection of the circles on the wall.
What she lacked in wholesomeness and the whiteness of milk and Wonderbread, she made up for in saccharine charm. A diminutive girl, she sat atop the bedspread in a romper with a sweetheart neckline cut deep over girlish breasts. The sleeves were capped and the shorts short. All of it was done up in a blue like the sky and held together with four white buttons just over her belly.
She was old enough. She didn’t look it, but she was. On the harsh top of the table by the bed sat her drink, grenadine and cherries, ice melted into a puddle on wood. A cigarette burned down in the ashtray. She snapped blue gum that tasted like blueberries. Dancing held no interest for her. Nor did the musk of the basement so filled with desire. She was old enough. She knew. But she was sweetness. That was why she was waiting in the dim oven-darkness of the room above the ballroom. Someone would come, someone with a sweet tooth. Someone with a craving.