Re: Third class, dining.
It was the work of two seconds and she’d not been born when the talkies came in (and that didn’t work, it didn’t line up but nights like this never did) and when exaggeration happened on screen. The starlet’s heels skidded in the puddled brine water and her back twisted beneath the heavy sodden fur, weighted down with water. It was ruined now but it hadn’t been ruined by her and there was no merit at all in having something ruined if you didn’t tear it up with your own hands like a bad script. Her heels slid sideways and her brightly shellacked toes clenched in the sandals but no one ever bought shoes that fit.
The starlet went down, and the water spread through the floral of her dress, seeped in and stained white cotton and splashed flowers and shock. The starlet had not been shoved in a decade, a decade of bright lights and people telling her where to stand and the starlet telling them where to stand right back (and where they could put their scripts for good measure). The water was cold and it was stagnant and it smelled the way seaweed stank on the shore. And the little mime who’d run her eyeliner down to nothing trying to look anything but miserable, that little mime looked anything but just then. Her suspenders cracked against her chest and the starlet watched, drops of seawater clinging to her eyelashes as plosh! one foot, then another was shown off.
She hadn’t stomped in puddles either for a very long time, even with the exaggerated fun the mime was having, and the starlet let the fur slide heavily off her shoulders, soak up some of that water like a heavy, dead sponge. “I can do it too,” the starlet said with the certainty that would never make it into the magazines, and her hand came out, impractical nails and all and SPLASH.