Re: Second Class; Theater smoking room
There were no sins in the celluloid dream, only tinsel. People could do all manner of things by cover of darkness and the gentleman in his grayscale suit showed no notion of thinking of any particular one. There was sex - of course there was, men and women were made for it, pearlescent flesh and grease smeared on the lens to make it more alluring, but the collar was buttoned very tightly and the cuffs of his sleeves were snowy white. He was very smoky, this companion of his and the gray man sneezed, once and then twice in rapid succession and produced a pocket square apologetically as pure white as his intentions. There was sex and there was vice but he hadn’t been snipped from that sort of reel, but ill-intent smeared itself like burst fruit, stickily spoiling one’s sleeves.
“Nothing,” the gray man said resolutely, for the poor gentleman couldn’t help his horns nor his taste, but he rippled, a starburst of interruption and black static. When he flickered back to life he looked embarrassed and he coughed neatly, just the once. He was family entertainment, for little people with their noses pressed to the glass and little people thought little of devils and nothing at all of sin. “I can’t, you see.” A little shrug that rippled the wrinkled wool. “I’m not scripted that way.”
But an ember of doubt glowed at his center, a lit match caught alight by a breeze. The movie star looked uncertain, he could feel it pull his face in ways it ought not and the ambiguity was clear as glass. “Are you all right?” He dug into his pocket for another pocket square, clean and ironed white and the shadow where an initial might once have been stitched. “It isn’t mine,” he said, “But it’s clean. So you can borrow it, if you need.”