Re: The Thief/The Flibbertigibbet
Everyone smelled like something. Despair smelled like carbolic soap, but Lili washed her face and hands every day now in soap that smelled like roses, that came wrapped in tissue paper from Paris. She didn't even notice the maid collecting up the slivers and pressing them together, or the faint traces of her own rose soap on the woman's skin. She might even have admired the woman's chutzpah, but she didn't notice. He smelled like some kind of tobacco, smoke and something sweet. Lili put her nose in the air and inhaled. It was a warm smell, nice enough. He didn't smell like carbolic soap from where she stood.
She watched the snow of the petticoat fall onto the floor with the drift of her own head a little sadly, twining a lock of hair around one finger absently as she did. It looked a little sad, right there, like someone hadn't so much as stepped out of it to have a good time as it had been lost. Lili discarded most of her undergarments one way or another, but she didn't notice it while she did it. She limped toward a trunk that had brassy hinges and a great hasp and tugged fruitlessly at the lid. She stood on one foot, and kicked it, hard with the shoed foot in annoyance.
"Oh no." Lili paused, mostly in curiosity for what he was doing with the little pick-locks. It looked harder than a hair-pin, but like it opened a lot more than a hair-pin ever could. "I make a habit of never telling anyone who they are, just what they aren't and only if you can see it in letters a mile high, like the Hollywood sign. I think that's the kind of thing you ought to tell someone yourself." Her smile was a warm bloom of convivial conspiracy.
"You looking for anything in particular, Petticoat Man? Or just anything shiny that goes for a buck or two?" The creamy rope of pearls clacked on the lid of the trunk, but it wasn't hers, hers was one along, it had to be.