Re: The Flibbertigibbet/The Pilot
The record was good and loud, loud enough it didn't matter who stopped in a doorway, they couldn't sully the ambiance. The ambiance, as far as Lili was concerned, could drown out any suggestion of worry, guilt or doubt that the train would start moving again pretty soon and deliver them all to their destination as smoothly as if they hadn't stopped at all. Lili didn't think about the lost, about the snow coming down in thick soft flakes. She didn't want to so she turned the record all the way up and waxy crackles just made Edith's croon better. The ambiance soaked through any suggestion of emotions that would fill Lili all the way up until she couldn't think, like melting butter.
She was looking for the shoe. The one that had sent her all the way along to the baggage car. It was buried somewhere in the scads of silk and lace she had flung across the compartment, and that draped haphazardly over a lamp with a dim, rosy-colored shade. She couldn't find it from Adam, and she'd liked those shoes well enough to buy them herself. Lili didn't often buy things for herself, why should she, if other people wanted to buy them for her? She was looking, but she wasn't looking full-tilt, she had a glass of something between the fingers of her left hand and pried through her own things with her right. There was an awful lot and they were everywhere, and she'd turned the heat higher than sin.
She saw the shadow drop over the carpet, and Lili paused on bare feet between digging through a pile of silk underthings and a heavy, fur-trimmed coat piled on a chair and looked in the direction of the door. "You listening?" Lili's voice was soft and sweet as honey, "Isn't she just the best?" Admiringly, in the direction of the record player.