Mars is lounging in a vinyl chair on the little porch/patio of the apartment. She's got on a haltered swimsuit, one that catcalls back to a bygone era. Her sunglasses are huge, they swallow her face much like the floppy hat of black straw swallows the tumult of her screaming red hair. She has a glass of diet lemonade, and her cellphone is singing some invigorating Bikini Kill thing. The peace is disturbed by a labor truck that goes lurching by. It is hiccuping diesel while the driver, all gristle and sunburn and decidedly not enough teeth for the smile he's giving her way, leers.
She pulls down her sunglasses to glare, and the strange memory, it seizes. It kidnaps, it pricks her with vertigo, and seals her to the vinyl chair. There is no good fighting it, she sinks like a stone. The imagery is chaos. She's tumble-dry on low, spinning... and she has the brief thought that she'd always wanted to see Paris.
But not like this.
The memory folds up like origami and when it washes away from her like the retreat of a wave, there is curious victory on her tongue. It sweetens the diet lemonade that lingers, reminding Mars of the fact that she has a body, has a mind, has memories of her own. She dissects herself, carefully peels herself, away from whatever that was. The work truck with the gawk-eyed driver is gone, so Mars settles, uneasy, back into her patch of afternoon sun. She slides her sunglasses back into place.
And no, she doesn't think she ever wants to see Paris again.