Re: The antique store: Ella & Will
Once, Ella had been seduction tied up rather gaudily. Always poor, she'd been the girl with worn soles in the gin joint. She'd tossed up her skirts regularly, and she returned to it when she hungered, even if love had made her heart go fizzy. She wasn't seduction at all now. She had the demeanor of spinster who played piano for the church choir. She looked like a woman who cultivated a garden and adopted cats, and that appearance served her well. No, any seduction that came from Ella was not about sex. It was a darkness that didn't belong to her. It was something in her voice that bespoke dark things, and it was something upon her skin that smelled like evil would, if only evil was sweet. When she grew things, it was worse, or it was better, depending on who you were. When she spoke and when she sang, it was awful and beautiful. It was not sex. Ella dealt in that no longer.
"No one here understands. It's like being a stranger in a strange land. Isn't that the saying, fella?" She knew it was, but playing brains never got a jane anywhere when Ella lived, and Ella knew better now.
She looked down at her ankle when he said she was hurt, and she didn't disagree with him. She let him move her arms, as if she was a doll made of porcelain. It entertained her a little, this farce, and so little entertained Ella these days. She'd thought leaving her gilded cage behind would be Heaven, but perhaps she'd been too long in Hell. Things were different there. Things were delightful there, once you stopped feeling guilty. Morals had no place in the ovens, and she winced a small bit as he led her along, hand upon her waist.
She moved slowly, because there was no hurry, and because the damsel was in pain. "I hurt my foot once when I was young. A bell bottom, which is a sailor," she clarified, "scooped me up and carried me all the way to our flat." She looked over at her rescuer, who was no bell bottom, and who couldn't carry her anywhere, and she smiled gratefully. "Are you from here? You don't seem a local. Too refined," she added, complimentary.
Along the sidewalk, poppies bloomed in cracks. Dark and pungent, and she wanted to see if seemed to like their stygian song.