Re: Side of the road: Sparrow & Jude
She wore gloves. Jude couldn't remember if it was a book or a movie, he'd seen those things in first. Not in life. (Never in life. He had gone to those kind of parties - in the back. Under darkness. Strains of music to a sashay with a lock and a little more intimate with priceless art than with a girl in gloves). The gloves she wore had a dull shimmer that made them silk or satin. Faded and he couldn't see if they ended at the wrists (that coat was in the way) but Jude thought perhaps they didn't. It matched, you see. Old dress. Old coat. Stood to reason old gloves. Like the ones in the movie or the book that he forgot.
Jude watched her. His head cocked, as if he were listening to a strain of music that wasn't there. His smile was watchful, absent-minded warmth like a cup of tea abandoned momentarily.
She didn't read well. Easy: she wasn't guarded. So she read easy. But not well. He couldn't parse her story from the coat and the gloves and the hair ringleted tight around her ears. The Carnival. That matched, jigsaw pieces around the edges.
Obediently, he rolled the car forward. It gave an indignant, choked purr at being left to idle in cold air for so long before it rattled into movement that smoothed out the longer the car ran at a particular speed. It objected in abrupt tones to being started, to going up a gear or down one but it stuttered briefly and then the car's judder evened into just the rattle of cool November wind past the windows.
"Hi Sparrow. I'm Jude." It was an unusual name. Possibly borrowed, instead of given. Jude had known a lot of people with a lot of unusual names. 'Jude' was comparatively conventional. "The Carnival's home, then?"