Repose Memories (reposememories) wrote in repose, @ 2017-06-10 01:10:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ~plot: memories |
[Memory]
What: Memory
Will characters be viewing the memory or experiencing it?: Experiencing
Warning, this memory contains: Unreliable narration.
This memory is not reliable.
Remember that.
You are young. (Are you?) You can feel it in the elasticity of muscles, the banked impatience. It is the young who are impatient. They surge with it. They need. You need. It is a single-note emotion and you need in this moment. You are young and you are one of life’s young lions. (Are you?) You know what it is to have no practical concerns. Need runs you. Need rules you. You need.
You are walking through the ranks of a party. The smell of expensive perfume, luxury and the heavy languor of cigar-smoke is a lustre over the heads of people. There is champagne, a lot of it. There is a glass in your hand and the bubbles coat the back of your tongue. You are used to drinking champagne, often (are you? There is an undercurrent in the memory: conviction at war with persuasion. The two are entangled, it is uncomfortable and it runs to the ticked heartbeat of a nerve-ending plucked).
The suit you are wearing is tight in the shoulders. It is designed that way, to cleave to the breadth of your back. You are the young lion and this is your party. The woman glitters in red. You know she is waiting for you as you pass through a clump of people talking thickly about stock markets and share prices, as if this were a meeting in a board room rather than a party frantically glistening in a display of ostentatious wealth.
The woman glitters and your approach is smooth, unhurried, you hold an inviolate expectation that you will be wanted. You are used to being wanted, it’s something you’re remarkably comfortable with now. (Your hands are damp. You dry them surreptitiously on your pants, heel of your palm dragged to the ends of your fingers and dropped to your sides. Anything more and they will notice. Your tongue is heavy, weighted against the roof of your mouth. You have no idea what it is you’ll say. You have no experience of women. You have experience of men who live together as one, who snort and grunt and gasp in the dark of the night, you have no experience of women)
You approach. Your fingers glance off the edge of her elbow, she is holding her champagne glass and she looks down at your shoes (tailor-made; too tight and ill-fitting) and then up at your face (slow, confident smile; an opaque look hiding every iota of reckless anticipation) and she smiles.
You need. It is as uncomplicated as that (it is deeply complicated. There are layers and recesses to your need but really, all that the memory entitles you to is that the combination adds up to desperation. You need)
She laughs. The man she is talking to glides away and is folded into the crowd behind her. She is older, the kind of woman men talk admiringly about style and panache. They do not call her beautiful because she is too old for men to call her that. Women will call her and mean it. She is older and the lines of her face are finely drawn.
She talks over champagne glasses that you fetch (you need). You can see the time slide past on your wrist. You can picture the conversation about the utility of your time, about who it is whose party this is, about where your focus ought to be.
You know in the second that her gaze settles on your mouth, on the fullness of your lower lip and her hand rests on the superfine of your jacket sleeve that you have done it. (You need. You need and it increases pace, adrenal heartbeat)
You knew you could (You doubted you could)
The memory ends.