Re: carnival: sparrow/matt
She looked at him, but not too long. Just enough to get an impression, and to fill her mind with thoughts and suppositions. Battered clothing, but clean, and hair too long for the polite people in town. He screamed outcast, even in muted tones, but he was trying. He wasn't like the girl on the bed, who knew she dressed wrong, and who knew she thought and talked wrong, but who didn't care. She looked, but she smiled softly as she did. She didn't do any nervous things. She didn't fidget or swing her legs, and her bare feet had toenails painted gold, and she was a swath of almost-color from head to toe.
"You've never been to a traveling carnival?" The question, coming from her lips, wasn't accusatory. She had a voice that was like long nights drinking bourbon, too many cigarettes in crowded rooms, and slow summer days. No rush, no bite, just a voice too low and too husky for the diminutive woman that was sitting on the bed. "They're mostly dead now, the carnivals, but they went all over years and years ago, and they always ended with the hooch. You get a little bit with your ticket, but nothing nude. You pay a little more, and you get to see more. You pay a little more than that, and you get to do more. It was kind of like prostitution without street corners, and whole families worked the hooch. The fathers were usually the barkers, and any mothers and daughters they had worked the show."
She didn't usher him in, didn't call him closer. He could stand there, if he wanted, for the whole cold night. He could come in, sit, talk. He could do more. She gave the appearance of being wholly amenable, because she mostly was. It was there, drawn fine on pretty features, that she wasn't the type of woman to argue. There lived a nothingness behind her eyes, not frightening, but still there, a thing expected on dolls on shelves. But her smile was genuine, warm, and she tipped her head and pressed ear to shoulder. "I like it here. I like people. I like touch. It warms me, and nothing much does that. And it's safe. I don't think it's safe like this in other places." Her smile warmed like candles flickering higher. "And I like to dance and sing." She wasn't very good at the latter, and only the sultry tenor of her voice redeemed her, but she was a good dancer, sequins and appliques aside.