Re: Le Memory Emporium
She would have liked to think she was scorched flame, the embers of the inhabitant seared out cleanly, a shell to rattle in, an embarrassment of promise. Whoever she was with dirt carved under her nail-beds, her body slithered under silk, a temporary puppeted coquette with her smile as sweet as a lover's lie.
"No," she agreed, hands out and palms up as if who she was and what she was could be discerned with the traceries beneath the skin. A palmist's trick to make up a future and she thought of spinning him one fresh as new milk. He had the breadth of a man who'd fight himself out of corners but the inmate at his eyes was in shadow, the truths in bone unknown.
She smiled at the boxes behind the counter, shuttered eyes on dreams that didn't belong to her. "No one is happy with the way things are," she said, "Unless they are unhappy with how they were." The lidded look was contemplation, bare as a child's machinations. Cherry had been forgotten, but unsubtle lingered.