Re: log: joey & ella, gatsby
The stool was warm from someone else sat with legs swinging, percussion cramped on the back of the stage like a shadow puppet theater, sounds and sighs and the rustle of music scores. Blue was nothing but a color for Ella, and the spot was rosy-gold, tissue paper over lit-lamp flare. It was a lie, or a story or something in between that was harmless and small and it felt like sunshine, all that heat on her skin and the small tables and the talking and the laughter faded to nothing. They sang jazz, smoky-sweet as aged liquor and the song wasn't pinned down to wax records to play on Vitrollas now or yet but it sounded close enough and no one in the club was going to know the difference.
Ella sang like cigarettes and whiskey instead of Julliard-training, months of clarity eroded away to leave something fuller in the soft smoke-wisps that curled upward from the cigars that rose blue above the heads of the clientele. No one came to the small club purely for the singing, they came for the mixed drinks and moonshine, but the bubble of noise pricked and burst and when she slid away from the light to make room for the next girl, it didn't make a bit of difference if they listened or they didn't, if it was make-believe or if it was realer than anything since college days on black-painted stages. It felt real, and when she passed by the bar, she took a glass of water from the outstretched hand, sweat beading forehead and the back of her neck and the gloves damp at the palms from condensation on the outside of the glass.
And then she looked for him. She'd hoped one day she could show it to Max, like a kid with a snow-globe on Christmas. Gatsby was preserved like a fly caught in amber, beautiful because it was forever and because it was a moment but there was no more Max and Ella didn't think of showing Luke. Not this, not blue cut high across her thighs and fringe shivering below her knees, not sweat-streaked from gas lamps turned high. This wasn't living but it was playing dress-up, same way Bethie had begun to play pretend and it was a better pretend than dirt and death and nightmare.
He was too clean for Gatsby. Too clean, and the corners of her mouth pulled because he wouldn't know that they wore dirt here, like baths were once a week. He was scraped-clean but he looked the same and she slid into the opposite chair at the wobbly little table without asking first, because he was a friend caught in the amber with her, and she smiled bright as paste-diamonds at him.