Re: log: joey & ella, gatsby
Ella figured you could breathe anyplace that let you stop and try. Gatsby was slow, was unlaced corsets and new ribboned-freedoms for twenties women who didn't know what to do with it. It was syrup-sweet juice laced with a backyard-brewed bite and so much money pouring in and out of the economy the men in the shiny white cuffs and the shell-shock from martialing numbers looked like they needed the jazz to teach them how to take stock.
"I drink," she said, because she wasn't an angel and she wasn't a Madonna, "But long enough before I have to go pick her up that it wears off." Gatsby was tinsel and fairy-dust, all of it wore off before she went back to Marvel, sticky with spotlight sweat and tacky with glitter and smeared eyeliner and Beth slept on her shoulder on the way home on the bus without asking why. "She's not much of a baby any more." Two and a half, nearly three and talking without the lazy-slow syllables she remembered growing up. Domestic motherhood wove itself in and out her own growing up: her first reckless credit card spend accumulated on baby clothes, stopped laughing at the counter to figure out what could be bought on a limit.
He didn't look fine. He looked, she thought like maybe he couldn't decide if he wanted to run or to climb the walls and she didn't think date for all the clean line to his jaw. She slid out a hand, fingers to the backs of his knuckles, and she touched once, briefly, fingers warm from satin gloves. "You don't have to like it," she said. She'd thought maybe he would, the girls here stood under spotlights from a distance, they sang like songbirds until you could pretend they weren't girls at all but clockwork wound like some girl's musical box. She thought maybe he wanted that better, people he didn't have to touch.
"I could use the air," He looked like maybe someone was going to eat him alive, sat there in his clean shirt and his anachronisms, and she was briefly, momentarily disappointed, like showing off Christmas Eve preparations to some kid who knew magic didn't exist already, that it hadn't worked - but she smoothed the fringed-skirt down and extracted herself with difficulty from behind the small table and she looked toward the back.