Monday, January 19, 2015

"So we generally start by asking you tell a couple of lies about yourself."
"Um, ok. I am 5'9", I break dance.."
"Ok, stop. We need to calibrate."
Deborah pulled a long cigarette out of her pack and started patting down her pockets, looking for a lighter.  The room had a greenish tint to it but Deborah doubted she would call it "green."  She found her lighter and lit her cigarette.  Warm light flooded though the dusty windows and she took a small drag and then held out her hand with the cigarette in it, studying her fingernails.  She had used a burgundy sorta of wine color; malbac?   She tapped the cigarette twice with her pointer finger even though there was barely an ash.  She could hear a train somewhere in the distance, she thought about a movie she saw about squatter punks.  What happened to their dogs, she often thought?  And face tattoos?  Fuck that.
She pulled out her phone and started thumbing through photos of herself.  Mostly in black for the last several months all of the pictures looked the same:  sharp, black bangs, black shirt, black pants...black.  She read the black made you look thinner and that was all she needed.  She took a polite drag and blew the smoke out of the side of her mouth, setting her chin on her hand.  She was looking up with a "sigh" look on her face like she saw in a movie, or read about.  No one was even watching her.