Velvet

     She wore an orange wig. Something about the highlighter colored bob felt right in the poorly lit bar under the fog of alcohol. The winter air blew in behind her raising the natural blonde hairs on the nape of her neck, as she thoughtfully pulled the door shut behind her. Easing onto a sticky barstool in the corner she waited, slipping her heel out of her red ballet flat and dangling it playfully off her toes.
     He seemed like a nice enough guy after two drinks and was completely intriguing after four. It’d been a long time since she felt like her old self, talking to strangers. The orange of her hair only drew more attention to her large, sage eyes, which naturally drew him in. She lapped up every word he said, not because she didn’t know better, but because this was a new town and she didn’t care to know better. She just wanted to connect. She agreed when he asked to walk her home and again when he asked if he could come in.


     As they sat on beanbag chairs in the half unpacked living room she listened to his philosophy on drug use and its correlation to religion. He’s definitely a man, she thought distracted by the shadows under his glossy brown eyes. When he brushed the synthetic hair off of her face with his rough fingertips she thought, well, we’ve come this far.
     She let him kiss her. She kissed him back dutifully. His lips moved from her mouth to the bone of her jaw, down the side of her neck. She knew he wouldn’t get further than that. She was in control. As she let her hand wander over his chest, her fingers outlining his collarbone she came across a chain she hadn’t noticed before. While he was occupied, running his lips over the soft skin of her shoulders she worked the chain out from underneath the collar of his shirt. “Oh God, it’s a pentagram.”
     Though her green eyes were still glassy her perception was on point. In that instant within the constantly shifting crevice of the two beanbag chairs she recalled the pagan ideals he seemed too eager to share with her. As if he’d seen the same documentary that aired at 4:00pm on the National Geographic channel. She couldn’t help but giggle, causing him to think he must be doing something right and to press his lips even more forcefully against hers. It wasn’t as if she disagreed with his beliefs or had any strong beliefs herself. It was the fact that even here in this town that seemed to promise an inherent sense of freedom, where people often didn’t wear shoes, she had to meet another person dangling a philosophy on a cheap chain.
     She walked him to the door with a gracious smile and made polite plans to meet up with him the next day. While he fumbled with his phone, promising to save her number and call her the next day, her eyes darted to the dangling pentagram on his clavicle. Almost simultaneously she was startled by another detail she’d previously ignored. His shirt, the color of cranberries, was crafted out of some sort of crushed velvet fabric she’d last seen in the form of a tracksuit. Without stopping to recover her face from the shock and disgust she respectfully ushered him out of the apartment and into the cold night.

     Alone, she removed her wig and along with it the shimmery veil of the night. The apartment may as well have been a palace. Even with boxes haphazardly acting as a living room set it was hers. She couldn’t remember the last time she hung a picture or personalized any space. She’d been fit onto couches and squeezed into extra drawers for years now, but it worked. In the six months since she moved north she’d felt an increasing anxiety to run. Not from or to anything specific, but just to remain in motion. It helped that she didn’t know a single soul here. It was so much simpler to remember people as scattered addresses on Post-it notes.