Single post in Sleight of Heart -- [COMPLETED]

“Why?” she fires back. “You clearly don’t mind me being here.” She raises up slightly on her knees, extends her arms past either side of my head, and slowly sways her hips to music only audible inside her head. She tilts her head back and lets an almost silent moan slip from her lips while she pushes her bosom into my face. I catch the slightest scent of strawberries and quickly press my lips against her flesh, just above her cleavage. Ms. Marilyn gasps and looks down at me, feigning shock. A second later, she giggles. “I didn’t think you’d have the nerve.” Crap! I shouldn’t have done that! I quickly grab her by the waist and, as gently as I can manage, shift her weight off me. “Sorry… I can’t…” She flops into the corner of the sofa, crushing the bags of chips beneath her thighs. She pays them no attention though. She just silently stares back at me for several seconds. I can’t see any anger, disappointment, or frustration in those eyes, and it makes me more nervous than curious. My right index finger tugs at the cuticle on my thumb. The uncomfortable silence drags on a few seconds longer. Is she waiting for an explanation or something? I really do not know what she wants me to say. She sighs deeply, breaking the silence and shifts her posture to grab the bags beneath her. In the next breath, she extends her legs across my lap and hands me my ranch tortilla chips while that same smile graces her lips again. “I like you, Karl,” she simply blurts out without breaking her gaze from me. With a smirk, she plucks a sour cream and onion chip from her bag and takes a single small bite from it before waving the rest in front of my face. “Maybe one day, you’ll actually like me too.” I blink. “What?” “So, how good of an artist are you?” she immediately asks, blatantly changing the subject. “Could you draw me if I posed for you?” I am still reeling from the blunt statement of her feelings, and she’s already jumped tracks to another train of thought. But to be honest, I would rather not discuss how I feel about her… mainly because I really don’t know how I feel. So… “Probably not. My style has a more cartoonish feel.” I explain to her how I grew up watching cartoons and reading comics… how it made me realize that I want to entertain people the same way. I want to whisk them away into a fantasy world, where they can temporarily forget the troubles of this one. Surprisingly, Ms. Marilyn then confides that’s partly why she wants to be an actress. Performing in front of others gives her a release from reality, where she can embrace the thoughts and feelings of someone else and lose herself in their life. I had never really thought of what actors and actresses went through to pull off some of the best portrayals I’ve seen. If nothing else, she made me believe she has the heart of an actress. She even gets up on one of the coffee tables and acts out a scene from one of her favorite films—Lady Hampton’s Requiem—for me and a handful of spectators who happen to wander through the union. “How should I respond, when you’ve given the remainder of my life a clock that constantly ticks in reverse? You expect me to remain calm and accept that my time on this earth has come to an end? I am not some senile old lady, resigned to accept the ridiculous hand of cards fate has dealt me! No… I will use every second—every breath—to deny this supposed fate! As long as these crippling hands still burn with the passion fueled from my beating heart, they will mold… a miracle!” I sit and listen to each word, her delivery of each defiant phrase, and the frailty yet strength behind her graceful movements. I see it instantly. She has acted this specific scene out many times before. But since she actually manages to shed a tear during the impromptu performance, I wonder if there’s a deeper attachment to that scene.