Wednesday, August 26, 2009

62

The clients watched the girl trail her fingers across the dead woman's china cabinet, then the buffet, then back again to the dining room table. The husband watched with detached interest, the wife with a tightness in her chest and hands clenched. It was the wife's mother who had died without warning, without illness, without closure.

The girl's hair hung in a neat, dark braid down her back and, compared to the clients, she was a girl, but she was really in her late 20s and not a girl at all. She always dressed appropriately for her work; she thought dressing like a slob would have been rude and unprofessional. Dressing like an old hippie would be disingenuous and it would make her seem like a charlatan.

Her fingers swept across the abstract blue painting that was meant to seem like a ship at sail, and she stopped short.

No comments:

Post a Comment