She looks like one of those cut-out paper dolls I made when I was small. A child’s body drawn for women’s clothes, improbably thin and straight. I imagine folded tabs tentatively hanging the misshapen, drab roll-neck and grey-marl jogging pants against her flat body. She shivers and cradles her sharp angles, apparently cool on this humid summer night.
An opulent stream of people babble around her towards a nearby building, several doors channelling them into tributaries. Her face, already accentuated in rosy blush, is even more concave as she pulls on a cigarette. Ash swirls into the sea of trim suits and floaty silk as tickets are removed from leather purses on gold chains.
Later the crowd is held transfixed as she, transformed in soft white feathers, pirouettes and plies across the stage. I wonder if I’m the only one who notices a trace of lingering smoke.
