Trying to write every day! I need to focus on constructing coherent, stand-alone pieces. Not snapshots of connected scenes that are vaguely, if at all, related. I'm tired of writing pieces that sound pretty but serve no purpose.
I'm crabby today :\
Saturday and Sunday I worked on an Augusta piece that I still haven't finished. I'm tinkering with it. Moulin Rouge was on HBO today though, so.
This is not a coherent, stand-alone piece. Oh well.
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It starts easily enough.
"You wanna see Argentina?" he mumbles drunkenly, leaning heavily against her side.
It's almost morning and it's drizzling and they're both shivering. Nini laughs, loud and hoarse and vulgar, and he can feel her cold hand at the small of his back.
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He borrows her kohl while she snores on his makeshift bed, using a sequined costume as a pillow. It's hard to tell whose eyes are more heavily painted black, his or hers.
They don't tend to wake up together. He usually gets enough sleep whether he wants it or not, and likes the unreal atmosphere of early mornings, when it's only the real people who are awake, not them.
If she awakens as he gets up, she grimaces at the sun, grimaces at the cursed bells of Sacre Cœur that echo inside her skull, her headache like a quickening pulse. Before he can say anything, she's buried her head in the costume and is out like a light.
It doesn't mean anything that they sleep in the same bed. On every soft carpet or folded down curtain, there's someone dreaming of quiet gardens, their dear distant countries, wicked fairies or the clear moment before rain. It's all tangled limbs and warm breath and the Argentinean has to be careful to not step on anyone.
It's not like they are sharing a quiet garret and waking up in each other's arms.
When she wakes, there are one or two other girls in the narrow bed, smudged lipstick and half-stripped clothes, or Toulouse, still drunk from the previous night, oil paint on his hands and arms like scars.
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On many nights, she never appears.
"Feeling lost and lonely, are we now?" Antoinette coos and he snarls and nips her neck and she pounces off with a shriek that melts into laughter, "Ah, bad doggy."
He'll kiss other girls and put his hand under their skirts just to make it clear that he's not waiting for anyone.
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Nini watches Satine lick blood off her pale lips out of the corner of her eye as she puts on her earring.
"She's already dead," she hisses as she passes Chocolat and his worried eyes. He should know better. They shouldn't all be lapping up this stupid farce. All this will prove is that in the end they still catch fire and become nothing.
(That night she's irritable and bites the Argentinean's lip so hard it bleeds when he tries to kiss her too softly. She fucks him hard and dresses quickly afterwards, bangs the door as she leaves, just to make sure that they aren't entertaining any notions of fairytale endings. Sewing the rip in her dress, she stings her finger with the rusty needle and starts to cry.)
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sad