Salomé
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Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Dec 31, 2008 20:19:53 GMT -5
The hem of Salome's fur-lined coat pleasantly brushed against her ankles as she descended the stairs into the Foyer with the grace of a queen and the self-assurance only a very young person could have, lipstick smile beaming, short, curly cap of hair looking like a cloche hat from afar. She looked just like any other young thing from the 20s, ready to kick up her heels, but for the fact that she was totally alone. Being unchaperoned was common for the garconne, but not having gone out with a gaggle of girlfriends wasn't. Not that Salome took note of it, for she was not the average young aristocrat and preferred the mystery of it.
She took out her cigarette case as she descended, removed a cigarette, shut the case once more, and paused, stopping a man who was going up and asking him for a light. He stammered but obliged, and she gave him a warm - almost sultry - thank-you smile and passed on, moving to slip the case back into the pocket of her coat as she was walking away from the stairs.
It wasn't quite in when she released it, and she felt it slide against her body after she let go, and stopped and turned to pick it up from the floor when she heard it fall, perfectly capable of appearing unconscious the looks she drew, even as she recognized them and savored each one enormously.
((tag Mortimer.))
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Post by Mortimer on Dec 31, 2008 20:41:49 GMT -5
The little man, still dressed in his somewhat outlandish long green coat and bright copper striped trousers with the red vest, had gotten to the case first, picking up the slightly warm, smooth metal in his (fully formed, five fingered) hand and straightened, smiling and holding the thing out.
"Hello. What's this?"
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Salomé
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Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Dec 31, 2008 20:45:34 GMT -5
Salome smiled back, at her most courteous, although as usual there was the simultaneous sensuality running beneath it. That had been expected of princesses in her day, and even though it was expected of much lower now, it was a part of her. She flicked open the cigarette case with her painted thumbnail to show him, then took a quick puff of her own cigarette and gently blew smoke.
"Cigarette case. You don't smoke, do you, darling?" Or he'd know. Imagine someone not knowing what a cigarette case was. Well, she supposed he did look rather outlandish, but then eccentricity was common here, especially amongst the upper classes. He certainly seemed rather Western and she was moderately surprised he didn't know what one was.
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Post by Mortimer on Dec 31, 2008 20:53:45 GMT -5
He thought he remembered Desire having such a thing--he certainly remembered the smoke sticks.
"Cigarettes. What do they taste like, how do they work? My name is Mortimer."
He gave a little bow, eyeing the person's mode of dress and deciding that this was probably a woman.
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Salomé
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Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Dec 31, 2008 21:07:04 GMT -5
Salome smiled sweetly, though her eyes narrowed as she did so and glittered. It wasn't that Salome wasn't cruel - to some, to many, she very much was - but that, predatory though she might be, she was not directly unkind.
"Well, then! Mortimer - walk me to my carriage and let me explain. I'm Salome."
She had had different names over the years, but no one minded Salome nowadays, and besides, it was having a lovely vogue that she very much appreciated, even though Moreau's paintings did not resemble her very much and therefore she was not entirely pleased with them. No one even believed it was her name, which was, after all, rather the point.
"One sucks in on them, and the smoke from the burning cloves - or tobacco - " Salome had black clove cigarettes - "is brought into one's lungs, and then one breathes it out again, and the taste is very fine indeed. These ones make one's throat rather numb, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing or have a sort of illness that makes your throat hurt."
She was not entirely certain of how to put it, but she was certainly intending to be genial enough in explaining. She looked him over carefully as she did so, noticing what she at first thought to be scars on his face, or some sort of birthmark in the form of a stain.
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Post by Mortimer on Dec 31, 2008 21:24:25 GMT -5
"Hm. I should like to try one. Where can they be got, and what do they cost?"
The tattoos on his face were perfectly hidden until one was very close, and then they had only a short of dull shine in certain light, when he turned his head this way and that. Too fine in pattern to be any birthmark, any stain.
"Where do you go when you leave the Opera, Salome?"
MOrtimer offered his arm as they walked, because he had observed that it was appropriate for a man accompanying a woman to do so.
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Salomé
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Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Dec 31, 2008 21:33:47 GMT -5
Peculiar little gentleman. She thought he might have been, at some point, some eccentric noblewoman's toyboy, because he was both pretty and exotic, and because he aped conventional gentlemanliness but clearly had little idea of etiquette in context. She wondered when he'd dropped her. And after a moment, she wondered if it had been a woman.
"They're very cheap," said Salome. "Everybody in the lower classes smokes generally. Or very costly - so do all the upper classes."
She took his arm. He was, despite being well-proportioned, rather unusually short even in this age, and she imagined that had added to his charm for whoever she pictured taking him in - sort of like a little page boy. "And I shall be returning to my rooms at the Grande."
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Post by Mortimer on Dec 31, 2008 21:39:17 GMT -5
"Oh." He smiled brightly, seeming to have no mind for their difference in height. It mattered not to him, and probably didn't register.
"Then you don't live in Paris? I haven't been here very long either--Oh, but I stay here, in the Opera."
His manner was very easy, not at all affected like an upperclass gentleman, or crass as a lower fellow might be. Nothing about him seemed put on or false at all, and he didn't seem to make any sort of apology with his voice or his body language for having revealed something as unconventional as residing inside the Opera.
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Salomé
- Ingenious Pilot -
Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Dec 31, 2008 21:44:31 GMT -5
"I live in all sorts of places," said Salome with a small smile that she glanced back at Mortimer to share with him as she might a private joke. "I've been in Paris a very long time. I suppose one might say I do live here, but I like to move in and out of different hotels and inns. I've been residing in a suite in the Grande for a week; I like it very much. Perhaps I'll choose the Opera next."
She said it good-naturedly, not disbelieving him, but imaging he had been somewhat smuggled in by someone or other. She'd heard rumors of that sort about one of the singers there - a tenor, she believed, with a divaish temper - and thought it might have been him. Well, she thought she might not have any trouble seducing someone at the Opera and staying there for a week, too. Might be interesting.
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Post by Mortimer on Jan 1, 2009 0:14:18 GMT -5
"Oh yes," he agreed, rather excitedly "there are so many rooms to visit, and small spaces--I expect no one else could fit into them. Perhaps a very young person. Oh, and there are so many things always going on. Always there is music, laughter, noise. I like it very much."
Mortimer gave an involuntary purr and continued to follow the lady's lead, pleased enough with her company. SHe was very nice.
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Salomé
- Ingenious Pilot -
Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Jan 1, 2009 0:32:43 GMT -5
His speaking had had a quaint touch to it before, and now she detected a bit of difficulty with the French grammar - graciously, collectedly covered, but there nonetheless. Well, she'd gone through her own difficulty with the language, and with many others, but it strengthened her idea of him as a foreign, pretty thing some rich Madame had picked up to take care of. He was rather young as well, and she wondered how long it had lasted and how long he'd been away from her.
They headed out the door and into the comparative chill of the evening air outside the Opera House. Salome reached her other hand up to her chest and drew the two sides of her coat together further to keep warmer almost absent-mindedly, head turning automatically towards the horizon. "Look at the twilight," she said, almost distantly, lifting the cigarette to her mouth and blowing smoke that obscured her vision of the colors with a gray haze for a moment. "Have you ever been to the Grande? Parts of it look something like the Opera House..."
She looked back at him with a very pretty, white-teethed smile that took away whatever sting of impropriety that might have been in that, although the feeling she had that said she needed to take that away was wholly insincere.
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Post by Mortimer on Jan 1, 2009 2:03:52 GMT -5
"I've seen if from outside, I think. I get lost easily, hm...but always find my way home again. Okay."
He beamed back, and really would have made a charming bit of arm candy for any old dame or master, and easy company for those of his own apparent social standing.
"Do you walk all the way to the hotel? I like to walk. I could go with you, if you liked."
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Salomé
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Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Jan 1, 2009 19:34:05 GMT -5
When Salome had said, "walk me to my carriage", she had not actually had a carriage waiting; she had simply intended to call one. But like watching an exotic flower that blooms within minutes - or maybe just a simple moonflower, blossoming only at night - Salome was beginning to see opportunity open up right before her, and so she smiled as usual.
"Mm, sometimes," she said. Really, her coat was warm enough for the occasion, and she'd been in far worse situations made to walk, and certainly then without company. It was a rather warmer evening than she had anticipated, and she thought it might be nice to watch the sun set. Salome was fond of this time of day, the evening, watching the heavens unveil themselves... "I would like that so much, M. Mortimer," she said, beaming, the voice what some people might have considered a purr (Salome was not one of them, but she had spent history being spoken of, not dictating her own autobiography, and was used to that sort of thing).
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Post by Mortimer on Jan 1, 2009 20:42:20 GMT -5
"It's not too cold, is it? I've only just become introduced to the cold." That might have sounded a bit odd, or it might have implied that he was local to some warmer climate. Either way it was truth, and he found his own jacket warm enough for him but didn't know how cold humans got.
"Hm." they paused in the street outside the Opera and Mortimer looked one way, then another. "That way." He pointed, smiled and stepped out with the lady on his arm.
"Where are you from, Mlle Salome?"
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Salomé
- Ingenious Pilot -
Posts: 101
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Post by Salomé on Jan 1, 2009 22:33:36 GMT -5
Salome did indeed imagine that he meant he was from some colder climate, and it both confirmed, for her, her theories on his origins and cheered her up a little. English visitors always thought French was sort of warm, but it would always be too cold for her. Heaven help her in England. She'd hated it there, all those fogs in every street, and in every gentleman's head. Ridiculous people, she thought.
"Not too," she affirmed, pleased as he sort-of led; Salome felt very much as though she was leading, sort of in the way of someone who has their darling pet on a leash. They know where they're going less than the dog, but the dog is very much ahead. "I believe they get called the Bible Lands these days." She felt somewhat reckless suddenly - not because she thought he was simple enough to take everything she said, but because she thought he seemed to be of simple enough tastes to not find it pretentious in a childlike manner for her to say something that most people would dismiss outright. "I'm in the Bible, after all. I am a rather famous princess. Today everyone knows who I am, but it's been so much time that I'm afforded an awful lot of anonymity. Does get lonely sometimes..."
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