Above her black stockings the white thigh flesh gleams like a young girls. She reaches into the dark, and brings out five eggs in one hand. One hen stays out too long. Cursing, the old lady in black, polite as a priest, lets her have it with a tin mug pitched one inch from her head. Our fingers have taken to pleading with the files.
Information falls from our office, in duplicate dreams of an old material process.
They are calling my name. Five minutes, Miss Kemble. I am in the wings. I am two people. Five minutes before the cue to pretend.