Empathetic Ears
The vase of flowers loomed pink and huge on her table.

Otherwise the hotel room was ordinary. Bland watercolors on the walls. Heavy drapes that unleashed dust whenever she slid them on their track. A mysterious stain or two on the carpet. Paisley print on the bedspread. A bolted television. A standing lamp. A desk that promised free internet. That would’ve been helpful, had her laptop not undergone rocky doom.

Star jazzed it up. She hung a few salvaged scarves over the lampshades. She pulled pink and white roses from the vase and thumb-tacked them up on the walls. Maybe they’d dry and be pretty. Not so

Ordinary.

You’re ordinary, now, too.

“Ugh shut up, my stupid head.” Star hammered it with her palm, not for the first time. Vodka in the micro fridge. Little Styrofoam cups for shot glasses. One sitting empty on the nightstand.

She drew up her knees and tucked her feet into the sheets, because it was always damp and cool in that room. At least the promised air conditioning worked. So too did the porno channel, if you didn’t mind the multi-tonal line scrolling down the screen.

Which she didn’t.

Bow-chicka-chicka-boom...reer reer chicka chocka.

She pressed mute and picked up her cell phone. Pink with encrusted cubic zirconium around the front screen. It was tacky as hell and she loved it. She scrolled through the numbers just looking for somebody to talk to. Somebody who wouldn’t worsen her completely agonizing humiliation over the whole debacle.

Wait... Leah!

Leah understood tragedy. A parking garage fell on her car, for sobbing out loud. That was pain.

Star, a little drunk, a little distracted by the pornography channel, pressed ‘send’ and waited for an answer. Her eyes drifted to the vase full of flowers. She’d put them on the bed and roll around in them, if it didn’t remind her of Mary Stuart Masterson.

[Thread: Open to Leah and Star]