She took the lipstick out of its case and let it roll from one side of her mouth to the other and back. Her reflection winked back at her and the sound of water running down the faucet quieted down to a drip. The bloody rose of her lips shrunk into a small button before blooming with an audible kiss.
Before leaving her place, she stroke the strings of her ukulele and looked up to the Marilyn Monroe poster on the wall. The instrument left a sad trail of sound that lingered around her for a few seconds before it vanished.
The doors of the wagon opened and closed and the metro rode through the landscape as it filled with the dimming golden rays of the sunset. Small houses scattered around tiny roads carved over the hills gave way to the carcasses of an abandoned industrial complex, itself swallowed by the passing sight of the brown waters of the river and the city center high rises.
Her long legs walked with a studied curvaceous step up the staircase. The cinema was quiet. Outside, the beginning of the night smelled blue and smoky. “Hi”, her colleague said and they smiled at each other.
She looked at herself on the mirror. The curve of her lips tilted down, tilted up, opened in a circle, imitated the shape of a waning moon and closed with a kiss, a frown and a soft smile.
She felt the gaze of her colleague looking at her. They smiled at each other and took their brooms out of the toilet.
People were gathering outside. The flashes of the paparazzi’s cameras burst on the esplanade mixing with the sounds of a crowd roaring behind as one by one, different men and women walked up a red cloth that stretched over the floor.
As she looked up, a flash lit up, and another one behind, and another one. She rose up and felt the blow of a beam of light on her face. Someone called her name, and she turned around with a wide smile, and her eyes went through the crowd, the smiley crowd, and the faces of producers and movie directors that wandered through the carpet and up the stairs. For a moment she felt as if she was seeing herself from the undistinguished faces of the audience, and she saw her tall figure, and her red smile shinning, and her eyes searching for those wandering figures as they entered the cinema.
She heard her name called again and with a passing glance looked down to the floor. The dustpan had fallen from her hands. She crouched to collect it. She hurried back into the theatre and dropped the small paper pieces she had gathered into the toilet.