Mascara girls...

I am to meet with a classmate today. She is kind of this ethereal, walk-on-water Jesus look in your eye as her head rolls around in yoga class girl.

 

 

Okay, she's not like me. She's a cosmology/astronomy major and minor in yoga and my major happens to be physical therapy, yoga included. That's how we met, in yoga classes.

 

 

She has the most beautiful, long jet black hair with her straight bangs hanging over her arched black brows and underneath them big, bold irises. I swear she has no color of eye.

 

 

She said her family were Austrian and were gypsies and you can tell by looking at her, that her nose is long and aquiline, her lips are pinkish and round, she's long and thin and graceful as a model. I wonder if she diets or eats very little to stay thin, but I have yet to know the mystery surrounding her.

 

 

As I waited at the park for her, I twirled on a wisp of my red curly hair that was put up in a bun and looked down at my tattered Converse Allstars. I was wearing my infamous, but comfy black yoga pants and a lime green tunic that matched my eyes a bit, although my eyes have been known to change color from yellows to greens. The air outside was still and seemed chilly for February. I felt knots in my stomach from the cold air.

 

 

Ambrosia came up behind me and grabbed my arms as I was sitting on a bench and I screamed bloody murder. 

 

 

"Sorry to scare you, Halley." Ambrosia said half-heartedly. She had on a silver fetish necklace, a black tank top, black pencil-thin leggings, black moccassins, and her hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She was radiant in the glow of the moon at night, but being late as she was, I forgave her.

 

 

Predestiny can lead you into different directions in life and I had not realized this until I met Ambrosia.

 

 

Ambrosia tossed her messenger bag aside and slumped onto the bench and looked over the water, tilting her hair a bit.

 

 

"So are we going to have to do the whole Sun Salutaion today." Ambrosia asked.

 

 

"Yes, I can teach you that one today and so you won't be lost in class when it comes up."

 

 

"Good. I need to keep my grades up."

 

 

"Yes, You want to get into Kennedy Space Center-right." I asked.

 

 

"It's my dream...It's all I drream about." Ambrosia began kicking the ground with her mocassin.

 

 

"What is it? How do you view space?" I asked.

 

 

"I see it as matter and anti-matter. or if you want to look deeper, matter to me is like kohl liner, smooth, thick and rich, while anti-matter is like mascara, long, flowy, sexy and cool."

 

 

I laughed a little not knowing how to respond.

 

 

"Mercy is as mercy does" Ambrosia said.

 

 

"What does that mean?" I asked.

 

 

"That's what my pappa used to tell me when I was little...Do you know that I call anti-matter of all types sparkle dust and you know what I call matter-a compact case, a gorgeous Givenchy compact case with a reflcetive mirror to send my S.O.S. to my lover in space..."

 

 

We both laughed.

 

 

"Seriously, we need to learn the Sun Salutations."

 

 

We got up and we both rolled out our yoga mats in the dark of the night and chill, she, putting on a purple cable-knit thin sweater over her lithe body. Her yoga mat had stars and moons and the sun on it, special made from India and ordered online.

 

 

As we clasped our hands and breathed in she watched me and my typical, average athletic senses kick in and before you know it I was standing like a praying mantis, hungry for something, knowledge or something more.

 

 

She watched me as a crow would watch a worm would bend and twist in the sunlight of an otherwise cheerful day, until it got eaten of course.

 

 

We could hear the swans on the pond making cackling sounds and all I could hear was her breathing in and out shallow at times because she smoked.

 

 

We kept up for a good thirty minutes until we were done and I told her good job. At that Ambrosia sat back down on the wooden bench and began to smoke her Winston's.

 

 

"You know," she said. "My family was very lucky to make it to America." And then her head shook a little and I asked her if she was all right.

 

 

"I think, maybe, I need to go lie down for a while, do mind driving me home."

 

 

"Sure, no problem." I said. We got into my beatup blue Toyota Camry and I drove to her apartment.

 

 

When I got her out of the car, being lightheaded still from the yoga poses, she asked if I could come inside and make sure she's okay, just for maybe a little while.

 

 

As she opened the door to her apartment the first thing I noticed was a smell of sage and cedar and mothhballs. Her apartment was a small efficiency and everything was all in one room, except for a clothes closet full of 50's Americana vintage old lady suits and a tiny little bathroom with only a toilet and shower tiled with black and white checks. She had a vanity full of tubes, black tubes of what looked like mascara, hundreds of them.

 

 

Her apartment was decorated cozy yet cold, all the colors were metallic silver, hues of pinks, gray and white. Nothing was on the walls except for a calendar on the only huge wall and it was in the middle of the wall. I walked up to it as Ambrosia went to the kitchen to get us both a drink of herbal tea.

 

 

It was a calendar of the Cosmos and it was the most beautiful photography I have ever seen of space.

 

 

"Where did you get this?" I asked pointing to the calender.

 

 

"Oh, I got that for the holidays from the bookstore."

 

 

She brought me tea with Celestial Seasonings Tension Tamer steeping into a hot gray mug. It tasted sweet and delishes.

 

 

As we sipped on our cups in silence I finally asked, "What's with all the mascara?"

 

 

"Oh, I collect mascara as well as wearing it and trying out different brands. It's a side hobby of mine."

 

 

"Okay, I see" I said and kind of looked to the bottom of my cup.

 

 

"I actually wear two layers of different brands a day or one brand on one eye calling it short and the other calling it sassy for long. Do you know how many formulas for mascara there are?"

 

 

"Okay." I said.

 

 

"What, do you think I'm weird or something. It's just mascara."

 

 

"No, your perfectly normal." And at that we both broke out laughing.

 

 

"Here." She said moving her hand over the tubes of mascara then handing me a tube. I noticed her wrist had a pearl bracelet or at least I thought it was pearls, but upon closer inspection, I saw it was baby teeth on a bracelet of string and dipped in a pearl solution.

 

 

"What's this?" I asked.

 

 

"It's new and called LashInk and it lasts four days and it light wearing, perfect for your light complexion and you don't have to wash it off, so no raccoon eyes."

 

 

"Thanks."

 

 

She stripped off her purple sweater and I saw her tattoo a little closer. It was small, about the size of a postage stamp on her left arm, right in the middle and it looked like an x and t together to make a star-formation. It was a direction.

 

 

She walked over to her dresser and said, "Oh, I love Jackie Onassis. Look."

 

 

She turned around and had on Jackie-style sunglesses on and she wouldn't take them off. She just sat there and looked at me with the glasses on for a while.

 

 

"Do You know what I do every morning?" Ambrosia asked.

 

 

"No, what do you do." I asked, sitting back in the chair, trying to get comfortable.

 

 

"I wake up, sing and cheer: I know you have got the best to do, yeah, yeah!!" She was standing and marching in place with her Jackie O. sunglasses on and waving her hands from side to side as her head went left to right.

 

 

"Yes," She said all tired."I repeat that four times a day. it's my mantra. You know when the instructor Gunning said we must have a mantra, well that is mine."

 

 

"That's good," I said."But including Sun Salutations in your morning routine might be better."

 

 

"You think."

 

 

And we both smiled.

 

 

"Do you know what the opposite of air is?" she asked.

 

 

"No." I said.

 

 

"It's closed off space."

 

 

"That's simple."

 

 

"No, that's science and theory."

 

 

I watched as she walked over to take a calcium chocolate supplement from the kitchen. "Do you want one" she asked, smaking her lips together. No wonder how she stay so thin, she lives off of vitamins.

 

 

"No thanks."

 

 

I had finished off my cup of herbal tea and was feeling pretty mellow, just then at that she reached over to a slow lit native American pottery candle in black and white zig-zags and put a ciggarette over it. Soon the whole apartment was full of smoke and I was feeling nasueous at the smell clashing with the cedar, sage and mothballs.

 

 

The zig-zags on the pottery matched her black and white striped horizontal curtains. It made me wonder why she was so obssessed with native American culture, but I kept my mouth shut about not asking why. Maybe she had gone out with a native American guy who broke her heart for all I know.

 

 

I noticed a teal cachinka doll on her vanity along with the mascara tubes. 

 

 

"For a rainy day, huh?" I said.

 

 

"Yes, that is so precious to me..." And she began mumbling to herself then.

 

 

"Are you hungry?" She asked.

 

 

"Yes, I am."

 

 

"Here, I made some veal for lunch and I still have plenty left-over."

 

 

She handed me a plate and fork and I scarfed down the veal in an instant.

 

 

"You know men are funny." She said."I want a man like a seahorse. Loving of me and the children."

 

 

I couldn't help but laugh.

 

 

"Oh really, well, I just want a down-to-earth guy, that's all."

 

 

"Do you know Vaseline has many uses including taking off mascara?"

 

 

"No."

 

 

"If I have a daughter I want to name her Vaseline, because she will most likely be the antethesis of me."

 

 

"Vaseline is a pretty name."

 

 

"And that she can work and get out of any sticky situation, haha."

 

 

We both laughed.

Reviews

[Playing with Demons]

This if a funny story! It's cute and kind of carefree! I like it especially the Vaseline part!
Cheerio!!