The beret was raspberry and she bought it before anyone ever heard that song. She wore it on the back of her head in an ecclesiastical fashion, and she imagined the office of it all, the feeling of being separate, a tad off, different. On cloudy days like this her skin looked blue and she liked the way that complimented the color of her millinery find. To pump up the effect she wore raspberry lipstick as well, applying it throughout the afternoon within little vignettes she’d direct; next to the phone booth, bending to the chrome-framed side mirror of a parked car, in the window of the coffee shop where that beautiful man-child worked. There she’d feign absent-mindedness and linger a bit after she’d placed the cartridge back in her patent leather clutch, sometimes pulling at her sleeve a bit in an oh-so-cute way.  She imagined herself fifty years older and doing the same thing, in a version of the same ensemble, and still not knowing whether she and the man-child would ever be together. She’d feel a strange pain in her hip joint.

Time for a movie, she thought. She knew a way to sneak in through the alley, so she didn’t have to pay, as she wasn’t working. She only worked when she had to, and she didn’t have to, not with her imagination, her raspberry things, and a way to get into the movies for free. She’d eat the complementary happy hour food at the club, and then sew her landlady’s curtains for this month’s rent. She’d take the remnants and make herself a skirt, maybe dye it indigo. Raspberry and indigo; she liked that, cool names for two adorable children. She wondered if the man-child would like to have a family…

-Danny Grosso