"Why don't they float off?" she asked me, sitting on my sister's front steps, the shallow dish of an ashtray cushioned in her hand like a crystal ball.
I wanted to say, "Mirabelle, that is gross." Her lips, pouting with alcohol, were getting way to close to the
(more) grime, as she blew into the dish.
"Its wet," I said instead. I had to remind myself that though I had lost their wrecklessness, I was gross in other ways, scraping the cracks of my apartment clean with a q-tip after long days at work.
"Yeah," she said smiling at me, "yeah, that must be it." Then she took to wiping it clean with a cigarette butt. It actually helped. "Would you pour just a tiny bit of your beer in here?" She asked me, holding up the dish.
"Um, sure," I said, carefully tipping a few drops in.
"No, silly, more than that," she said.
I poured in more, and a sea of gray glitter floated to the surface. Mira stopped and looked at me, in awe, now not wanting to touch it.
"You should dump it now, and then we can fill it again," I said, invested in the cleansing.
She rocked her whole body nodding and tossed the beer and ash into the flower bed with gusto. It was remarkably clean.
"You could use a leaf to scrape the rest," I said.
At this she giggled. "Dude, I have a kleenex." Her eyes got wide.
I started laughing, too. "Yes!" I said, as my sister was coming out the front door to hover over me. .......
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