She woke with a crick in her neck and an imprint on her cheek from the backseat of the Mustang. She had no idea how long she had driven or where she had gone, and she knew she must have stopped only from sheer exhaustion. Her throat was dry, a white mucus filmed over her lips. She tasted her own breath. Her head stung and when she reached into her hair, she found the plastic headband digging into her scalp. She cracked it in two and dropped the pieces to the floor.
Somewhere in the night she had put back on the ivory sheath. Somewhere in the night she had thrown the green poplin stained with blood out the window, had rubbed off her makeup. She did not look in the rearview mirror or at the compact but felt the smears on her cheeks. Her cuticles were grimed black.
The Mustang was hidden in trees. She faintly remembered driving into the walnut orchard from the road. Farther and farther up the wide row into the middle. She stepped out and stood in the dust, breathing in the piquant smell of the unripe walnuts. Her body was hot with the spinning and nausea. The warm benevolent carsickness continuing to pulse through her.
She went to the trunk of the Mustang. Her body still understanding before she did what actions to take. She removed her makeup case from the travel bag and one by one tossed its contents, the eyeliner, the mascara, the lipsticks, into the dust.
In the shade of a tree, she took off the bone-colored heels and buried her toes in the dirt. Some of the hard green fruits had fallen and split, the open rinds intensifying the scent, transporting her to a faraway land. Her mind was an even plane inside the warm spinning. Why had she so resisted the truth? She braided and unbraided a strand of her hair, wondering.
When she stood up, she was unconscious of the dried mud all over the sheath, the dust and rind sap on her legs. She went back to the travel bag. The diamond brooch she laid very carefully in the dust, next to the bone-colored heels. Apart from her they were a curious still life, the significance of which seemed important.
Important but not of interest.