She'd melded with a woman in a cloud of perfume and an obtrusive hat. The man sitting to her left had called her Gianna when he'd told her he thought they'd sung the last hymn. His dry, chapped fingers rubbed her palm–a familiar sensation, though false.
Gianna concentrated on the sermon; Sloane concentrated on not being expelled from Gianna.
Thirteen minutes and some odd seconds later to be almost exact, Gianna stood, but Sloane couldn't figure out how to follow.
Even after she'd been pushed out, Gianna's thoughts still lingered. She'd moved from the sermon to her husband and their marital bed. For a distinguished appearing woman, Gianna had dirty thoughts. Sloane had let those lead to one of her own sexual memories. A naked Francesca slid two fingers under Sloane's panties.
“Are you alright?” Molly asked.
Sloane calmed her heartbeat. "Just trying to get to Francesca."
"Your face went slack and your eyes glassy like the children in my village did before they had fits. I was unaware that could happen in The Veil, though I will not pretend to know everything." Molly shrugged, and her ill-fitting dress slid off of her right shoulder.
"Hm," Sloane responded. Switching to a memory that wouldn't have her craving skin, Sloane honed in on the dimples that appeared when Francesca struggled not to laugh. She didn't think it would be strong enough, but it's what came up first.
A blink later, Sloane stood beside a sweating, swollen-eyed Francesca in her ugly pajamas with a knot of hair twisted up high on her head. With her knees curled under her, she sat with a box cutter in one hand. The other rested on an unopened box labeled, ‘Shelf Four’.
Molly jumped onto the velvet three-person couch and made herself as solid as possible without being seen. If Francesca had been looking, she'd have screamed as the center cushion indented with Molly's force. Sloane's jealousy flared at her ability to do it without a thought. "She has done an incredible job on this home."
Ignoring Molly, Sloane sidled up next to Francesca. Her hand shook as the knife slid through the tape like scissors through wrapping paper.
As Francesca popped open the box, she sighed. "Okay, Sloane, I hope I'm doing this right," she muttered.
"You are," Sloane whispered into Francesca's ear.
Her lips brushed pearl stud earrings that had been part of a scavenger hunt for their fifth year anniversary. Five clues, five presents, each better than the last, leading up to Sloane in a sweeping grey silk dress and the ballroom dance lessons she'd been mentioning since they'd been on their third date.
Francesca snapped her head and stared right at Sloane. Her breath caught. "Sloa–" Bursting into laughter, she grabbed a stack of books and stood. "A year later and you're still talking to her. Shouldn't you stop at some point?" she said aloud. "No, and you know, I don't want to. Hear that, love? I'm going to talk to you forever."
Francesca had always had a habit of talking to herself. The first time Sloane heard it, she had been coming home, and Francesca was in the shower. Heart sinking, she expected to find another woman in the bathroom with her. To her surprise, Francesca had her hands in her sudsy hair, chatting away in a normal tone of voice.
"Oh!" Her eyes were so wide, Sloane thought they'd fall out. "I… I'll be out in a few minutes."
They never did talk about it. It just became something Sloane expected. Talking to Sloane after she'd gone had been a logical step–almost a rational explanation for it.
Francesca mouthed each title as she placed them in order. "Damnit. Did you put Greyson by The Cirque because it's the same author, or were they organized by genre? Wait, it could have been alphabetized. How did you make our house so beautiful without any help? The bookshelves were so put together." Francesca's shoulders hunched and began to shake. "Maybe I should just make it look pretty. I don't read like you do." She sighed and corrected herself quietly, "Did." After a long pause, Francesca jumped up and ran to the bedroom. "Of course! I took pictures."
"This is a serious matter to her," Molly commented. "Who knew stacking books in a library could be so stressful."
"Me." Sloane sat in her reading chair out of normalcy, not out of need. "I spent days working on it–the one in San Francisco, that is. I put the books up to get them off the floor one day, then every day after that I tinkered. I'm glad she took pictures."
Francesca stomped back into the living room shaking her head. "I knew it seemed wrong! So much for putting things in the right boxes–thanks, guys. Okay." She rolled up the sleeves of her wrinkled, stained button-up shirt. "One book at a time it is then."
Molly reminded Sloane she was in fact just a child as she whined, "We aren't going to sit here the entire time, are we?"
"You can do what you want," Sloane said. "I want to be here. Besides, I have some thinking to do. I don't know why I couldn't stand up with Gianna."
Molly said something, but Sloane's mind had already moved on to the first time she'd seen Francesca dressed-down in the ugly pajamas. They'd been together for a few months and had decided to have a lazy Saturday where they were going to paint each other's bodies, something Sloane had seen in The Pillow Book. When she'd come over, Francesca had had messy hair, worn the same makeup she'd worn from her girl's night out with friends the night before, and the soon-to-be-infamous ugly pajamas. Sloane's dream of painting words on each other had flown out the window. They'd painted little wooden trays which were purely decorative, as they wouldn't hold but one small plate. She wondered if her poorly designed beach scene had made it to Montepulciano.