(no subject)

[panicking]

A little over twenty minutes later, Catherine Clipps is rifling through her purse for a pack of cigarettes. "You should get a little sketchbook, like an actual one." A tube of pink lip gloss jumps out at the ground, but she dismisses it for the time. "Don't make that face, I'm not pissed about your receipts— oh, hell, where are they. But I mean, don't you want to save your neat little stuff?"

"Not particularly," Anna says too softly, which is fine since she usually says things to softly and Clipps has learned to listen. Anna's trying to will her eyebrows back down to their normal perch, at least, so that she isn't making 'that face' anymore. "I have paper, and things. I think your cigarettes are in your left side pocket, Clipps. And you dropped your lip thing."

Clipps laughs at her, in more a familiar way than anything else, and finds the cigarettes exactly where directed. "Thanks," she says whilst Anna dips for the lip gloss, then taking it gladly as she passes the pack off to Amy Phipps, who's waiting with a lighter ready. Of the two women before Anna, Amy Phipps is the one who smokes, and Catherine Clipps rations out cigarettes when she's on her work breaks. "I have an addictive personality," Phipps had explained one afternoon as her fingers knocked against Clipps' to take her second to last smoke allowed for the day. "That's such a bull excuse," Clipps had said. "You just want to come see me." Anna wasn't and still isn't sure how an addictive personality is supposed to work, but looking at them now, she can believe Clipps' side of it.

Abruptly and supremely bland as always, Phipps says, "You missed the first part of what I just said, so you're trying to quietly figure out the context, aren't you?" She lets smoke leave her wry half smile when Anna's eyes go wide and dart down. "I said, I do think you ought to indulge."

"Not much of an indulgence," Anna mumbles, and twists her fingers together. "Little startling for that, I find."

Clipps, ever all-knowing - or glad to think as much - pantomimes waving both Phipps' smoke and Anna's notions away. "It's not startling," she says sagely. "Just exciting, and exhilaration's kind of a trip."

Phipps is small and olive-colored with very long, dark hair and surprisingly blue eyes. Clipps is blonde, and she's got long legs, and she could probably talk to anyone in the world about anything ever. Looking at them both, Anna thinks that exhilaration mustn't be hard for them at all. "Could be," she says, and winces when Clipps cards fingers through the top of her hair. "I'll go inside, now."

"I'll be in soon, hun," Clipps calls after, whilst Phipps waves her cigarette. "Seriously, don't worry about it— you keep using the register paper if you want."

"Sorry," Anna says as an afterthought, and she plucks her apron from the hook in the doorway.

Clipps and Phipps have their comfortable silence, albeit one that's not for too long. Clipps fiddles with her lip gloss as Phipps takes one of her last drags. "Let's get her a little sketchbook," Clipps says finally, thoughtfully, and Phipps answers, "I know. Go back to work now."

Phipps leaves with two pieces of mint gum and a pink sheen on her lips. She wonders about a good art supply store on her way out of the alley.