Porcelain

She wore porcelain sunglasses. It was literally so fucking classy. She was so filthy rich she didn’t even need to see. Nor did she want to. She’d walk right out into traffic, and the cars would just stop for her. She knew the streets of the Upper West Side so well she never needed to check a street sign.

She once sat down to a lunch with me—fabulous as always, with the massive porcelain hat, tugging her porcelain gloves off with her mouth, and folded the porcelain sunglasses up. They cracked, the arms snapping right off, and she shoved the whole bundle of broken porcelain pieces into her patent leather bag (come now; she wasn’t that ostentatious). When she had drunk all her clear broth—the only thing I ever saw her consume—she pulled out a new pair of porcelain sunglasses and slipped them onto her fine-boned face.

I wanted to ask for the pieces of the old ones, which I would have kissed; would have suckled them like a child on its mother’s breast, would have soaked them in hot water and lovingly drunk the tea they produced. Alas, it was not to be; the pieces sat in her bag and crunched as she stood and hit her hip against the table.