Brooklyn

Anne sat in the open window of the hottest apartment in Brooklyn. Nothing that could even qualify as a breeze crossed the aperture of her dwelling, but still, she felt her post more bearable than most and she was loath to move. Her exposed, white legs were stretched across the sill, and her little head rested against the sticky frame. She had plaited her long hair in a french braid, knotted at the nape of her neck, and a turquoise headband attempted to tame the loose curls that misbehaved in the insufferable heat.

As sweat gathered in the supra-sternal notch of her neck, Anne allowed the party's conversations to flow around her like ebbing Woolfian thoughts. She knew that Cameron was watching her from the couch, and she let her ice-skating fingers circle one knee and then the other.

Condensation from her PBR can dripped on her thighs.

Anne was scared to go up on the roof; the ascent required the treacherous scaling of a rusty fire escape ladder and nothing to catch her fall. She was deathly afraid of winds and precipices and those spiral stone steps in old European castles. Dizzying heights and unsure methods of reaching them exhausted her mortal terror.

But it was hot.

She reached the top of the ladder with the lip of a solo cup between her teeth and a wondrous view of Manhattan before her eyes. It was beautiful, beautiful! And romantic...but she quaked in the emptiness of being alone.

Rachel was already on the roof with her lover. And talking in that calm manner that suggests security.

A breeze existed up there, perhaps blowing from the fairyland of twinkling lights in the distance, and Anne loosed her braid with her fingers and let her hair fall around her shoulders. For some reason, she thought of vanquishing dragons. And how she'd like to do it with wisps of hair escaping her armor. She would be drenched in sweat with a nasty gash bleeding into her right eye. Her fingernails would be caked with mud. She might be perched at a precarious height, and her sword would probably be heavy to wield, but vanquish she would.

Still, there was the matter of getting down from the roof.