She sits in the corner of the room and drinks, quietly, and everyone is pleased with her then. So long as her eyes stay soft and her mouth stays shut. She's pleasant enough to look at with her face like an unnatural mask. Like the wax features of a gypsy from one of those turn-of-the-century fortune-telling machines. Some of them even think she's attractive. She always drinks from the same place on the glass, leaving only one red hot lip print from her glossed lips which are drawn to the same spot as though through some strange precognitive time loop. She never seems to notice.

Her eyes are dark and wide, fixed inside, as though she can't bare to see past whatever goes on behind her eyes. But they know she can. They have seen it happen, and it frightens them.

When a certain song comes on the jukebox, it's as if she comes to life. Her mouth trembles, then forms words that match the voice which fills the room like water. Perfectly timed, you'd think it was her singing, her voice more wide than even her eyes. The tongue that flicks at the corners of her mouth, you'd swear that was the tongue which uttered the words in the song. And her eyes move, and glisten, and become wet, and blink. They turn, like mirrors, out, and she looks at them, and sees them for the first time all over again. And the thickly lined black rings around her lashes trickle as tears cross the field of her cheeks, all rushing, rushing, to be licked from her lips. Returned to the source.

They can't keep track of their breath when she does this. It becomes unimportant, and they realise for the first time again that her hair is not just black, but blue-black, and her eyes are not just dark, but brown and vaguely Spanish. They can't find the words for the pain, or the thoughts to re-arrange that which she has displaced. So they pull on their cigarettes, their drinks, their pens, their fingernails, and try to not look at her. But they do. It's uncomfortable and scary, but they do. And her mouth moves more, and there is no sound but the sound of her lips touching around the words, between the consonants and vowels, but it's not even her voice, but it is. They know it is. They know she was born to sing this song, and to sing it here, despite how much they hate her for it.

And then, it ends, and she goes back to her drink, and they are safe from having their fortunes told until the next time someone selects that song.