The audition was not an audition. It was a reckoning.
It was not the name she was given at birth, but the one she carved into the wet clay of her new life. Tabatha Lust Dorcel . On the glossy rectangle of a business card, it looked like a promise. In the hollow of her throat, it felt like a confession. tabatha lust dorcel
She wanted to tell him that she was not kind. That she was Tabatha Lust Dorcel, a woman who had faked ecstasy for a living and had forgotten how to feel the real thing. But instead, she said, “My name is Tabatha.” The audition was not an audition
Tabatha spoke. Not about the bills, or the suburb, or the stopped train. She spoke about her mother’s funeral. About the rain that fell in straight, indifferent lines. About how her brother had held her hand, not out of love, but out of obligation. And how, when she drove home, she had pulled over on a empty highway, rolled down the window, and screamed into the static of the AM radio. The scream had no shape. It was just need . She wanted to tell him that she was not kind
They sat in his broken-down van, drinking warm Orangina, while the rain drummed a confession on the roof. He was a botanist, studying the last wild lavender in the region. He spoke of soil pH and pollinator patterns with a reverence that made her chest ache. He was in love with a world that did not love him back.