She was a beauty. One of those charming vixens that enrapture the audience. Black and white, silent-motion, gracefully breathing life into leaflets of sigh-thin paper. Signs announced her debut, guided her finale. Yellow lamplights accenuated her bold features and she quivered and hid her face under a woolen coat, beaded drops of city water baubled on the surface- a tendril of fuzz treading its curve. Swinging her brass buckled tap shoes she trodded, plodded, blundered down the sidewalk stiffened by sore ankles. She walked not knowing where her feet would direct her. Dusk sank below the rooftops, shading her sight from the bands of early sunset that filtered through widths of gray clouds. A chard of window pane reverberated the sound of its clammer, barely echoing through the alley leading to the back entrance to the theater. Smells surged past her- inky, creeping, cautionary, soft. Her fingers brushed over an overexposed rectangle of pale pink paint. Grooves of wood toyed with her memory. She batted her eye. Her simple stare unhitched a lock, streaming a steady flow of mascara languidly dripping into a janitors galvanized mop pan guarding the door shut.