Fragment No. 9

The conversation fell into a lull like a wheel into a ditch. For the umpteenth time that evening, Kent eyed Natalie over the edge of his wineglass. Joe had been right: She was lovely. She possessed skin pale as a split birch branch, tresses tawny like ripe wheat, eyes the gold-flecked green of a forest canopy shot through with summer sun -- and a habitually blank expression. She was like a tenement whose front doors were inlaid with ivory, but whose halls held only silence and a thin film of dust.