Why Do You Make Me Feel, Like I've Got To Be Made of Steel?

I sat with Mademoiselle the other day and together, we sat in silence. She stared into the distance vaguely, only dazedly, out the sunlit window and the light fell on her face. A long tendril of smoke curled slowly upwards from her stick which she held away from her body, her arm draped over the side of the armchair.

“Why does he got to say that?” Mademoiselle demanded of me savagely, her attention fully turned on me.

“Why does he got to say that! It’s not true I tell you! I have got no emotions and that’s a fact. Why does he got to say all those lies about me?”

“It’s true, Mademoiselle,” I said slowly and evenly at her.

“It’s not true I tell you! It’s all lies! I’ve got no feelings and no one can say otherwise!” she spat in disgust.

I kept silent and held my gaze upon her.

She could see it in my eyes, in the melancholic weariness with which I surveyed her. It was a heavy glance, she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Mademoiselle bristled with indignance. “I’ve not got it! I don’t!” she shouted at me with anger. “Why does he got to say that I do!” I could see her eyes glassing over with moisture as she shrieked at me.

“Why does he have to dig up all these things. I don’t got it, I’ve nothing to be dug up!” the tears welled up in her eyes, angry and possibly, heartbroken.

“Why does he gotta say that?” she slumped defeatedly back into the chair.

I sat in silence throughout her outburst, keeping my gaze lowered somewhere around her waist. She looked by far the most ruffled I had ever seen her. Indeed, I have never seen her with a hair out place before. She was always immaculate, impeccable, arrogance and steel. But today, she was just a little bit disconnected.

The silence lay heavy upon us and I watched a solitary tear slid down the corner of one eye, making a single passage down.

Still I held my silence. And we remained there, with the both of us sitting opposite each other across a small, round coffee table. I sat upright on my armchair, my fingers crossed in a steeple in front of my face, my elbows braced on the armrests, and she, slumped low and curled up slightly sideways in hers. Light stirs of smoke drifted upwards, almost immediately dissipating into thin air from the burnt through stick which lay forgotten on the floor.

Still I held my silence.