"We don't go to funerals for the dead," she said around her cigarette as she flicked her green lighter a couple of times before a steady flame appeared. Allegra looked strange in that fire-light, all in vintage black lace with her auburn hair swept back from her brow into a bun with an austere style. The lines of her face, normally the perfect angles of a Swedish model, now looked hard and jagged like ice.
She took a long inhale of her cigarette, the black ones that smelled of spices, and repeated, "We don't go for the dead, we go for the living."
When Nick looked confused, she waved her hand in a gesture to the crowd around them. All of the family and friends of the dead in black mourning clothes with solemn or stoic expressions. The murmur of their conversation was a low buzz in his ears tinged with the sound of weeping in the next room. In the corner he saw his cousin Franny sitting perfectly still with no expression, like a doll left behind by a forgetful child. She was most likely in shock and had never handled change or bad news well, even when they were children. He considered leaving Allegra and her morbid conversation and going to her to see if she would like some tea. Tea was everywhere, the British reaction to any uncomfortable situation.
Allegra went on, preventing his departure. "Do you think the dead care that we're here eating hors d'oeuvres and handing out personalized handkerchiefs? Hell no, they're gone and why would they give a damn anymore anyways, even if there is an afterlife?" She flicked the growth of ashes into a nearby crystal bowl.
"No," Nick agreed softly, "we don't come for the dead at all." He then got up and went to Franny who took tea from him but didn't drink it. She stared into it instead, like a fortune teller divining the future from its brown liquid and bone china edges. It reflected her face back at her in a fun-house mirror sort of way. Her eyes were larger in the glass, their red rims made sepia tone in the brown.
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