"I like this one," the woman said, tearing an orange ticket from her ticket spool. Madeleine struggled with the loose bills in her wallet.
"Although, he's kind of a creep, now."
Madeleine put her $6.50 on the booth counter and looked up again. She noticed the woman was smiling at her. She had a beautiful, quiet smile, that was enhanced by deep pensive brown eyes. Madeleine wanted to tell her that she didn't really like Woody Allen anymore either, and that she was only coming to draw the sad woman who had played Woody Allen's first girlfriend in the film. That she hadn't seen the woman in anything else, as if she had disappeared. And that there was one particular scene that she adored. Just simple shots of the woman - jumpcuts of different expressions: manic anxiety, whimsical laughter, pain, sorrow. She wanted to tell her that this was all she had come for. Just to sketch her in her book, to take her from the film and close the door on Woody forever.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," she eeked out in an apologetic manner. Lame, she thought.
"Here you go." The woman nonchalantly slid Madeleine's money back at her, with her ticket.
"But won't you --"
The woman smiled softly and nodded. "Go ahead, I'll see you around. You can get me another time."
"Oh. Thanks ..." Madeleine smiled. She gathered her things.
"Maggie."
"Thank you, Maggie."
The lines were simple, as Madeleine let her hand go. She was half-conscious of what she was doing, caught somewhere between the last sounds of Maggie and her fading song, and the tapping of the rain which had started to fall hard on her window. It was the bird who brought her out of it. She had pecked the tiny silver bell, hanging from the top of her cage. The bird tilted her head to look down at Madeleine on the floor. Madeleine stared for a moment, smiling, and then turned back to the wall to finish her sketch: a ribbon around the bird's neck drifted across the wall into words: HELLO, SAD MAGGIE.
