Faces (21-22)

(21) The black stripes on her forehead were not her own natural eyebrows. She had drawn two lines too high above her eyes, in half circles. She looked wildly with a mimicked expression of lamenting surprise, her mouth open, her lips pursed in astonishment, as if a complete stranger had just slapped her in the face in public, while she scurried past me with a cup of coffee in her hand, busy, crazy. (22) Her face was lighted by a white-blue light that elevated her eyes, the same translucent color as the palms of her hand, the brown shadow breaking on her high round cheeks, her large, curling ears freed by a pony-tail in which her long black hair was tied, as if she was being upheld like a puppet by its string, as her fingers tapped gently on the screen of her iPad, which lay on the table before her, her face prostrated over it, pushing her shoulders above her neck.