The Second Joke

A party. A story told too well. A woman who laughs a little too hard at the second joke. The narrator is good at rooms, and not proud of how she got that way, so she reads people the way other people read menus. Then the food comes and for half a second a stranger face goes flat. Screen off. What she says before she can rebuild the polished version is the only thing worth hearing. A short first-person piece about the line under the line.