People always said that ocean air was salty like the rim of a margarita glass, but to Penelope, it was sweeter, more like fresh-squeezed orange juice. She grew accustomed to the taste of the ocean air on her lips as she sat out on the beach during the hottest part of her day. She only drank water, with silicone ice cubes in it that didn’t make any satisfying clanking noise in her glass. They didn’t melt in the summer’s blaze, either.
Penelope didn’t give her drink a thought as she lounged, the sand between her toes bringing all the usual sensations and plotted her next article. She had a laptop computer on a pillow over her legs, which were stretched long and lean across a chaise lounge set up just at the shore – right in front of the action. That was where she did her best thinking. Her editor at Midwestern Style Magazine would allow her only two days to write an article about a new trend in plastic surgery called “designer dimples.” Penelope wasn’t afraid. What could she say? She had a gift.
The hardest part was the research, which was why Penelope made such a to-do about working, off of her phone’s 5G hotspot, by the ocean. She needed all the distraction she could get, especially when she had to write such an obviously insipid article. What a joke! What she hadn’t counted on, as a first-time visitor from South Dakota, were the expertly sculpted boobs, butts, calves, and even hairlines which paraded through her line of vision and made her feel like she had been born in the wrong body. There were no two ways about it – she needed those dimples, now.
Natalay G. Maria 