In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

Suddenly, he glared at her and looked at the floor.
"Au, mais, n'te casse pas la tête!" She kissed his cheek and
rumpled his hair, then swept her hand back over it in one long sweep,
like a lioness licking her cub.
Just then, there was a light, sharp knock at the door.
Alessandro, seated on the futon and closest to the door, leaned over
and opened it.
Ula swished in covered in her long black cape coat, the collar
jauntily up, a black tricorn hat smashed down on her head. She looked
as if she had just escaped incognito from the guillotine. Once in the
room, and sure that all eyes were on her, she lifted the hat, revealing a
shiny bald skull.
Alessandro could not have looked more stunned had she lifted
her severed head off her shoulders.
She tossed her cloak and then her hat smack in the middle of
the futon between Alessandro and Penny, and glared down imperiously
at them all. With a theatrical sweep of her hand, she declared, "Well,
here we are."
From somewhere in the middle of her back an empty sleeve
shivered as if the outfit was on wrong, although both arms were
sheathed in sleeves identical to that one. Ula stood very still over him,
pressing up against his knees, and watched the tears spill out from his
tightly shut eyes, brushing them off with her thumb every so often. He
remained motionless, with only his jaw muscles working under his skin
each time she wiped his cheek.
After a while she drifted to the toilettes, avoiding Maia who
stood now, arms crossed, in the kitchen doorway. Blindly, Alessandro
got up to follow his fiancé, but Maia shook her head, and suddenly
remembering all the stuff at Max's, he disappeared in there. From Max's
den voices could be heard over the Voodoo Child and when
Alessandro returned a few seconds later making the okay sign with his
thumb and forefinger he sat down on the fur ottoman, the seat closest
to Max's door and as far as possible from Penny.
Ula returned and settled into his old place on the futon, her
gaze fixed on Penny as she arranged her folds. Maia, her faced clouded,
poured more wine from the saucepan into the cups and prepared to
pour some into a new a bumpy handmade one she had placed in front
of Ula, but Ula placed her hand over the cup and waved Maia's
saucepan away. As if pulled up by a string Ula rose and stepped around
the coffee table into the middle of the room.
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