I now have a mental image of Peggy Carter doing her nightly routine, which of course doesn’t necessarily happen at night, just whenever she has a chance to lie down and sleep. It starts with sitting at her desk, where a mirror has been wedged into the right position by militarily files, but she doesn’t look at it any more. Instead she’s pouring over whatever has to be memorized for the following day, fingers working on automatic as she wedges pins into place. It takes forty seven pin curls to get the look she wants, and she’s done with it before she finishes reading the memo.
There’s little flickers of red on her gun as testament to smudged nails before she learned to check her weapons first and then paint her nails. While they dry she reads something else, filing it all away for future reference and remembering key words by which finger she was painting at the time. When Peggy Carter checks her nails she might well be looking for chips, but it’s more likely she’s remembering names.
She ran out of cold cream weeks ago, but she stills has some rose water left and uses it sparingly, careful not to get it mixed up with the other little vials in her kit.
And of course there will be that one night, when the alarm sounds and everyone is forced from their beds in a panicked hurry. Peggy Carter will not only be at the center of it, but she will be the one keeping the intruder pinned down. Dressed in a faded floral nightgown thrown over her night clothes, smelling like rose water, her hair hidden under a silk scarf to keep her curls in place, gun held steadily in a perfectly manicured hand. Everyone else is dressed, however hurriedly, but it’s Peggy who is the most put together, even in her pin curls.
I love the expression, “Hell in high heels”, but frankly Hell has never met Peggy Carter.
