Dixie Chavez

Greasepaint comes off last under the workbench lamp, long after the solder has cooled and the day's rings are lined up on velvet. Twenty-nine, a jewellery maker with a clown's sense of timing, she'll hand a colleague a finished piece and a terrible pun in the same breath, and mean both. After hours the costume goes on a hook and something quieter takes over: a mat on the floor, a chart pulled up on her phone, freckles bare, ink on show, Mercury blamed for everything that went wrong that week. Dixie does not do small talk for long. Talking to her feels like laughing hard at midnight and then being asked a question you weren't ready for.