What I remember of her are the small things: The way she moved her hands, the sun in her hair, the way the hem of her dress curled up slightly. She would hold her hand over her eyes, shading out the sun, but letting the small breeze blow her bob around her ears.
"What are you doing?" She would ask, but not really expect an answer. It was a greeting, as close as she ever came to acknowledging that she needed someone else's company. We sat together often, usually during a lunch break or some such interval. I would munch the sandwich I brought, she would look around us, and comment on the people. I never saw her eat, which is curious; most relationships center, at least in a small way, around eating.
"I like that guy's hat," she would nod at the elderly gentleman with the fedora and long coat. "You should get a hat like that."
I rarely had a reply to that sort of thing. She couldn't possibly have meant it. I had seen myself in hats, and it was always ridiculous. At the time, I had long, red hair, past my shoulders. Hats just looked out of place.
"That woman is a racist," An unsubtle pronouncement, but when I looked up to see who she was talking about, I wasn't sure I could disagree. The lady did look rather disapprovingly at the interracial couple a few feet away from her. It could have been the overly-affectionate mannerisms they displayed, or the divergent skin colors. It was difficult to tell, and to point that out would be unnecessarily confrontational. I was never into an argument.
So, I let these little comments go, usually without a rejoinder of my own.
These are the things I recall, and little else. She seemed nice enough, and in the couple of months we played at a relationship, she displayed nothing abhorrent or terribly irresistible. So, finally, we simply stopped seeing each other. We didn't even say goodbye in any way. One day, she didn't show up for lunch, and I didn't go round her place that night to make love and examine her collection of novena candles again. I didn't see her again for another six months.
I was at a party. It was a rather large affair, held in a warehouse. Two friends of mine, a couple for a decade or more, were celebrating their anniversary. When they had a party, they tended to invite everyone they had ever known, so these affairs had long ago outgrown their apartment. One of them was an artist, and she liked to turn these parties into an art show as well. The floor was scattered with various heavy-looking lumps of bronze and iron, almost fearful to behold, in a Lovecraftian sort of way. The walls were littered with two-dimensional doppelgangers of them.
I was seated on a bench beneath one of the gigantic canvases, staring distractedly into a mostly-empty glass of gin. "That girl just had sex in the bathroom." She was standing a little to the left of me, gazing off into the crowd. I could see the woman she was talking about. She was the only obvious choice. The rest of the crowd in that part of the room appeared to have stopped doing anything remotely enjoyable years before.
"Her dress is wrinkled in the back, and her hair seems more accidentally disjointed than intentionally scruffy."
She looked down at me. Her hair was longer now, it was in her eyes, and I couldn't see the color of them. I didn't remember it. We smiled at each other for a moment, and she moved back off into the crowd. I never saw her again.
"What are you doing?" She would ask, but not really expect an answer. It was a greeting, as close as she ever came to acknowledging that she needed someone else's company. We sat together often, usually during a lunch break or some such interval. I would munch the sandwich I brought, she would look around us, and comment on the people. I never saw her eat, which is curious; most relationships center, at least in a small way, around eating.
"I like that guy's hat," she would nod at the elderly gentleman with the fedora and long coat. "You should get a hat like that."
I rarely had a reply to that sort of thing. She couldn't possibly have meant it. I had seen myself in hats, and it was always ridiculous. At the time, I had long, red hair, past my shoulders. Hats just looked out of place.
"That woman is a racist," An unsubtle pronouncement, but when I looked up to see who she was talking about, I wasn't sure I could disagree. The lady did look rather disapprovingly at the interracial couple a few feet away from her. It could have been the overly-affectionate mannerisms they displayed, or the divergent skin colors. It was difficult to tell, and to point that out would be unnecessarily confrontational. I was never into an argument.
So, I let these little comments go, usually without a rejoinder of my own.
These are the things I recall, and little else. She seemed nice enough, and in the couple of months we played at a relationship, she displayed nothing abhorrent or terribly irresistible. So, finally, we simply stopped seeing each other. We didn't even say goodbye in any way. One day, she didn't show up for lunch, and I didn't go round her place that night to make love and examine her collection of novena candles again. I didn't see her again for another six months.
I was at a party. It was a rather large affair, held in a warehouse. Two friends of mine, a couple for a decade or more, were celebrating their anniversary. When they had a party, they tended to invite everyone they had ever known, so these affairs had long ago outgrown their apartment. One of them was an artist, and she liked to turn these parties into an art show as well. The floor was scattered with various heavy-looking lumps of bronze and iron, almost fearful to behold, in a Lovecraftian sort of way. The walls were littered with two-dimensional doppelgangers of them.
I was seated on a bench beneath one of the gigantic canvases, staring distractedly into a mostly-empty glass of gin. "That girl just had sex in the bathroom." She was standing a little to the left of me, gazing off into the crowd. I could see the woman she was talking about. She was the only obvious choice. The rest of the crowd in that part of the room appeared to have stopped doing anything remotely enjoyable years before.
"Her dress is wrinkled in the back, and her hair seems more accidentally disjointed than intentionally scruffy."
She looked down at me. Her hair was longer now, it was in her eyes, and I couldn't see the color of them. I didn't remember it. We smiled at each other for a moment, and she moved back off into the crowd. I never saw her again.
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