The first of the other two times I’ve seen her up close also happened accidentally. To explain: at the street corner on her side, which she crosses the avenue to get to in order to make her way up my block, is a candy store which has a large variety though charges three cents more per pack of a particular brand of candy I like, the flavors there ranging from several kinds of tropical and sour fruits to the hard-to-get chocolate mint, butternut and the extremely rare maple cream. But because of the higher price and time-consuming inconvenience of having to cross the street to get to this store and then cross back to continue to school, I almost always buy these candies at a store which, besides being along the most direct route to school is also owned by a much friendlier man, who not only has an invaliding chronic affliction I sympathize with but who I have a strong loyalty to because he lets me run up a month’s bill on my art and stationery supplies. But once a month or so, and till that morning always in the evening when the store where I get credit is closed, I cross the street to go to this corner store to choose from its much larger selection of this particular candy and in fact to stock up with several of the flavors the other store owner says would be too many dead items to carry, and that’s what I did the first time I saw her face to face. It was drizzling and chilly, near the end of March. We passed not a foot from one another and I stared at her eyes as she looked fleetingly at my face and then my clothes. I had on a soiled trench coat, muffler, galoshes and green felt hat — a hat similar to one often worn by male marionettes, though it was advertised in the newspaper, where I got the idea to go downtown to buy it, for golfers who want to pursue their game in the rain but don’t want to be burdened with a bulky hat to carry when they already have their cumbersome clubs. I probably looked ridiculous in this hat, as it comes to a point on top, which is the reason it can be rolled up tight and tucked in a back pocket as easy as a large hanky, and has a small brim and no band or feather and the color’s like new grass and I wear it pulled down on top of my ears. She was wearing her sou’wester, maxicoat and laced high boots. What was unusual about her was her hair, waving behind her like a flag that never touches its flagstaff in a heavy wind, instead of pinned up under the brim, the only day during a rainstorm when I saw it wasn’t The one other time I came up close to her also took place on her side of the street. It was a month later, a clear sunny day I remember, as we’d had a month’s string of them, and this time I cut across the street in the middle of the block when I saw her in the distance on the next street over from mine walk toward the avenue, cross it and start up my street from the corner. I wanted to get another good look at her and I thought I might even say “Good morning” or “Nice day” if she was looking at me as we passed — a cheerful innocent greeting, nothing more — so I might have some basis for saying something more substantial to her on another day. But she kept her eyes to the ground as we came together and practically touched elbows and then looked straight ahead when we were separated by about ten steps each.
I saw her again this morning. Short dress, hair combed back and neat as ever, tanned legs, knotty calves, big feet, small waist and nose, slender bowed neck — another dancer sign — never eye- or sunglasses or a perceptible face blemish or clothes stain, she walked briskly, gracefully, I’ve never seen her chew gum or her nails or eat on the street or smoke and for no more knowable reason than that mixed with my hopes for her health and conjectures about her dancing career, doubt if she smokes at all, long mouth, averagesized eyes, breasts appear small and except for a day when she wore a man’s white T-shirt and her teats seemed unusually dark and pronounced, never without a brassiere, high buttocks, low heels on her shoes and boots, never sneakers or socks and stockings always a brilliant color and in the red and blue family, though of late never hose, today in sandals, yesterday when rain was definitely forecast and thunderclouds loomed all day overhead, plastic or leather boots but no other visible rainwear, from what I can see no makeup, jewelry or adornments of any kind on her neck, hair, ears, fingers, clothes, ankles and nothing on her wrist but the watch she always wears with the exaggerated pocketwatch face and equally large transparent band, rarely a blouse, skirt or bandanna and always one of about five leather shoulder bags and each beaded or embroidered with colorful primitive or tribal symbols, designs or replicas of prehistoric cave paintings of what seem to be spear-holding hunters on foot or horseback and their animal or human prey and all with leather fringes that beat against her coat or dangle above her knee. That’s about what I know of her till what I learned today.
For the past two-and-a-half weeks and until school closes I’m the substitute typing teacher for the seventh grade, though without an official homeroom class. Periodically, the other typing teacher unlocks my back or front door with her passkey and offers compassion and advice, such as “Pity you don’t know shorthand or can’t pick it up quick at some speedy secretarial school. For shorthand’s what they were promised to learn for June and which would have kept their interest and them from being so rowdy.” I took the job to guarantee myself a full month’s work, as per diem work is hardest to get the first and last months of the school year. I don’t type and was mainly hired over a woman sub who taught the subject a few years to defend the machines with my very vis vitae and bloody sinews, as the assistant principal put it, since each typewriter costs a hundred fifty dollars and the local school district won’t have the funds to replace the irreparably broken ones for a year. I was warned to be especially watchful that the students don’t dismantle the margin control springs to use as bracelets or pick off the keys one by one till they’ve spelled their first, nick- and surnames in their pockets. Some of the students continue to mutilate the machines no matter what I do. Every day I find several Tab, Mar Rel and Back Space keys on the floor after I heard them pinging off the blackboard. Also, the large bolts and wing nuts that secure the machines to their tables and a variety of less familiar parts that I’m sure come from inside the machine though I can’t locate where. Even if several students in each class remain fascinated by the machines and type every lesson I give them, I’ve gradually become incensed with my inability to control the majority of students and reduce their vandalism, and during the last period today I accused two boys of maliciously destroying their margin controls and not even having the simple skill it took to do the job cleanly, though the only proof I had for either charge were the two margin control springs in their hands.