Confessions to a Poet

     "Rage. Rage and fear. Standard feelings growing up, for me at least."
Lounging on a stack of books doubling as a chair, a cherubic faced but rangy teen sat with pale crystal blue eyes and a shock of amber hued hair uncombed and crazily pushed back from his face, fussed with a pipe and a book of matches.
      "Arthur are you listening to me?"
      "Merde, I can't get this pipe lit!"
      "Don't smoke that in here!"
      "Merde." he said slamming down the pipe and knocking over a stack of hardbound books.
      "Watch it! Those are already sold." She rushed over and neatly stacked the first editions back into a neat tower.
      "Merde- Nito, you need to relax. Have some fun, some deranging of the senses if you will."
      "Will you just listen for once?"
Leaning forward Arthur grimaced with a mock professorial look of interest placed the unlit pipe in the corner of his mouth; as he did so he lurched forward, his throne of books giving way underneath him and burying him in a avalanche of books. "Merde!"
      "Oh my god, stop fooling around Arthur"! the grey-eyed girl eyes flashed.
     An amber head of hair broke through the pile of books as did an scarred wrist and one leg sending books sliding, toppling down over each other; pages rippling.
      "Merde! Fuck! What happened to all your furniture anyway?" the poet said from under the pile of books.
     Surveying the tiny apartment there were stacks of books fashioned into a low table with an electric hot plate used for cooking and eating on, a stack carrying a computer, various stacks made into seats like the one Arthur had destroyed, and what looked like a futon covered with a quilted comforter was really another low stack of paperback books.
     "I got rid of everything to make more room for my books, its my business after all." the grey-eyed girl glanced approvingly at her handiwork.
     "I think I will stay under here, just let me smoke my pipe."
     "Ok, if you will listen."
     "Your wish Madame Nitocris, is my command." Arthur said with a flourish of his scarred wrist from under the pile of books. The grey-eyed girl lit his pipe and Arthur happily wagged his one leg and smoked with one half of his body still trapped.
     "As I was saying;rage and anger and I should add anxiety were what my home was filled with on those days my father had something go wrong at work. He would come home and sit smoking; literally foul cigarettes. My mother was no help those days she would provoke him with questions she knew he couldn't answer. She would start on her wine well before he came home her faced pulled into a paroxysm of sullen redness."
     "When the voices grew littler, quieter; I knew trouble was brewing. I would get a tingling sensation in the pit of my belly and sit on the sofa with a book, while the voices grew quiet and the sentences shorter. Till one would say "What was that look for?" and I would try to be as invisible and quick as I could so not to get hit with shrapnel from the opening salvo as the sentences got longer and the volume of the voices increased. Like a rising and falling tide of words and volume their arguments had a violent progression. From quiet and many, to loud and short, to dead silent, to loud and long, accompanied with a bang and a scream or a slam and a screech always yelling and sometimes even crying. Threats were a passed back and forth with increasing vehemence like a continuously escalating game of catch.
     If my retreat was successful, hiding in my room in our small house I felt the walls falling in on me. Then I would take all the books off the shelves on all four walls of my room. I neatly stacked them one-by-one and build a coffin, a sarcophagus and settle in sealing it up completely -phasing out the tumult going on around me.  I wanted to die to the world I was in, die to the everyday world, and like a Pharaoh be reborn in another better world, to enter the worlds in the pages entombing me; to be a character in a book."

News Report

   

     The latest in a series of attacks on people using Kindles and other e-reader devices took place today in a midtown Starbucks.  The attacker grabbed one woman's Kindle smashing it on the ground and used a shortened field hockey stick to smash six other devices before fleeing the scene. Like in previous attacks leaflets bearing the phrase “It was a pleasure to burn.” the opening line of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 were found at the scene. The novel describes a dystopian future where books are banned, and burned. Police have no leads about the nature of the attacks. Are these attacks the work of protesters? Occupy Wall Street has disavowed the attacks saying they do not believe in the destruction of personal property. Are these attacks a contemporary version Bradbury's book or are they something else? Do these attackers want anything? It’s hard to tell, they seem senseless and random, occurring often in coffee shops or on subway trains and platforms through-out the city. The mayor has promised to find the perpetrators and has stepped up security on subways and subway platforms. The only description of the attacker or attackers that has been made so far is someone wearing workers coveralls, sunglasses, ski mask and hat. If you have any information call crime stoppers at 1800-tip-crime.

      In other news we are sad to report the passing of a legend; the songstress Ava de Fleur. The reclusive singer was famous for her days in New York after fleeing the Nazi’s occupation of Paris in 1940. Most people will remember her for her hit “All Year Through” which she mysteriously refused to sing after 1944.  Miss de Fleur died late yesterday evening of natural causes.

Signs

     Charlie in blue suit and striped tie swinging his briefcase slightly,walked through the fog on an unusually warm December to a five story apartment building of light brown brick and bay windows on W. 96th Street and pressed the intercom button marked D. Sign.
     Derrick rolled over searching for her warm soft skin, but woke to the faded smell of suntan lotion on the pillow next to him.  "Aw, Shit." he groaned. "She's gone." Has been gone for two months now.
     The bell rang an angry shriek again. Trembling and head circling, he heading the thirteen steps to the door, and pressed the intercom button.
    "Come up." he growled and flipped the lock open.
    The elevator being out of service Charlie headed up the stairs sweating from the climb and the strange December humidity.  Charlie knocked and the door floated open; inside was a moderately sized apartment with an open floor plan living area with a small kitchen and a hallway leading to other rooms. Shelves of books, leather bound volumes, ancient looking tombs and large art and photography books covered one entire wall.  The furniture was spare; a black leather sofa, a dinette set in the kitchen, and a aspidistra plant in the corner.
     Charlie, busy taking in the apartment didn't notice Derrick come out of the bathroom down the hall vigorously drying his face on a towel.
     "What? Are you with the IRS?"
     "Professor Sign, we talked on the phone, we had an appointment? Charlie Farmer with Forrest Insurance."
     "Right". Derrick moved to the sofa and sat hand holding his temples, moving head his head side to side cracking the bones in his neck and jaw. Running his hand over two days stubble and his shaved crew-cut.
     Charlie wondered why he got stuck with these assignments. Difficult clients who had to be visited at home. Charlie sat at the other end of the sofa and put his briefcase next to him; there was no coffee table.
     "OK Professor Sign, ah do you prefer Professor, Dr. or Detective?"
     "Whatever Chuck lets just get this thing over with." Derrick grumbled feeling his stomach churn with last nights gin and tonics.
      "Because we dealt with all the preliminary questions over the phone Prof. Sign I just have a few more things to clear up. We will be done quickly; I will get your signature and be on my way before you know it."
      "Right, shoot."
      "Do you use alcohol or tobacco?"
      "I have the occasional drink, and once in a while I will have a cigar."
      "OK, any family history of disease."
      "My mother was a terrible driver."
      "Excuse me?"
      "No none, are we done?"
      "How long have you've been blind?"
      "Twenty years but who's counting. Its only partial, I get around just fine."
      "Really, then what kind of hat am I wearing?"
      "Your not wearing a hat."
      "Good guess. But it says in your file that you lost your vision while still an officer for the NYPD. Correct?"
      "Your wearing a sensible blue suit and I think your girlfriend who wears a clean, flora perfume picks out your tie, so that is most likely striped and red for the holiday season. Your a insurance salesman so your clean cut but today you didn't shave because you were meeting a blind man. Your shoes are scuffed because you walk a lot to meet clients and you stepped in something on the way here. Your wearing a watch but its not working. And your sweating like a pig."
      "Wow, how the fuck did you do that."
      "Listen, I can tell you more. But right now I want to ask you a question."
      "OK Professor Sign."
      "What did you do with that green hat you stole- Mr. Farmer?"

Agents

         Shadows mixed with fog and night mixed with mists rising up through the parapets; wrapping up the bridge in an inveigling gloaming.  I was supposed to meet the man here over an hour ago, but it's just been me, my cigarettes, and the occasional strong baritone foghorn of the tugs going up river.  I've been on so  many sides now, its hard to tell where I am anymore. I'm on my own bridge between Europe, Britain, the good ole USA and what I hope is a way out of all this, hell maybe even an end to the war. But the fog is so goddam thick.  What the hell, where is this guy; boredom, the price we pay for information these days.  In my coat are two letters, one I'm supposed to hand to this guy; if he ever decides to show, and one for Ava in Paris.  It’s damp and the tobacco smoke from my lucky strike clings to my hand and finds its way up my coat and around my fedora.  A siren is wailing in the somewhere out there that I presume is the city. A fire alarm. Clicking of Florsheims and he was on me before I realized it. 

      "Nice evening, don't you think? Especially for our line of work. No?"

      "Yeah, just wonderful.  I feel like I'm back in London. Lets get this done- I’m running out of smokes waiting for you." my irritation flooding over.

     "I didn't know if it was you, Hamlet's father or Jacob Marley."

     "Yeah, great." I didn't have time make jokes.

     "Sorry, ran into some unexpected circumstances." the man said coldly, flatly.

     "Just hand it over." I said taking out the letter.

     As the man reached into his jacket pocket- I for once got a good look at him. He was of average height, with fair hair cut short. From under the brim of his hat, eyes that were intense, perceptive eyes, there was a icy rigor to the man that didn't match his lighthearted quips.

     "Here you are." He held out his parcel, I handed him his letter.

     And when we exchanged; I noticed a gap were his first two finger should have been on his left hand. 

I realized then that I just exchanged top-secret documents with the man codenamed: Kestrel.

      "Just remember what your working for, not who. There's no reason to turn a young spook into an old ghost." He called back as he vanished again into the sightless night.

Louise meets the Grey-Eyed girl.

     "Charlie she was trembling and gasping for air.  Walking up and down the aisles with this distant look in her eyes." 
      This often happened when the grey-eyed girl went to the library. Bright sunlight radiated the whole floor suffusing the air with an white tangible light. Her heart clawed, bumped and banged against her thin breast bone. "So many." she thought.  All goose flesh, the tiny gossamer hairs on her arms stood up. Whole body from crown to toe gave a cool shiver as she began pacing the stacks.   Turning her fingertips and delicately painted nails nervously over the spines, hand over hand, finger trading finger, she traced waves, up and down in long arcs.  Literature, philosophy, fiction, poetry, books of criticism and memoirs. Here Milton, Nabokov, Lusseyran, Rimbaud, Thoreau, so many, so much too read, too absorb, too relate to,commune with and learn, worlds to visit. Whole green rows of Loeb classics and red volumes of Tacitus; here dusty volumes of Keats, leather bound and shedding volumes of Dickens.
      "Charlie she was only a young girl probably around eighteen. Her eyes were large oval and piercingly grey. She had this wild hair, and was smiling like she just found an old friend."
     Her feet couldn't keep up with her thoughts as she stumbled around S in the literature section. Viewing the lions out of the window casting shadows on the street below. Waves of nausea washed inside her; she fell onto her knees vomiting.
      "Charlie I had to help her up, I grabbed her arm and tried to help. She looked sick but something else... I don't know... possessed. She pushed me away, and went to a worn wooden chair kneeling in front of it."
     "Darling what is the matter with you?" I told you not to get carried away."
     The women had deep brown hair that time had seeped the color from mixed with a steely silver. Burly and matronly she sat on the chair observing the grey-eyed girl. With dark eyes the woman appraised her.
      "You must learn to control these fits, people will see your weakness.  Come now child tell me what is wrong?"
     "I just can't take all this in at once." the grey-eyed girl got out between heaving.
     "Child it's already in you. Remeber a book is a book is a book is a book." the matriarch said.
    "Charlie, the light from the window was bright and yellow and I couldn't see. But I swear she sat in front of that chair talking to no one." Louise concluded.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 3

     The alley way was dark but for ambient light of the city and a naked bulb that flickered over the door she just pushed out of- he following.  A lone cat scampered over some crates and streaked down the alley; the air was permeated with the order of stale beer, urine and garbage.  Through the funnel of buildings, traffic, trucks gasping and sighing could be heard; the incessant honking, blaring of taxis, the squeal of brakes.
     She faced him and pushed him up against the building, made to kiss him but passed her face next to his feeling his stubbled plump face. He turned to kiss her; she felt his mouth and teeth slobbering on her neck his excitement palpable and groping.  
     "Oh, your some kinda freak huh? Good. What do I call you? I mean what's your name anyway?"
     "You can call me Delilah."
    His paw like hands moving over her back and ass, she leaned back and looked him in the eye, ran a hand over the back of his bald head pushing his head down to her crotch. The grey-eyed girl stepped back a little from him and her eyes matched the grey snub nosed Beretta she pulled from her handbag. 
      "Wha...what the fuck? Wha..what d-do...do you want?" staring down the bore hole; black, flat and empty of any solace.
       The girl with the gun-metal grey eyes shoved the short barreled Beretta into his mouth grinding and chipping teeth. 
       "Do you want to live?" the girl with the gun-metal grey eyes said. "Voir ma misère, hélas! Voir ma détresse." she quoted; a tear cold and slow rolling down her check. Her black fingernails tight on grip, but easily and light on the trigger.
    Gun in mouth; Samson jerked his head in shaky yeses.
    "Good....THEN STOP WRITING BAD POETRY!!!"
  There was motion from a fire-escape overhead a figure leaned back into an apartment.
She left Samson weeping and trembling in a heap and out of the alley and into the New York night.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 2

 

     "Samson? Hi- sorry I'm late, did I miss your reading?" she said

     "Oh, yeah, who are you?" he said his bushy eyebrows raised, he was expecting Chanteuse_23 to be some hideous thing that hadn’t seen the light of day for years, but here stood a slim girl in a navy-blue dress, curly some would say frizzy light-coffee colored hair pulled back and poorly tamed into a clasp. She had flat shoes and ribbed tights and a dark gray pea-coat. A green handbag slung over her shoulder.

      Samson glared at her and said." I was expected someone well you know… anyway I can give you a private reading later. You’re much different than I thought.”

       "SHHHH!" a white head whipped around from the seat in front off them. "Do you mind?" he was holding a Pomeranian and had pinkish red eyes.

       "SHH! yourself ya rat!" Samson took an open-hand swing at the back of his head.  The young albino man faded his head back just in time and glared at Samson. He got up with the dog and walked toward an empty seat. The grey-eyed girl looked at the pale young man unsettled; out of the corner of his eye he did the same.

         "Lets get out of here these people can't write anyways. I know a place we can play pool and I can read you my poems. You know you got nice eyes."

        They went to a dim bar; empty except for the bartender cleaning glasses with a rag.   The green felt of the pool table like an oasis, humming green under a hanging light. Samson ordered a rum and coke and she got a bottle of beer.

     "That’s not so lady-like drinking from a bottle like that."

      ‘There are a lot of things not so lady-like about me." She said coyly smiling as she rubbed the cube of chalk on the tip of the pool cue, and blew it off in a blue cloud.   She wanted to get through with this before he tried to recite any of his poetry.  She thrust the pool stick and broke; she sunk the two and three, then buried the six and purposely missed the one.

       "Your pretty good for a girl." he said as he took aim at the twelve and he caught her raising the brown bottle to her lips suggestively for a long drink.  He missed; it was time. She grabbed the pool cue from him violently.   "You have grey rain clouds in your eyes girl."

        “I prefer to think storm clouds."

        "Why is there a storm coming."

"You'll see." she said and sank the eight ball. Turned and re-racked the stick and walked to a door marked exit motioning for him to follow her.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 1

     A fingernail painted glossy, robin’s egg blue tapped the mouse and it was done. The meeting was set; she added some lines from Milton.

"With winged expedition

Swift as the lightning glance he executes

His errand on the wicked, who, surprised,

Lose their defense, distracted and amazed."  (Lines 1277-86)

     Fingernails painted black gripped the handle of the bookstore door and the grey-eyed girl spotted Samson immediately. Samson, the irony of the name was lost on him, not a strand on his furrowed dome.  What he lacked on his head he made up for with hair growing greasy black and thick on the back of his paw like hands, knuckles, and escaping from his shirt collar swallowing up a gold chain and patriarchal cross.

     Samson thought himself something of a poet; he reveled in disbursing his rhymed cliches at coffee houses and bookstore readings the audience always to timid and Samson to menacing for any critiques to be made.   Finding him was easy.  He had a Facebook page devoted to his frothy amateur poetry along with pictures of himself enjoying baklava and other desserts.  Arranging the meeting was easy. She friended him using the name Chanteuse_23 and after holding back her vomit commented on how much she liked his poetry. Samson invited her to come and hear him read, she showed up late to miss his performance. There was no way in hell she could listen too it. That would literally make the grey-eyed girl sick.

     There he was sitting hunched and straddling a backward chair while a tall, ornithological looking women read in a think French accent from the podium.               

The Dream of the Grey-Eyed Girl

    Sitting, reading a cloth bound book under a ginkgo tree a grey-eyed girl is falling asleep. A burgundy silk book mark ripples obedient and languorous in the breeze. Fan shaped leaves shake and fall a bright yellow cascade around her.  She wears a mans sweater; the top two buttons missing she holds it closed with robin eggshell blue painted fingernails, when the breeze turns into a gust sweeping up the hill making the blond heads of the dry, overgrown  grass wave and dance like ecstatic dervishes. Her grey eyes squint and watch a kestrel hovering over her tree and dart back out over the field and back again.
    Back firmly against her tree, her favorite tree atop the hill, she feels the comfort of soil, root, the entire earth. Experiencing the earth pulling her in and letting her go at once as she closes her eyes and nods off.  The grey-eyed girl dreams of her mother; still young, vibrant dark hair, glamorous and mysteriously inviting like an alleyway at night. A promise of something behind those star-like eyes. She senses all the protection and leonine power in the way she embraces her father. Her father handsome; when all the markings of his face were but an outline and map for the deeply entrenched emotions that she would know.  They hold each other tightly, and she hears the kestrel screaming.
    "Charlie, I dreamed about her again." Louise said sitting up in bed.
     "The grey-eyed girl?" Charlie said without turning over.

The Letter

Dear L.A.F.,

      It's getting near to Christmas time and the leaves are falling- they get pushed and scattered by the wind   swirling as I walk the city surrounding me. Everyone races around, the men have taken to wearing hats again and the women their long coats and stockings, I have to hurry from one avenue to the next or get swallowed up. I'm not quite used to it.  I can't help looking and investigating the vertical landscape.   It is in a quiet gaping awe that I gaze at the decorative windows, facades, and the wrought iron gates; here a walk-up apartment house, there a church and again another apartment, townhouses and Tudor revival buildings. Lobbies, all in marble, bigger than the house I grew up in. 

      The city is a Goliath of ponderous concrete, sublime artistic craftsmanship, and continuous motion. But what is this monolith of constant motion compared to you?   I know I promised to write you a poem.  Compared to your eyes on me what is the city, the city awes me but you with just a turn of  your head, a word, or reaching over in your sleep to clasp my hand and hold it close to your breast, there is utter fascination and wonderment. What is a city compared to your beguiling, I'm bewildered by you at times; the city in comparison is predictable and dull. I think of your hair like a dark waterfall flowing. Rushes over me and crushes me and I drown in perfumed delight in bountiful sensuousness. I am suffocated in locks like blackbirds wings fluttering and beating against my face but it feels incredible to be under and I take big gulps of you.  

     I read a scientific article that said some women can see an extra color on the visible color spectrum (that might explain some fashions we see today) they are called the tetrachromatic women. That's what happens when I look at you a whole different spectrum is revealed- things look brighter and better.  Maybe that is what love does; it brings the whole world to life in different colors.

    I am running short on time I hope everything is well with you my love.  I wrestle everyday about rejoining you. Not having you by my-side at times is too much.  I want to leave but I know what is best for us both. With that, here is to the hope we will be reunited soon, until then I will continue to see the world in this new light and know you are still in my heart.

With love always,

C. Farmer

 P.S. You have to see the wonderful parks, in the next letter I will tell you all about them. I even saw a kestrel eating a pigeon last week.

She Takes the Stage

     Amid scattered applause the singer took the stage. Her red lipstick shone in the pool of stage light set off against her clear ivory complexion and hair the color of October fallen leaves; somewhere between red and brown. A shimmering green sequined dress clung to her and held the collective gaze of the small subterranean nightclub's patrons. She clutched a Pomeranian under one arm, the microphone stand in the other. Her voice started out a husky whisper but grew resonate and had the depth of an underground river. She sang:

We met in the cool breeze of spring.
walked along the quay and the riverside
went to cafes and talked the day and evening away
we watched the stars all night.
in the morning
you said you could love me all year through.

In the summer we spent all day at the ocean-side
drank in saloons and danced and swayed
passing our way; we watched the stars shoot through the sky.
And you said
you would love me all the year through
 

In the autumn the wind chilled and blew
but we were warm together, I held tight to you.
and there were stars in our eyes.
and you were loving me all year through.
 

Then the days grew quick and the nights never-ending
because you had left me,
oh why, oh why?
You had said the stars had fallen from my eyes.
 

and you said you would love me all year through
and you said you would love me.....

      She finished, her last breath was like a sighing wind beneath a bridge. She let the microphone topple over, held her dog tightly and left the stage. Before she left through the service exit behind the stage she donned her chameleon skin green hat with the ostrich feather. Ava de'Fleur the famed French singer promised herself never to sing the song again as she walked off into the New York night.

The Green Hat 2

     They sat in the barely lit bar. Quiet, staring forward at the bottles of liquor and there own reflections in the chipped and smoky mirror.  The hat sat mutely between them.  Louise played with her earring and held her drink with her other hand.  Charlie was feeling the effects of the adrenalin rush and was shaking thumb-nailing the label from his beer.  The bartender eyed them from the other side of the bar cleaning glasses with a rag.  "You know if we were married I would divorce you." Louise was the first to break the silence.  They were the only ones in the dive and the silence clung to them. 
      "I will take it back in the morning" Charlie said shaking his head. "I don't know what got into me."
       “We could be arrested for fuck sake." Louise said and turned to look at Charlie. He had a hangdog expression and she knew he was sorry, but what did he expect.
       "You didn't exactly stop me Lou." his sorrow turning to anger.
The bartender looked up; more to see if they needed fresh drinks than at their raised voices.
       "You fucking grabbed me, look at my arm Charlie." she raised her bare arm and there four purplish red marks where his fingers gripped her arm.
       "Shit Lou, I am so sorry." his anger being no match for hers he groped for an answer " I just don't know it must be the city’s getting to me. There's so many fucking people, they are everywhere. I mean just think of it the city is crawling with people above ground below ground there's no escaping them."
       "So you steal an ugly fucking hat, no you make me steal an ugly fucking hat?"
        " I don't know Lou maybe I’m going nuts."
She started turning her earring in her ear again. "What are we going to do with this thing?” Louise nodded toward the hat.
        "I will take it back tomorrow."
         "You can’t do that they will want to charge you or call the police or something."
        "I'll just say we were frightened by the fight."

The bartender moved from behind the bar and a french song came on the jukebox. Louise couldn't remember the name of the singer but she loved the song. It was something very romantic and melancholy about two lovers breaking up.
         She saw how much Charlie was beating himself up and decided to let it go for now. Besides it had been exciting and she had never seen this side of Charlie even after being together for over a year- she just wasn't sure how to react.
        "Come on Charlie, shall we?" She took the hat and placed it on in the same rakish fashion as before at the shop. She held out here hand; he smirked, took a sip of beer and started to twirl her around.  They danced tightly pressed to each other for the entire song Charlie indulging in her dark eyes and she in his tight grip around the small of her back.  He dipped her and before she was up he met her lips for a long full kiss as he turned her and did it a second time. 
The song ended and Charlie and Louise's world only consisted of each other breathing.  Louise dizzy from the dance and even more from the kiss noticed a man over Charlie's shoulder looking directly at her.
  "So- you have the hat." he said.

The Green Hat

           The hat was green and glowing like a dessert under glass in a roadside diner. The color of neon jell-o made of felt with an ostrich feather sticking out of the slightly darker band.  The brim was wide and round and stiff; twice as large as a manhole cover.  “I have to have that hat". Louise laughed as they walked by the brightly lit window.

       Taxis whooshed by on the damp street and the air was cooler now.  Louise had Charlie's arm and was hugged up against his shoulder.  "That's just your style Lou, Come on lets see how much it is."

  "You know I was kidding right?" Giving Charlie a wry smile.
  "I know I just want to see you in it. It will be funny". 
    A little bell rang as the entered the small shop. They specialized in designer hats that all looked to be too asymmetrical to wear or too heavy or just too plain ugly.  Charlie approached a tall thin woman with a bright orange bob haircut behind the counter.  The lady looked up from her accounting pushing her bifocals back up her beak like nose.  "Yes, can we help you?" The lady drawled in a think French accent.

     Charlie trying not to crack up said “Why yes Madame, can we perhaps see that beautiful green hat on display there."
     The sales lady slinked her sinewy body  from the behind the counter bringing a key on a long sparkling chain with her.  Her long red dress clashed violently with the green of the hat as she removed it from the case, she looked like a Christmas decoration gone horribly wrong.  She held it out in her thin long arms at full length to read the price tag. Clutching the tag with one talon like hand she read. "Oui, this one is a Calvaconte, from Italy very nice" Charlie couldn't help to peek at the price tag.

     The green saucer of the brim actually shimmered like chameleon skin; the color wasn't as bad removed from the glare of the display case neon light.   The clerk placed the hat on Louise's head at an rakish angle that divided her face diagonally. "Oo-lala, tre bein, this hat it suits you very well." the clerk squawked.

       Louise turned and looked into the gold framed mirror and thought right away how wrong she was about the hat. It made her look sophisticated and as she modeled the hat for herself and Charlie she thought, I look almost mysterious as she pulled a dark lock of hair from behind her ear. Like a movie starlet from the 30's or 40's. 

      Just as Louise was reluctantly taking the hat off.  A bell attached to the door rang and a man in a white dress shirt and dark suit pants pushed his way in.  His hair was wild and shirt stained and stretched over a large belly, his face was red and unshaven; his bulbous nose even redder. Running his hands over his wild grey, head the man shouted at the clerk "Mimi you bitch, you cheating bitch!" the man continued to yell like this but in an incomprehensible drunken french. Mimi the clerk wasn't backing down and didn't seem to mind that Charlie and Louise were there.

       "Who are you talking too? You louse! You drunk?" Mimi shrieked.

     Mimi went right up to him and jabbed her bony finger into his chest and backed him into a back room. Where there was a loud clatter like a table being overturned or a book case falling. Charlie and Louise looked at each other.

     "Should we do something?" Louise said

      "No, let’s just get out of here".

      Louise started to take off the hat but Charlie grabbed her arm hard and said "Come on lets go!  Take it." 

They hit the door with a bang and the little bell rang wildly as they were out of the shop and heading down 42nd street.

   

Charlie and Louise

     The dim light shimmered off the wine glasses in the soft murmur of the restaurant.  Candles swayed and flickered revealing all the depth of Louise's deep mahogany eyes.  After clinking glasses they took there first sip of wine and settled down after their toiling commutes.  A faint smile on Louise lips appeared when she noticed Charlie smoothing out the red and white checked table cloth.       "What are you thinking"? Louise said lightly to Charlie.
       "Oh nothing, this place always puts me in a sentimental mood"
Louise laughed she knew his habits; she always liked when he delved into his past.
        "Did you ever go to camp as a kid Lou"?
         "No not really, school trips mostly- my parents were too cheap to send us all."
        "Yeah my parents didn't see the point. I did go on one class trip once; we went to this place way upstate for three or four days with my Sixth Grade Class, just been thinking about it lately."

       Charlie took a big sip of wine. "I remember this place in the woods. There was this little stream surrounded by pine trees and I remember feeling such peace there. Maybe it was the quiet of the pine needles that covered the ground or the sound of the stream. But whenever I could I would break away from the group and just sit on the slope of the bank watching the water splash on the rocks and roll by. I must have spent hours there on that trip.  My classmates and teacher thought I was up to something or maybe that I was just nuts."
         "No argument here." Lou said with a warm friendly grin but regretted joking as soon as she said it. She knew for some reason he had turned uncharacteristically serious. “I’m just kidding honey."

          "I know, its just when I was there, remember I was just a kid at the time, the one person who knew what I was up to was one of the counselors of the camp. Her name was Sunny and I thought I was in love with her."

        "From the first day we were assigned counselors according to what activities we wanted to do.  Sunny was in charge of the environmental biological nature portion so I knew we would be skulking through the forest and allowed to get as dirty as we wanted; so I immediately signed up." Sunny was just that; bright- I mean smart she knew everything about all the flora and fauna of the stream and surrounding woods. She was also bright like when I saw her there was like a halo around her or something, like the air around her was lighter, more bright."

         Charlie stopped and was staring at the orange-yellow flame of the candle. “You know Lou, I think what made me really feel special about Sunny was that she didn't question my sitting around watching the stream apparently wasting my time; she actually understood it."

         Charlie snapped his gaze back up to Louise the candle's flame dancing in her eyes. "Lou that's how I feel about you now. But do you know which you are?”

         "What do you mean Charlie?" Louise said.

          “Guess who you are.”

           She just looked at him her head turned a little and touched her earring.

           “You’re both Lou- you’re both."

Louise and Charlie

     Louise pulled her dark hair back from her flushed face as she made the closing doors of the packed subway. A bead of sweat made the long journey down the curve of her back and she puffed out the front of her airy blouse "Whew." she said out loud.  Charlie was meeting her at the subway at 42nd street from there they had dinner plans at her favorite Italian restaurant. She was running late and tried to text him but of course there was no service in the tunnel.
     Charlie unloosened his tie as he navigated the churning sea of people that was 42nd street. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead making his fair hair stick to his brow. He looked through the crowd of people to see if maybe Louise had gotten there but was met only by hundreds of anonymous faces. Charlie loved New York after moving there two years ago but the sheer amount of people still bugged him out occasionally. Masses of people like rapids of rivers moved toward him; guys in business suits like him just trying to get home, women on cell phones and in high heels, homeless shuffling with downcast eyes or crazy eyed and babbling heads thrust into the sky.

      Louise made her way up the grinding escalator her last trek up from the underground for the day and into the somewhat cooler air of the corridors of Manhattan.   She checked her phone for service and texted Charlie; "At the Subway."  She watched as tourists stood and gawked at the Chrysler building or like morons risked their lives waiting in the middle of the street, Taxis bearing down on them, for their relatives to snap a photo. All that for a crumby picture, she thought.  I wonder if Charlie and I were to go to Paris would we dangle from the Eiffel Tower just for a souvenir picture, or stand in front of bulls in Barcelona, maybe walk-up and pet a lion on safari in Africa. "Charlie would and I would have to stop him." she thought with a kind of pessimism.  “I must be hungry; I am getting mean." she sighed to herself.

     Charlie made his way through the streaming crowd. “I can't do Italian tonight Lou."

      She put a hand on her hip puffed out her blouse with the other and blew a lock of hair off her face.  She turned her eyes up at him and Charlie recognized that look as one that was usually reserved for his more gross transgressions and grievous misconduct.

       "Italian it is." Charlie said.