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.

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

           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.