Walking

It was a three-cigarette walk.

She passed some sailors dining outside of Pescatore.

Then there Andy was through the opened windows of the pub.

"Hiya, Anne!"

Then she turned the block with dexterity, dexterously poising a cigarette between her second and third finger. There was Roberto outside of Ashton's.

"Hola, Mommy! Hola, Anneceta!"

"Yeah, si, hola!"

The outside tables were filled with American suits who lost their words, their train of thought as she walked by. Gutless suits who lost their words and wished they could be strong enough to challenge her. Smoke in their faces and a knowing turn of her lips was enough to set them off for a week of confusion.

La-tee-da.

Cameron

Anne stood with her forehead against the glass, looking down at Times Square. Thirty stories below, the entire city was sprawled beneath her both in glittering illuminations and black corners. There were the marquees on which she would never be. There were the margaritas she would be drinking if she weren't so hungover. There were the tourists she once was. There were the New Yorkers she now was. She knew that he was changing clothes behind her and she didn't dare turn around.

With her thumb, she rubbed the smudge her forehead had made on the window.

Click.

He was safely in the bathroom. She walked around his bedroom (a cubicle made almost entirely of glass), running her fingers over every object. There was an Eliot novel on his shelf. She sat down on the edge of his bed and tried to imagine him reading Middlemarch. She couldn't! Lying back, she tried to imagine her head on his chest and his hand in her hair. That she could imagine. Oh, what in the world was she doing in his bedroom!

Thud.

The sight of a recumbent Anne on his bed with her eyes closed made him extremely nervous. But she was on her feet before he could entirely process the feeling. He pulled on his navy suede shoes.

On the subway downtown, they held onto the same pole. He looked down at her, she up at him.

In the movie theatre, they sat close together, almost touching. It was like being in Jr. High again. She could feel the heat off his sweater and she didn't dare move her elbow. He never shifted to his left, she never to her right. Several times he spoke to her and kept his eyes on her as she remained glued to the screen. "Are you alright, too scared?" he asked.

As the credits were rolling, she accidentally touched his shoulder. It was almost painful to withdraw her hand.

He suggested they walk across town. Her sensible shoes and the welcoming night air agreed with his plan. As Broadway and 5th Avenue and Madison were conquered and left behind, her dread of his feelings, fears that he might not like her, melted away. The buildings were beautiful, the sky was beautiful, sidewalk detritus and the Kmart window display were beautiful. Talking to him was simple and funny and even joyful.

She whirled away out of the night and down the subway stairs before he had a chance not to kiss her.

Maggie the Cat

Anne sat with her legs stretched straight across the sofa, her hands underneath her thighs. The trees outside her window danced violently in the golden sun of afternoon...their leaves like fluttering petals on a sequined dress. But the low drone of the window unit AC drowned out the sound of the botanical Charleston-in-double-time. How wretchedly clinical it was to stay cool.

Click and the AC was off. Anne returned to the sofa, stretched her legs out straight, and tucked her hands underneath her thighs. Resume thoughts.

Resume.

Thoughts.

She had none. Besides those sort of cloudy, sultry Tennessee Williams kind of thoughts. The kind of thoughts that make you appreciate the beads of sweat on your collarbone and wish that there was someone else around to lick them off.

No, those thoughts would not do.

She freed her hands and examined her wrists. Fragile and delicate. Perhaps her most snappable feature. The white skin was almost like gossamer tissue paper or the pages of a pocket Bible. With pronounced blue veins crisscrossing just below the surface, like tributaries flooding porcelain banks. She had always feared the transparency of her skin. Being forced to see that death was eminently possible since life was made possible by such fragility alone. It made her heart pound in her chest and it made her cry.

No, those thoughts would not do either.

She didn't really smoke, not really, but she needed a cigarette and a walk and an introduction. The need to feel his hand on her neck was too overwhelming and required eradication by yellow cabs and small dogs and subway grates and gathering clouds.

Fire Escape

Anne rested her cheek against the wooden menu board and gazed at the second floor fire escape across the street.

Come out! Come out! Come out!

Usually he would appear... once, twice... or maybe three times in a night. Out he would crawl from the window, drink in hand. And then he'd light a cigarette and knock on the window next door. Pudgy-boy-next-door-who-is-always-watching-TV might stick his head out in response. Or give a protective pat to make sure his sad herb garden is not being tread upon.

He never seemed to look down--only exposed to Anne the underside of his dirty white socks. Only once had she seen him on the street. And then it was such a flurry. Before she could even take in his level proximity, his bike was saddled and he was flying off downtown, leaving her to suffer the night alone.

And what did he do? Did he work? He was never in the office. Always up there writing something. And smoking. And drinking. And having friends. In his early-nineties blue jeans and tee-shirts splattered with paint. Were they paint-covered or did she just want him to be an artist?

His body was agile though, like an actor's body. Like he could easily touch his toes. Like his own tension was shed so that he could take on the tension of a number of roles. Like he was relaxed in a way that she never could be.

Come out! Come out! Come out!

She kicked nothing in particular with her black high-top sneaker and then itched the back of her knee.

Ah! At last, up came the sash! It was dark, but she knew his outline well as he silhouetted in the window. He was alone, and his face was ignited to her as he lit his cigarette. He leaned back against the ladder, Jordan Catalano-style...and ran his uncigaretted hand through his longish hair.

Delicious.

Andy

Andy was so Irish, in a way that reminded her of her childhood. And of all the things she had promised herself she would do. Of course he had lived in Camden town. They had probably passed on the street. When she had escaped and wandered the maze of stalls alone and purchased her first pair of Doc Martens at fourteen (which she proudly slung over her shoulder in a bright plastic bag.) Or when she had escaped again at nineteen and bought her first piece (which she guiltily wrapped in tissue and stuffed in her pocket.) The bowl was white porcelain, etched with black paint, and it would later seek its demise on a Bostonian sidewalk.

Then, again enslaved, she rested her chin on top of a half-pint glass in a Camden beer garden and watched three Irishmen in the sun. The words of her enslavers floated (or rather jabbed) over her head, ignored. The Irish were shirtless and pink from the sun, talking loudly and gesturing dramatically. And really more boys than men. Their bodies were yet impervious to gain, their tattoos and pale blank spaces taut over sinewy flesh.

Andy reminded her of being ten-years-old in Cardiff. Watching an Irish band from behind her brother's elbow. No, watching hooligans watching an Irish band. Irish hooligans, she assumed. But they could have been Welsh. But all she saw was skin and mohawks and legs wrapped around shoulders.

At any rate, there he was behind the bar. Anne clutched her knees and her vodka tonic (she forgave him for giving her the wrong drink.) He rested his hand dangerously close to her as he obtained a drink order from a German tourist. His hands were feminine and white, and his fingers spread over the mahogany bar elegantly. She wanted to touch his rings but she did not. Instead, she turned to Sarina and prattled about something. But there was that ringed hand again, caressing an India pale ale.

"Have you got a cigarette, lovie?"

Anne fished through her bag and pulled out an empty carton of Marlboro Lights. Fucking typical.

But Andy served last call. And Anne bestowed a lipstick lip-print on Sarina's forearm and put her in a cab. And then Anne collected Andy off the street and scooped up his piercings and his tattoos and his dreadlocks. He was lost.

All his years were written on his face in an appealing way. There was India, there was London, there was Dublin, there was New York. She rambled on, pretending not to watch him performing her favorite male activity of rolling a joint. Her knee hit the coffee table and caused the record to skip. There was his strange laugh. She wanted to stand up and trace the lines on his forehead with her fingertips.

But then he looked at her. And in the light of her living room, his blue eyes seemed candidly earnest. And that exposed look of maybe-wanting-to kiss her couldn't have been right. It was innocent. It couldn't have been right.

There was something about him that made her excited about living life.