Stories from When We Were Not There
Lemon-scented, flippant, smiling woman but with a smile that is neither knowing nor interested, only kind. A tired smile. But she knows what it means, even the aloofness, which isn’t about her, but about the fact the she finds everything around her amusing, and because she is with her friend, there is a safety there from whence the flippancy can roam uninterrupted, for the delight of them both. The cake-eating girls on a summer’s day, the sensuousness of eating together after such a long time, I know it is so good I may faint, or come, or both. Summer dresses wasn’t it what the writer said anyway, the girls, and it isn’t over yet, the hot and mighty summer, although it may be a bit sad, too. They were playing Art Tatum and Ben Webster and Florence’s new album and imagining things that were long ago, like the white sheet being lifted from the line by the autumnal gale, the white sheet a phantom rushing by their second-story window with the perpetual bird shit. Oh god I