Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

188. A PLEASANT WINTER IN PARIS:

So the answer really is ‘sit back and enjoy’ and think about what you’re doing and watch the man nearby with the saxophone in the case as he walks along the street avoiding lights and cars (he’s the one running from one session to another) in a hurry to be somewhere and take a moment and observe the people streaming in and out of the railroad station and see the men with the uniforms and the guards and maintenance workers and the busmen and drivers and sports fans and delivery people EVERYONE milling about going to and fro and it’s all work the wildest work in the world the ‘everyday’ work of session men and builders and laborers and losers and all we ever can do about it is try to escape it but in every other place we go there’s more work to be done – anyway it went something like that - those final words from Pinkerton who was getting ready to leave for Cos Cob (which is a town in Connecticut somewhere she’d mentioned as home) but I never found out which home the one where she ‘grew’ up or the one where she still really lived for she certainly SEEMED like a city type to me especially an uptown one who walked a lot while thinking nothing of it and that’s only something that locals do for people from other places are always complaining about walking - their legs are tired their feet hurt their back is killing them their shoes aren’t fitting right their stuff is too heavy to keep carrying - anyway outsiders never walk (I’d found that out) but that’s a confusing meaninglessness in this case of Pinkerton who bore the earmarks of everything at once and nothing at all and PERHAPS just perhaps I’d designed a mystery (I thought that to myself) and as we finished our time together I found myself maybe wishing for more time with her but at the same time a gladness for her leaving did come over me and it’s that bedraggled mix-up you get at a bus or train station when you ‘know’ you really want to go yet you linger and hope to stay too just a little bit longer so you hang around and operate slowly and stop for this or that just to all-at-once take it in which I was already doing and the voice on the loudspeaker kept announcing a page – evidently for someone who didn’t show – and that became annoying quickly enough but then so did other people for the crowd-crush was really a lot and she was gone and I was on my own but the last thing I said to her was "well hey I hope to see you somewhere again maybe at Columbia or maybe around there or even here and it’s been a really pleasant afternoon walking and talking" and she gave me a phone number and I gave her mine (a made-up one as I really had none) and I realized the burden thereby was all upon me to make the next move whether in a week or a month or a day for only I could call her she’d not be able to call my made-up number for any real satisfaction unless by chance I had for her rippled some great unknown waters of coincidence and surprise and – who knew – she’d maybe wind up with some great person for her on the other end of that phone call and you know ‘stranger things have happened’ (as they once said at Barnum’s but haven’t said lately) and it all reminded me of another time when I finally did reach someone on the phone in this manner (one Cartier Liza Von Liberte) and she wound up talking to me about very many things but what was amazing was that there I was on one end of the phone a pauper who’d written her a letter in response to something she’d written that I’d seen and her – in response – a wealthy New Yorker on the other end - living at 25 Fifth Avenue who spent most of that conversation telling me about her trips to Europe and how she’d just returned from a pleasant Winter in Paris and had I ever been there and after being told I had not she exclaimed as to how it was I could even live without having ever traveled or seen Europe or the world or done anything ‘extraordinary’ to expand myself and my horizons and all that and it was that huge divide as it opened up which pretty much sealed our fate and never heard from again were either one of us quick end to a short story but another example of how chance - which DOES sometimes really work - in this case worked for nothing and amounted to less (or as my mother used to say - all pouted up and haughty in her play-acting 'Well! I like me who do you like?').