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Page 3.
Chapter 1. The Story of A
 A was the first June in my life—almost a July really, at 7 years older. I was utterly inexperienced in matters of love and much else, until instructed by A. I was 23 years old, just out of college with a B.A. degree in Liberal Arts, and no idea how to live a practical life. I had pretensions of being recognized for a minor poetic gift I did in fact possess, but this (ahem) cruel world offers little reward for such things. I was driving a taxi for a living, and I soon discovered, to my amazement, that many women see the young taxi driver, with his slender body and long, flying dark hair, as a kind of doctor, artist, shrink, authority figure, what have you. For a few fleeting minutes as you navigate the streets, you are the captain of the ship. To be honest, only one or two liaisons came from this source, but the few that did were firecrackers. So, one day, I was taking this 29-year-old woman home. She was divorced, had a child I never met (as was often the case in these affairs, amid their juggling of people and times to give us space), and lived in one of those huge apartment blocks that smell of Dry-Fluf and carpet cleaner.
How did this come about?
I recall the swirls of snow on the darkening streets as I drove her from the school, where she taught Music (if that's not ironic; and maybe it's what made me think of the title of that dreary short story). How did it happen? She talked animatedly all the way. She was Italian-American, and beautiful in an understated, 'cute' girl next door kind of way. Oh, and this you must realize: once a young man finishes college, the blender of constant young chicks vanishes overnight. If he is smart and studies something for which society pays, and he makes a nice salary and circulates among offices in which many women work, then maybe a newer, still lesser blender begins. After all, he is now more responsible, and his event horizon goes from 'the next moment' to 'tomorrow,' 'next year,' or even 'when I retire someday.' I was driving a taxi, and at a loss to share with anyone the meaning of the circles in Dante's Hell, or the underlying Weltschmerz of Waldo Gassoff, poet and longshoreman, and all the other obscure things on which I had written papers during my undergraduate years. When people asked, I sort of fibbed and said I had applied to graduate schools. I hadn't yet, at that point. A young man could not be more lost in life than I was during those years.
A was in control of the situation. She had a wry mouth and a sense of humor to match, and brazen brown eyes in a smooth oval face. I can still see her as she leaned over the seats with her arms crossed and her chin on her wrists as she asked: "Would you like to have a drink with me?" Her insouciant grin gleamed handsomely from smooth olive skin.
It took me a moment or two to close my mouth, which had dropped open. I had several working hours yet to drive, and I couldn't think of having anything on my breath.
"You are a good responsible man," she said (was she teasing me? Of course).
"How about later?" I asked.
Blah, ...di Blah, ...di Blah, ...di Bloody Bla-Bla…
Skip to eleven o'clock that night. By now she knew more about me than I knew about her. Actually, I cared less about her background than she did about mine, to be honest. I was flying blind. She seemed like a nice person, and I had nothing better to do. She seemed 'older,' and I wasn't interested in her for that. We found ourselves in a nightclub around eleven. I got carded on the way in. She laughed. "You are tall, and thin, and good looking of course, but that thick dark hair and those wavy, flying curls, you look so damned young that it makes my mouth dry."
We had one drink each; beer for me, some mucky looking ladies' thing with chocolate in it for her. We danced to a absolutely horrible band of Mediterranean-looking men in Mongolian-looking suits, playing the worst kind of lounge music imaginable. Understand that this was near a highway on/off ramp, and all sorts of brief encounters flickered on the movie screen of this hotel's existence. For her, it was a convenience because she lived within walking distance.
It was good to hold her, and I became interested. As my hands moved with surprised fingertips over the smoothness of her slender waist and the generous curves of her hips and rear, I stopped thinking of her as 'older.' She had a body under that dress, a figure that was as smooth and soft as any girl's. I had an erection and a wet spot soon after. She cut us off after that one drink, and nursed us out into the lounge, which was less intimate. She told me once after: "Don't you get it? A woman tries you out. Sees how you act. If you're an animal. If you can't keep your hands off. If you are dangerous, and she's smart, you won't see her again." With that, she touched my nose, brushed a kiss on my lips, and swished away. She wore a purple ski parka which made her look athletic and young, and she wore a dark skirt that came to just above the knees, with some kind of grape-colored hose and then mahogany loafers. Very high school music teacher. There was, of course, the never-on-the-first-date rule, of which even I was aware, so I had patience and got a sense of where the game was headed. I mean, I had an inkling, or maybe let's say a hope. Here I was, just past 22, a veteran of plenty of college adventures with girls as young and inexperienced as myself. I was still experiencing things like blue balls and unplanned, early erectile launch. Smooth I wasn't.
Third time around, same lounge, she adjusted the rules. We were dancing a slow dance that squeezed like toothpaste out of the sound system—a slow motion mazurka with yak butter. It was dark in there, and a ball twirled slowly in the ceiling sending glitter in all directions. I found myself looking into her eyes and falling in love, and starting to panic. This wasn't supposed to be happening.
I had a few friends in town, and I couldn't tell any of them I was seeing a woman with the earliest signs of crows' feet around her mouth and eyes. All I knew was, I had not gotten laid in months, and my loins were like panthers running across the veldt—directly at her. Here eyes were full of glitter and veiled desire, not to mention the lead singer's unintelligible moaning. I did what I had done each of the previous times—I slid my palms down the narrow isthmus of her waist, to feel the branching out of that river delta in whose channel I longed to blow my steam whistle—loudly, and often. On previous occasions, she would shove my hands away—no, roughly place them back on the fine and proper line of her waist. Don't think there weren't jaded and cynical eyes watching our every move like snipers across the rims of whiskey glasses in the dark recesses with their red plastic (torn) bench seats studded with brass tacks. This time, she responded by saying, "Let's go have one more drink."
Surprised at this change of vectors, I allowed her to lead me back to our own dark nook, where she ordered a 'little bit more interesting drink' for me. It was a Rusty Nail, which is a Drambuie with Scotch (insist on Chivas). One of those will rattle your yurt. Two... She looked at me with those amused, calculating eyes, and the pink lipstick on her wry mouth glistened: "You can't drive home yet. Why don't you come up to my place and I'll fix us coffee?" Good strategy, A. If I was aware of being finessed, I calculated and ended up not caring.
The equation was loaded in my favor (and hers, each for our own reasons). There was that long, brisk walk arm in arm, with chattering teeth, for neither of us felt fit to drive. It was cold, and wisps of dry snow swirled on frozen asphalt. The street lights looked Arctic and distant. By the time we reached her apartment block, our ears were numb and our lips blue. That's when I first smelled the Dry-Fluf and the carpet cleaners, which remain sexual excitants to this day. I'll skip the coffee and conversation. Actually, she made tea and put a little shot of rum in each. More strategy. We sat on the couch together, watching some musical variety show. Then the TV was off, and she was sitting closer. All I had to do was reach over and put my arm (hesitantly) over her shoulder, and she scooted close so she could snuggle against me. It amazed me that so ancient a woman could be so much like a college date.
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