Autobiographical Sketch #3

She scooted her chair across the office to her purse, opened a pocket, selected one lip balm out of the many in there. The summer sun one with the bight yellow cap. It was late October now, and she wanted to hang on to those sunny, balmy days that were slipping away more and more. She was still wearing flip flops, but she knew she would have to give that up soon. Her goal was to keep wearing them until the end of the month, but the upcoming weekend forecast didn't look promising. She smoothed the balm on her lips and puckered to spread it around.

She was cute. This was the word guys always used to describe her. Cute. She would have preferred sexy, even hot or beautiful, as awkward as those term sometimes seemed. She got those once in a while, but mostly just cute. Maybe it was because of her wide eyes, made wider by her heavy eye make-up with intense mascara, liner, fully shadowed lids, and, most importantly, little black wings at the outer corners. It all created a doll-like effect, making her look several years younger than she was, like she was fresh out of school, rather than already deeply jaded from nearly four years in New York.

As much as she loved the city, it stressed her out. She power walked everywhere, hated when people got in her way, especially at intersections. Didn't they know you could still cross when the hand was blinking or if there were simply no cars coming? Slowing down, stopping was anathema. There had been a prayer, in English, that they read in Synagogue on Friday nights. One of the lines was about looking without seeing. She was a master of that. Walking down the street, she allowed her eyes to take in just enough information that she didn't run into anything or anyone else or get hit by a car. Otherwise, she was all but oblivious to her surroundings. Music constantly pumping into her ears accentuated this effect. Sometimes it would take her days to realize that a feature of her regular route had changed, that scaffolding was gone or that a new window decal had been installed. She always felt embarrassed when she ran into people she knew -- she never saw them; they had to flag her down, taking her out of her private reverie, exposing it like a shameful secret.

The only time that it was fun to walk in the city was late at night, when everybody else was asleep or taking cabs. She loved the freedom of the open sidewalks, the lights of the buildings reaching up into the sky. At night she would raise her eyes, tilt her head back, realize what she was looking at, really see it all. There was still much hidden by the darkness, but it was her darkness, her city. At these moments, she felt lucky to have a whole world at her disposal. Yet a problem remained: she didn't know what to do with it.