2

She was in her pink cape—heroic and flappy. You look great in that, I said. You can have it, she said, handing it to me. We were friends, but not what one would call great friends. I like how you believe in the clarity of things, she said to me, though it was only the second time we had met. She lived by her code. Living long—living proper. She classified her various boys as an efficient way to stay awake. Her most famous act, the way she placed her leg at a right angle to her body, any old fence as a prop. Her skirt slipped to where her leg attached to the vertical. On that particular day she existed to satisfy anyone who had begun to mumble in life. Loosen up, she chanted. There we were wandering along Forest Avenue in the heat. She was loud. In a crowd page 144she would have been heard right at the back. In a crowd I might not have minded so much walking next to her.