Convenience’s Lost Cause

She had a bike-chain necklace and a pair of wire cutters hung from a belt loop that were dangling at her gorgeous hips. I’d never seen someone who was so profoundly not anyone’s type. Her lips were pinched. Her eyes like stalactites. And the way she chewed gum was the best sight this side of 6th Avenue. Everyone knew her walk and her nickname and the stodgy crowd she never ran with. I had one of her handwritten poems on my refrigerator door.

I was strolling through Civic Center. Some part-time drug dealer dropped a crumpled dollar bill onto the sidewalk. I thought it was a candy wrapper at first. The wind was really having at it. I reached down to get it for him, and he kept mumbling, “Hey, hey ,hey, hey…” softly towards me as it rolled and barely kept eluding my reach. Finally, I knelt down and nabbed it, and then quickly handed it to him with a very kind smile. He was incredulous, but happy.

She palled around with drug dealers and OTC thieves, but she never got high or stole. I wanted her autograph, so I brought a pen with me everywhere, just in case I ran into her. She could spell “rhododendron” and “sincerely” without having to look it up, and she never split her infinitives in conversation. With the world’s bluest hair and blackest lipstick, she had every album and paperback that you’d ever wanted to own. Nobody knew her middle name.