Beauty, Love, and Vanity Itself

As usual I’d hung myself with snappy necklaces, but other­wise had given my appearance no further thought, even though I anticipated the love of a dark person who will be my source of prosperity and emotional pleasure.

Mr. Morton arrived about 7 p.m. and I said, “I owe you an explanation.”

“Excellent,” he replied. But when my little explanation was completed, he refused the meal I offered, saying, “You proba­bly don’t like the way I drink my soda or how I eat my olives with my fingers.”

He exited at a good clip and nothing further developed from that affiliation.

The real thing did come along. Bob—Tom spent several days in June with me and I keep up with books and magazines and go forward on the funny path pursuing my vocation.

I also went outside to enjoy the fragrant odor in an Illinois town and kept to the thoroughfare that swerved near the fence where yellow roses on a tawny background are always faded out at the end of the season.

I never thought a big cloud hanging in the air would be crooked, but it was up there—gray and deranged.

Happily, in the near distance, the fence was making the most of its colonial post caps.

And isn’t looking into the near distance sometimes so quaint?—as if I am re-embarking on a large number of relations or recurrent jealousies.

Poolside at the Marriott Courtyard, I was wearing what oth­ers may laugh at—the knee-length black swimsuit and the black canvas shoes—but I don’t have actual belly fat, that’s just my stomach muscles gone slack.

I saw three women go into the pool and when they got to the rope, they kept on walking. One woman disappeared. The other two flapped their hands.

“They don’t know what the rope is,” the lifeguard said. “I mean everybody knows what a rope means.”

I said, “Why didn’t you tell them?” and he said, “I don’t speak Chinese.”

I said, “They are drowning,” and the lifeguard said, “You know, I think you’re right.”

Our eyes were on the surface of the water—the wobbling patterns of diagonals. It was a hash—nothing to look at—much like my situation—if you’re not going to do anything about it.