It is a given that Surfer Joe is still out there somewhere making meaty smashes, ripping chest-high junk, looking for hooks under the lip on an 8’6” nose-rider; he smashes the lip heading for the shore break and speeds up for an elevator re-entry as I walk to the post office and spot Waitress X on the Mongolian restaurant’s tiny patio. I have to stroll right by her, my heart going nuts. Is that her old boyfriend? Does he still shove her around? Did they patch it up or is this new talent? I can’t see. What will the two of us say if she sees me? Her hair looks straighter now, darker, no more gel but more eye makeup, hence a look a little like Cleopatra. She wears it well. There is a pattern of small rain in the sunlight and they stand to go. She is not looking at me and her long body twists to leave the awkward tiny tables, her back slightly arched. I hear her voice breathe Bye to the waiter, smiling. I’m just below on the sidewalk. Now we’re ghosts to each other. That beautifully hoarse voice, her bare arms; I’d actually forgotten the way she looks, her waist and legs, her perfumed neck, those huge eyes that seem so focussed, dark and light, staring only at YOU, the mandatory gaps in her dress, olive green, tight, my heart, all working together and there is no dimestore hurt, but instead a strange exhilaration that she is back in town, a half block from where I’m staying, and I knew her, I necked with her, joked with her, me! My vocabulary cannot keep up with what I’m sensing. I start laughing on the glittering sidewalk, I feel fine. What a riot. I too ate and gabbed with her, I too took that trendy dress off, gazed on her pretty brown nipples, her shining space-age top loosened in the sun on the porch while she talked breezily and failed to bore me and I worried and fretted for nothing.
I turn. I keep walking to the post office, not waiting for her to move out the restaurant door. I don’t understand it but I don’t need to. I don’t need to see her and I don’t need to understand.