Manhattan Love Song

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First she was just a figure moving toward me in the distance, among a great many others doing the same thing. A second later she was a girl. Then she became a pretty girl, exquisitely dressed. Next a responsive girl, whose eyes said “Are you lonely?” whose shadow of a smile said, “Then speak.” And by that time we had reached and were almost passing one another. Our glances seemed to strike a spark between us in midair.

I retraced my steps while she continued hers. It had been too sudden to be crude, or even noticeable at all. And I had raised my hat. You raise your hat when you meet some one. And I had met her, as any one could see. Not at all new under the sun, all that. But it was she and it was I. That made all the difference imaginable.

She was dressed almost entirely in blue, but her stockings were the color of a rifle-barrel glistening in the sunlight, and their texture was so thin that it merged into the pink of her skin, which showed through. She had eyes with sprites in them that came and went: little capering symbols of whimsicality and amusement, dancing figurines of mockery. And at times she drawled, “If you see what I mean,” and a horrible expression that she had, “On the level?”

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