14 Stories

THE SUB

Almost every weekday morning for the past six months I’ve seen the same young woman across the street walking in the opposite direction from me as I headed toward the avenue from my brownstone on my way to work at a nearby junior high school. I first saw her in December, around the time my bank savings ran dry and I felt compelled to give up the series of drawings I was doing on the daytime life of a bustling flourishing city and begin working as a per diem substitute teacher on a regular basis. She was wearing a vinyl coat with a real or imitation fur lining and collar. The coat, which she wore daily for months, reached her ankles. Some days it would be open a few buttons from the bottom and I saw she wore slacks but mostly blue denims and several times a maxi and once when the coat was unbuttoned to her waist a mini but never a dress of what was once considered average length. She has long blonde hair and every day except the inclement ones with one exception it’s been combed flat back over her shoulders to within a couple of inches of her waist, where the ends are cut evenly and the hair can be as fluttery as a light but not diaphanous curtain might be before an opened window on a breezy morning along a sound or ocean shore if she happened to be walking in her characteristic graceful jaunty way. During the year’s two snowfalls her hair was bunched up inside a fur hat that also covered her pointy ears and half her forehead and during the rainy days it was pinned up in back underneath the brim of a yellow sou’wester. Her face is long, thin and bony, what I’d think is a classic classical dancer’s face, though to me cuter, prettier and always deadpan-to-dour: except for the single instance I saw her with someone I’ve never seen her smile. Her age is around twenty, maybe a year less. I’m thirty-four. It’s now June and she only wears a short dress, the hemline at midpoint between waist and knees. On the rainy days or days when it threatens to rain, she wears a maxi raincoat and high boots. She has long solid legs. Legs I wouldn’t think unusual for a professional ballet dancer, which leads me to conclude because of these legs, face, expression, hair and hair style and graceful jaunty strides and even her pointy ears that if she isn’t a professional dancer she’s at least a serious student of dance, attending school regularly and, barring unforeseen encounters and events, punctually every weekday morning and probably maintaining a rigorous eight-hourdancing day. Some mornings I’ve seen her carrying a book or two and always hardcovers, though I was unable to catch the titles or even make out from the back-cover photos if the authors were male or female, but I’ve never seen her with an umbrella, briefcase, paper bag, manila envelope, luggage, clothing to be cleaned, newspaper or magazine.

The only weekday mornings I haven’t seen her and when I no doubt could have better determined whether she’s a student or not simply by her absence or presence on the street, were during the winter and spring vacations when for a week each just about every school in the city was closed. And the one time I’ve seen her other than on a weekday morning was when she and a girlfriend were approaching the same grocery store I was at that moment leaving. It later made me wonder if she lives with this girl or at home alone or with her folks. Anyway, I missed what I still think was my best chance at introducing myself to her. Because when I saw her coming toward me chatting and laughing with this friend I instantly felt I had the pluck to say something, anything, even a hello accompanied by a smile but hopefully something more courageous or even mildly amusing or ironic, such as “Remember me?” Certainly that would have puzzled her, though I think if she had looked right at me after I said that there would have been some sign of surprised recognition on her face. Because I’ve noticed that like me she doesn’t walk an entire block without once glancing to her right and left and behind and even at the windows and buildings and sky above her and she must have seen me many times, more times than I’ve observed, as my eyes aren’t always on her, and after a while recorded in her mind that almost every weekday morning, because of a combination of concurrences in our living habits and work or educational conditions, I’m the same man who walks on the opposite sidewalk though in a counter direction at almost the same time and in practically the same positioning from her as she heads for the avenue that parallels the park. For the points where we’re at nearest antipodes from one another hardly varies from day to day by more than two hundred feet or the combined widths of numbers 20 to 40 brownstones. And the time when I see her is invariably between 8:35, when I leave my apartment, and 8:36, when I normally take a last look back at her before turning the corner, as I have to leave home the same time every morning if I don’t want to run to school to dock in by 8:40 or every minute after that be docked about a dime from my monthly paycheck.

The first of the other two times I’ve seen her up close also happened accidentally. To explain: at the street corner on her side, which she crosses the avenue to get to in order to make her way up my block, is a candy store which has a large variety though charges three cents more per pack of a particular brand of candy I like, the flavors there ranging from several kinds of tropical and sour fruits to the hard-to-get chocolate mint, butternut and the extremely rare maple cream. But because of the higher price and time-consuming inconvenience of having to cross the street to get to this store and then cross back to continue to school, I almost always buy these candies at a store which, besides being along the most direct route to school is also owned by a much friendlier man, who not only has an invaliding chronic affliction I sympathize with but who I have a strong loyalty to because he lets me run up a month’s bill on my art and stationery supplies. But once a month or so, and till that morning always in the evening when the store where I get credit is closed, I cross the street to go to this corner store to choose from its much larger selection of this particular candy and in fact to stock up with several of the flavors the other store owner says would be too many dead items to carry, and that’s what I did the first time I saw her face to face. It was drizzling and chilly, near the end of March. We passed not a foot from one another and I stared at her eyes as she looked fleetingly at my face and then my clothes. I had on a soiled trench coat, muffler, galoshes and green felt hat — a hat similar to one often worn by male marionettes, though it was advertised in the newspaper, where I got the idea to go downtown to buy it, for golfers who want to pursue their game in the rain but don’t want to be burdened with a bulky hat to carry when they already have their cumbersome clubs. I probably looked ridiculous in this hat, as it comes to a point on top, which is the reason it can be rolled up tight and tucked in a back pocket as easy as a large hanky, and has a small brim and no band or feather and the color’s like new grass and I wear it pulled down on top of my ears. She was wearing her sou’wester, maxicoat and laced high boots. What was unusual about her was her hair, waving behind her like a flag that never touches its flagstaff in a heavy wind, instead of pinned up under the brim, the only day during a rainstorm when I saw it wasn’t The one other time I came up close to her also took place on her side of the street. It was a month later, a clear sunny day I remember, as we’d had a month’s string of them, and this time I cut across the street in the middle of the block when I saw her in the distance on the next street over from mine walk toward the avenue, cross it and start up my street from the corner. I wanted to get another good look at her and I thought I might even say “Good morning” or “Nice day” if she was looking at me as we passed — a cheerful innocent greeting, nothing more — so I might have some basis for saying something more substantial to her on another day. But she kept her eyes to the ground as we came together and practically touched elbows and then looked straight ahead when we were separated by about ten steps each.

I saw her again this morning. Short dress, hair combed back and neat as ever, tanned legs, knotty calves, big feet, small waist and nose, slender bowed neck — another dancer sign — never eye- or sunglasses or a perceptible face blemish or clothes stain, she walked briskly, gracefully, I’ve never seen her chew gum or her nails or eat on the street or smoke and for no more knowable reason than that mixed with my hopes for her health and conjectures about her dancing career, doubt if she smokes at all, long mouth, averagesized eyes, breasts appear small and except for a day when she wore a man’s white T-shirt and her teats seemed unusually dark and pronounced, never without a brassiere, high buttocks, low heels on her shoes and boots, never sneakers or socks and stockings always a brilliant color and in the red and blue family, though of late never hose, today in sandals, yesterday when rain was definitely forecast and thunderclouds loomed all day overhead, plastic or leather boots but no other visible rainwear, from what I can see no makeup, jewelry or adornments of any kind on her neck, hair, ears, fingers, clothes, ankles and nothing on her wrist but the watch she always wears with the exaggerated pocketwatch face and equally large transparent band, rarely a blouse, skirt or bandanna and always one of about five leather shoulder bags and each beaded or embroidered with colorful primitive or tribal symbols, designs or replicas of prehistoric cave paintings of what seem to be spear-holding hunters on foot or horseback and their animal or human prey and all with leather fringes that beat against her coat or dangle above her knee. That’s about what I know of her till what I learned today.

For the past two-and-a-half weeks and until school closes I’m the substitute typing teacher for the seventh grade, though without an official homeroom class. Periodically, the other typing teacher unlocks my back or front door with her passkey and offers compassion and advice, such as “Pity you don’t know shorthand or can’t pick it up quick at some speedy secretarial school. For shorthand’s what they were promised to learn for June and which would have kept their interest and them from being so rowdy.” I took the job to guarantee myself a full month’s work, as per diem work is hardest to get the first and last months of the school year. I don’t type and was mainly hired over a woman sub who taught the subject a few years to defend the machines with my very vis vitae and bloody sinews, as the assistant principal put it, since each typewriter costs a hundred fifty dollars and the local school district won’t have the funds to replace the irreparably broken ones for a year. I was warned to be especially watchful that the students don’t dismantle the margin control springs to use as bracelets or pick off the keys one by one till they’ve spelled their first, nick- and surnames in their pockets. Some of the students continue to mutilate the machines no matter what I do. Every day I find several Tab, Mar Rel and Back Space keys on the floor after I heard them pinging off the blackboard. Also, the large bolts and wing nuts that secure the machines to their tables and a variety of less familiar parts that I’m sure come from inside the machine though I can’t locate where. Even if several students in each class remain fascinated by the machines and type every lesson I give them, I’ve gradually become incensed with my inability to control the majority of students and reduce their vandalism, and during the last period today I accused two boys of maliciously destroying their margin controls and not even having the simple skill it took to do the job cleanly, though the only proof I had for either charge were the two margin control springs in their hands.

“They were on the floor when we got here,” one of the boys said. I said “Bullcrap and you know it” and threatened to tell their homeroom teacher of their abuse of school property and hold up their final report cards, and right after school to phone their parents and demand they pay for the repair of the machines. I wasn’t going to make any such calls or even see their teacher. All I ever do after school is hurry home, shower, snack, have a beer, change to street clothes and walk in the park and read and sketch there for a while or lie on my bed and sleep. Besides, the city has a cover repair contract with a typewriter service that includes everything but the replacement of parts, and what would a couple of margin control springs cost? I asked for the boys’ phone numbers. One said he didn’t have a phone and lived with his oldest sister and her kids and the other said he lived on a roof of a building I’d be cut up in if I was ever so dumb to step an inch inside and I shouldn’t be trying to push them around as the only thing strong about me is my breath. Instead of hoisting him out of his seat and demanding an apology, which I felt like doing but which could end up with a corporal punishment charge brought against me, I said “All right, maybe you didn’t do it, but at the rate these machines are being mistreated there won’t be one left to type on in a week,” and went to the supply closet and pretended to be looking for something and came across a stack of old school annuals called Terminations. The teacher I’m subbing for must have saved every issue of the annual since the school opened twelve years ago. To waste time till the bell rang I began flipping through the top copy — last year’s annual — and got caught up in the way the appearances of so many students and teachers I know had changed so radically in just a year. How one teacher with a full head of hair now was in the annual totally bald. How an attractive female teacher then had gained about a hundred pounds since the photo was taken and another teacher looked so different without his present long side-burns, mustache, ear stud and shoulder-length hair. I opened the Terminations of two years ago, expecting to see even greater contrasts and transformations in these and other teachers and from there to proceed to later issues till I had read in reverse order them all, when I saw in a photograph of a ninth-grade glass that one of the girls sitting solemnly in the front row looked very much like the young woman I see every day on my way to work. A few of my students were still typing the warm-up exercises. My prize student was copying from her lesson book the long business letter to a cement company about its basement construction costs. Most of the students were congregated around the phonograph in the back of the room, singing and dancing to their records of eleven- and twelve-year-old recording stars, after having removed the instructional record I’d put on to improve their typing speed. One girl sitting on my desk brushing her hair suddenly yelled “Hey Mr. Teacher, Terry’s molesting me — get him to stop!” I said” I’ll be there in a second, honey — Terry, lay off!” and looked for the blond bony face in the rows of individual photos of the entire ninth-grade graduating class at the end of the book, thinking she shouldn’t be too hard to find among so many dark faces and black hairs and half the class male and about a fifth of them with eyeglasses. And there she was. Unmistakably the same girl. Long thin face, hair combed back the same way, no smile, same neck, ears, eyes, forehead and mouth. Judy Louis her name. 7thgrade treasurer. Voted prettiest girl in the 8th grade. Best sense of humor in the 9th. Fencing club, Dramsoc, Quill ‘n Ink, citywide and intramural girls’ track-team star. High school she’s going to attend: Mind, Spirit, Beauty and the Creative and Performing Arts. College she hopes to attend: School of Hard Knocks. Ambition: dancer, actress, gourmand and paid somnivolent. Favorite sports and hobbies: eating and dreaming. Pet peeves: hard mattresses, cooked okra, bad theater acoustics and a slippery splintery stage. Favorite adage: There’s no yesterday and tomorrow never was.

Maybe I’ll look up her address in the phone book when I get home and go and see where she lives. Her building’s probably on the same number street as mine but the next block over. But what if she has a front apartment and recognizes me through the window as the man she sees every weekday morning on her way to wherever she’s going, which is probably school? She might become alarmed, tell her parents, who she’s most likely living with, and even if it’s only her mother who’s at home she might come out and ask who I am and what’s my interest in her daughter and their building and the police could be called. No matter how adept I might be in talking myself out of the situation, my school could learn of the incident and I could be fired and also lose my license. Substitute teaching pays me better than any job I’ve had when I worked at it steadily as I’ve been doing and I can pick it up and drop it whenever I want. So forget the girl. Crazy idea, looking up her address. She’s just a kid. Or at least, compared to my age, much too young.

The bell rings. Chairs are knocked down as the students clamber over one another to leave through either door. I tidy up the room, scour the floor for typewriter parts and check which keyboards the keys belong to and fit them back on, lock the cabinets and doors and go to the general office where I see the other typing teacher waiting with half the teaching staff for three o’clock to come.

“Some picnic upstairs,” I say.

“And you see? I bet like most people here you thought we’ve the cushiest job in the school. What are you doing for the summer?”

“They must have driven that poor woman I replaced right to the hospital she’s at.”

“No, she was pretty effective. Always a strong lesson prepared and perfectly timed so they didn’t get bored. And most of her playful darlings she had a certain charm with or through a stream of letters and phone calls home got them right under her thumb.”

“When I was a student in the seventh grade—”

“Dearie, all of us except the youngest teachers say that.”

“Right? P.S. 9, just a few blocks from here. We used to sit with our hands folded if we finished a lesson before anyone else. And after school we’d cross the street if we saw any one of our teachers coming, only afraid they might stop and say hello.”

“Things change. Civilizations and schools notwithstanding. Like this place was the model school of the city when it opened up. Visiting dignitaries used to be invited, and come.”

“Now the kids buttonhole me for quarters and cigarettes if I see them outside. And one last Sunday cursed me out to his friends when he saw me entering this nice neighborhood bar. ‘Hey look, there goes my wino teacher drunk.’”

“The last week shouldn’t be too bad with most of them cutting or out on class trips. And if you think it’s cuckoo now you should’ve seen it last two days last year. Hundreds of them across the street and with smaller forces in back in case we tried to escape, and they battered us with raw eggs and ice-cream balls.”

“How’d they manage to throw ice-cream balls?” But three o’clock’s come. We line up behind the teachers and paraprofessionals to place our room keys on the key rack and clock out for the day.

At home on my bed I fantasize about Judy Louis. It’s the following morning and I see her walking on the opposite sidewalk on her way to high school. She’s wearing a short skirt, man’s white T-shirt and on her shoulder is one of her leather bags. I cross the street to buy one of my special candies but more to see her up close. No, better it’s the day after tomorrow. Friday, around quarter past three, whole weekend ahead of me, and I’m leaving the same grocery store I saw her approaching that time with her girlfriend. It’s a hot day, near ninety, though the humidity’s quite low. In my grocery bag are two six-packs of ale and beer, items I buy in that quantity almost every Friday on my way home from school along with my once-a-week loaf of unsliced black bread and a hard cheese. The store’s front door is closed, as just the other day I overheard the dairy man yell to a woman to please don’t be keeping it open as they don’t want to be air-conditioning the whole outside. But I keep the door open for her and as she passes I say “Hello, Judy.” She stares at me, surprised I know her name. I say I didn’t want to startle her, but I used to teach at 54. She says “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you, what did you teach?” The dairy man might say “One way or the other, in or out, but shut the door.” I say to her “Would you mind? In’s more comfortable,” and step into the store, switch the package to my other arm. “You wouldn’t remember me as I was a per-diem sub, but I had your class a few times. Right now I’m a typing teacher for a month — remember Miss Moore?” “Oh God — Miss Moore. Two years and I almost forgot. I had the other one — what was her name — with the very correct manners and bawdy asides and horselaugh?” Or else she could have had Miss Moore and recalls the story I’ve heard about how she got order in the class. “She’d stand halfway up the middle aisle tinkling by the end of its ivory handle this little bell, which she said she got in India forty years ago, till eventually everyone stopped what they were doing and stayed silent till she spoke. ‘Class,’ she’d say, if she didn’t say children. ‘As much as I love each and every adorable one of you, I estimate you took a minute twenty seconds of your Friday free time away by just now taking a minute twenty seconds too long.’ But I actually learned how to type with all my fingers from her, so you could say if it wasn’t for Miss Moore I wouldn’t have my part-time job.” I ask what she does when she isn’t working part-time and she says going to a special city school for theater and dance or even rehearsing a small part with a theater or ballet group. I mention the regularity of my seeing her and she says lots of times she’s wondered herself where I’m off to every morning and finally decided it was a graduate school I attended, because of all the books I carry, or some other kind of school I teach at, though she never figured for J.H. 54. “The books are for my own enjoyment during my free and preparation periods, or if the class cooperates, then during the study periods I try to give them whenever I can. Now I can’t as I have this program for a month and if I don’t keep them busy all the time they’d be climbing the walls.” She asks what happened to Miss Moore and I mention the operation and she says she liked her and hopes everything turns out all right. I say something like I don’t want to be detaining her from her shopping or if she has to be anywhere soon, but if she doesn’t then why don’t we have a coffee somewhere nearby? She says “Coffee’s too hot for today, even tea.” I suggest a soda or beer, though I don’t drink soda, and she says “Sure, either’s fine,” and we leave the store. Outside I say I ought to leave my groceries in the store and pick them up later instead of lugging them around. Or else I’ll just place the bag under the checkout stand before we leave, telling the cashier I’ll reclaim it in an hour. Then we head for the bar three blocks away. I’ll tell her what that student called me last Sunday when he caught me entering this same bar. And how many of my students ridicule me for my sostraight behavior because I won’t dance to their records with them, even if I tell them I’d love to dance with them or by myself if it weren’t for the possibility of another teacher walking in. How one afternoon I just sat at my desk and let the class throw erasers and paper planes at me, as I’d given up on trying to control them and lost the will, wherewithal or whatever it is to fight back. How on the hottest most humid day of the year this week I told the kids to just sit quietly and don’t type and by all rights they should be dismissed to find relief in the park and public pools and sprays, and for the first time my assistant principal walks in, face and clothes soaked, and says “I don’t know what you think’s going on here but I’ve been explicitly ordered by the principal and she by the district supervisor to see that every teacher maintains disciplined classes and structured lessons till the last day of the term.” How without being detected I’ve tripped several boys to stop them from running around the room, how others have told me to go on and teach when they had their arm around a girl’s neck and hand on her breast, that I’ve been dubbed ‘pigeon head’ because of my receding hairline and ‘fish lips’ because of what they think are my excessively large lips. How one day about twenty boys from a local high school burst into the room, turned over all the chairs and unbolted tables, threatened to beat up all my students and knife one boy in particular and toss all the typewriters into the street and the teacher after them, and then as swiftly left to pull the same prank with another class on the floor while my students cringed and sobbed behind me at the far end of the room. Or how on another day, but we reach the bar. She could say how come I’ve no nice stories about my students and I’d say because they’d be too unamusing to tell and I’d think uninteresting to hear. She studies dance, quit high school this year, lives with her mom. I explain why I’m only a sub. That I’ve also been living with my folks for three years to cut down on my rent and help out my mother with my ailing dad. I ask if she’d like to go to the Modern tonight. Only the sculpture garden’s open but we can get beer or wine there, espresso with snacks. I’ve an artist’s pass I acquired for ten dollars and a fake letter from a real art gallery saying I’ve shown there and for an additional two-fifty got a second pass for a nonexistent wife. She says she’d love to go. We return to the store. She says would I prefer meeting her upstairs or in front? We part, we meet, we sit on the sculpture garden steps drinking foreign beer. Before we separated at the store I said eat lightly if you have to eat at home at all tonight as we might as well have dinner after the museum. She says I’m the first teacher she’s gone out with other than a dance instructor who’s her own age. I say I dated many students when I was a student but so far all the single agreeable teachers and college teaching aides I’ve asked have turned me down. Do I say that? We say goodnight. I say I’d like to kiss her now but sort of feel funny about it and she says I don’t see why we shouldn’t. We do. Three shorts and a long. I pick her up at home the following night, meet her mom, am offered a drink. Judy sits beside me on the couch and we want to hold hands but don’t. We have dinner out or see a film. We walk, we talk. I say if I had my own apartment would she come back to it with me now and she says why not? I say I’ve an old car and would she like to go camping next weekend and she says that sound like fun. I’ve no tents but two sleeping bags that can be zippered up into one. We make love in a big bag. Later in the summer we go abroad for two months. When we return we search for our own apartment in the old neighborhood so I can still help out with my dad and mom. We’re married by the end of the year. By the end of the next year we’ve a child. A girl or boy and it’s conceived by natural passion and delivered by natural childbirth and I’m there in the delivery room with her, clasping her hand when I’m not drawing her in labor and giving birth, and then sketches of the cord being cut and umbilicus being sewn and child held aloft and washed if they’re still held aloft and washed, and bundled up by the nurse, suckled by my wife, sleeping and weeping and caterwauling behind incubation-room glass, other fathers and grandparents making faces at the new infants, the room, window view and various objects in this room where Judy sleeps and her three roommates. And we’re both very happy. We’re considered an ideal couple. We love each other very much. I continue to draw, engrave, assist my parents and substitute teach.

My mother knocks on my bedroom door. “I’m setting a place for dinner for you tonight, and don’t say no.”

“Not hungry now, ma, thanks.” I exercise, shower, dress. It’s still light out. The folks are at the dinner table. “Sit down,” dad says. I wash the cooking utensils that are in the sink, kiss my parents on the cheek and go to the park, sit by the lake, draw an abandoned rowboat, jog for a mile, watch the carousel close and the tail end of a women’s softball game, draw a catcher’s mitt and mask on the grass, buy sweet creamy pastries for my mother, dietetic cookies for my father, go to that same grocery store for fresh green beans and a four-pack of stout. Would I speak to her if she were here now? “You wouldn’t,” a friend recently said about something else, “because you never want to see your fantasies end,” but I don’t think he’s right. I wouldn’t speak to her without her speaking to me first. She could become repulsed or afraid if I did and I could become embarrassed and suspect in the store I’ve been shopping at for three years. She’d have to drop something and I could stoop to pick it up. Or stretch for something out of reach and I could say “May I help?” After I got whatever it was she reached for or dropped she’d say thank you and I’d mention the school we’re both familiar with and maybe a conversation could then begin. It could continue in the street and that neighborhood bar where I’d invite her for a beer. If she came into the store now I’d only look at her a few times, maybe get into her aisle under the pretense of searching for an item I never do find or for a bottle of chili sauce or vinegar the household could always ultimately use, but no actions if she didn’t elicit them more unguarded or venturous than that.

Next door’s the corner candy store I go into to get the afternoon paper for my dad. He’ll gripe I’m only tossing good money away by buying such a rag but read it from beginning to end including the larger ads. She’s at the magazine rack in back, scanning the magazine covers while gnawing off the chocolate remains of an ice cream-pop stick. I open the paper I’ll buy, look at it as if checking a movie timetable, say huh-huh, and nod while folding the paper in two and pore over the many choices of my favorite candy brand. She’s taking a magazine off the rack. There’s a flavor I’ve never seen anywhere before called pink grapefruit. She slips the licked icecream stick into a back pocket and turns a page. And tangerine, which I think I had in the sour-fruit assortment and found either too tart or sweet. She’s coming front to pay for the magazine and I feel which of my pants pockets has the change. Her bell-bottom white denims have brown buttons for a fly. She isn’t carrying a shoulder bag but extracts a wallet from one of the two breast pockets of her denim workshirt. Sandals I’ve never seen, woven colorful cloth for a belt that’s half-tied, but hair, face, expression and walk all the same. Everything else the same. “Excuse me,” I say, “but would you mind if I took a brief look at the table of contents of your magazine?”

“I’m really in a rush and they’ve plenty more copies back there.”

“It’s just because they are in back and out of the way that I asked, though I don’t see why I should be such a laze. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

I go to the back.

“A dollar,” the proprietor says and she pays up and leaves. I find the same magazine, one I could always read, good author in it and poet I’ve mostly liked, many reviews, elegant ads for places and goods I could never afford, pay for it and the newspaper and pinkgrapefruit candy and wait for my change. Her voice is deeper than I thought it’d be, unaffected, without regionalism or unpleasant twang, pitch or tone and she did seem in a hurry and genuinely sorry she couldn’t help me out.

She’s at the corner in front of the store waiting for the light to change. Traffic’s heavy with lots of zipping cabs, cars, buses and trucks booming downtown one-way. “Judy,” I say. She turns and looks. “Now I know.” She points to her chest as if saying do you mean me? “You see, I used to teach at 54.”

“What?”

“The junior high school there.”

“That long white brick building?”

“You’re Judy Louis, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“But you answered to the name Judy before.”

“My name’s Judy — though Judith, never Judy — but not Louis. You’ve got to have me mistaken for someone else.”

“She graduated two years ago. I’m a sub there and had her class many times. I think it was an SP — a special class for gifted students.”

“Never went there. And gifted I surely never was. I even thought your school was some kind of factory or warehouse or even a prison of sorts — I had no idea. I’m missing my light — excuse me.” She steps off the sidewalk as the light turns red, stays by the curb with her back to me, waiting for the light to change.

“Naturally it must seem silly my pursuing this, but it’s still inconceivable to me how much you look like this girl.”

“I hate being compared to anyone else. I don’t do it to others, but since I don’t know you you wouldn’t know that. I’ve also got to be a lot older than this girl if she was still in grade school two years ago. There’s the coincidence of our first names, I’ll grant you, but it isn’t a very odd first name so it’s really not much of a coincidence after all.”

“But what I find even more curious is that I’ve seen you almost every morning for months and always thought I knew you from somewhere. Till just before when for the first time I felt certain who you were.”

“I’ve seen you too. You walk very fast. Though going to work mornings I see lots of the same strangers from time to time.”

“I don’t. Maybe because the school I teach at is so close to my home.”

“Could be. Though one man downtown I see every day without fail, unless I’m late starting out that morning, is always getting out of the express across the platform as my local’s pulling in. And besides you and some schoolchildren and a lady, there’s a man I see practically every morning going into number 8 up the block as if back from work. And there’s this I’m sure husband-and-wife team who a few times a week are already in the same seats of the first car of the subway I take to work. And of course the I-don’t-know-howmany I repeatedly see climbing out of the station and while I’m walking to my office building and in the elevators up and down and restaurant I’ve my lunch in most days and counter place for my coffee breaks. And quite often I’ll get one or two both coming and going along the same streets and in the same stations and subway cars and stops as mine and all on the same day. It’s a big city, but you’d be surprised. Excuse me, my light.”

“Wait till it turns green again.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. For your health, or a coffee then, or a beer.”

“Oh, how do I say this? I’m with a man. For a year now. He stays with me. I’m sorry. Nice talking,” and she cuts through traffic to cross the avenue against the light.

I see her the next day. On the opposite sidewalk heading for the subway she’ll take to work. It’s between 8:35 and 8:36. I’ve had the breakfast I have every weekday, given my father his daily insulin shot while he lay mostly asleep in bed, kissed my mother goodbye. “Good morning,” I yell when she’s directly across the street. She looks. I wave. We’re walking. She nods, doesn’t smile, never lingers, hurries on. All the clothes she’s wearing I remember from different ensembles on other warm sunny days. I watch her till she turns right at the park and I don’t see anyone enter or leave any buildings on her side. Nobody else even seemed to be on the street when I yelled. The block’s still empty of people except for two women in a passing car. Now a man leaves 34. Now a girl leaves 46 and a woman blows a kiss to her from a window on the third floor. Now the super’s helper lugs up a garbage can from the basement of the apartment house at the corner called The Delmoor. I’ve seen all these people as I’ve walked to work, though I don’t think more than once a week.

On the remaining school mornings I’ll wave to her if she’s looking my way, but nothing more outgoing than that. And next time at a store, if I happen to be near enough to speak frankly with her, I’ll apologize for what she might have thought was my presumptuous behavior on the street yesterday and explain I honestly believed she was the young woman I used to be a substitute teacher for and I wasn’t coming on with a line. She might then say she likes comparisons even less when she hears the same one a second time, and walk away. Or she could say she realizes mistakes are made and comparisons are inevitable and so it might have been she who was somewhat abrupt that day, and walk away. Or she could say “Will you please try and combat these impulses you seem to get of stopping me every time you see me to speak about yourself and this junior-high-school girl?” Or she could say “Listen, I’m actually the one who should be doing the apologizing, for the truth is I am Judy Louis but for unexplained reasons, which still seem unexplainable to me, I didn’t want to admit it that day. Perhaps because I wasn’t feeling right with myself or plainly just detested myself and you gave me the most ideal opportunity available of momentarily denying my very existence.” Or else “I was really in a rush that day and had no time to talk and surely not about that stifling school, which is the one part of my past life I most urgently want to forget.” And the truth might also be that she hasn’t a boyfriend and only said that to end our chat and discourage me from developing further interest in her. Maybe then I could propose the coffee or beer. If she consented, then at the coffee shop or bar I could suggest we have dinner that night. She could say she has a previous engagement though not one she couldn’t break. We could also see a movie, at her door kiss good night. Forget the kiss and previous engagement: she accepts my dinner invitation outright. The next weekend we could drive to a lake for the day or shore if she likes and bring a picnic there and that evening have an open-air lobster dinner somewhere and if she lives alone she could later invite me in for a nightcap. More likely it would be then we’d first kiss. Because on our first date I’d be ultrareserved and even gallant without seeming like a fop. As I’m sure she’d still be a bit wary of me from my having followed her to the corner when she was waiting for the light and next morning yelling good morning to her across the street and then waving to her whenever I see her those remaining school days and speaking openly to her in a store if it’s in a store I bump into her. The weekend after that we could plan to camp out I’d bring the sleeping bags and just in case there’s a bug problem I’m sure I could also borrow a tent. In a month I could ask to move in with her or if she’s with her parents or roommate we could look for our own place. But I’d prefer going abroad with her for around six weeks. Ancient hotels, inexpensive bistros and cafés. Light and dark native beers and stouts and all the time drawing a chronicle of our trip: everything from the rickety buses and flying buttresses to Judy dressing, undressing, sipping cafés au lait in big fluffy beds. We could return by ship if the fare’s not too steep, rent a flat in this neighborhood so I could be near my school and folks. And maybe after a while we could get married and have a child or get married without having a child or have a child without getting married but living together, loving one another, subbing for most of the year and drawing, engraving, maybe trying my hand at woodcuts and aquatints. I think this will happen one day though I don’t think the woman it will happen with will necessarily be her.