Little Casino

Spring colors

APHOTOGRAPH OF DOLORES IN PROSPECT Park. She is in a dusty-rose suit and has on a small white hat with a half-veil, white gloves, blush-tan nylons, and white high heels. Behind her are Mary and Liz. In another photograph we discover Dolores and Georgene, the latter in a pale-yellow suit with matching gloves and a flat straw hat, white heels. Annette is beside her, too, her face in half-profile, laughing, one hand holding down her light beige skirt, which the wind is lifting, slightly, above her knees. Their teeth seem remarkably white, their figures just beginning to take on womanly contours. It must be Easter Sunday, let us assume that it is Easter Sunday. On the back of a photograph of Dolores — yet another one, in which she poses dramatically against a lamppost — someone has written, in a labored, childish hand, “sweet young girl.”

Time. The photographs, somewhat carelessly and inadequately described here, are in black and white.

“Photographs, because they exclude everything except the split second in which they are snapped, always lie,” he once wrote. Time.

And the angels sing, but perhaps not always.

Dusty rose, pale yellow, and light beige were spring colors, worn exclusively by virgins. Don’t argue with me!