14 Stories by Stephen Dixon Page A

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