“I know that,” you say. “Also completely, just stratospherically out of my league. Wait, she’s not that old.”
“She’s rich,” Diane says. “Did you say she was tall?”
“Shorter than me.” This makes her not exceptionally tall.
“So probably not a model. And in those clothes, she’s either, hmm... married to an old rich guy, or maybe she has rich parents, but either way...”
“I know. Out of my league.”
“I was going to say, plenty able to pay for a photo session.”
You want to protest. But she was coming on to me.
“Maybe she’s just really good at shopping,” you say. “Like, at thrift stores. Getting things for free.”
“Sure,” Diane says. “Maybe she’s homeless. Maybe she could crash at your place. Oh wait, no. How were you supposed to get those pictures back to her anyway?”
“Yeah,” you say. “Good question.”
“What happens in the Forest of Arden, stays in the Forest of Arden,” Diane says, as if Central Park is a magical forest and the whole episode is only your fantasy.
Still you go on, looking for her, aware that she’s out there somewhere. She’s changed the way you look at things. Where once you looked for architectural incongruence, or ironic juxtapositions of cityscape and nature, now you look at people. Of course, you’re looking for her and not really at anyone else. Time passes, you lose hope.
And then, maybe three weeks later, you see her again. You’re just done with your late-morning dog walk. It’s raining buckets, cold drops finding their way under your poncho and sliding down your back. You’re dodging umbrellas and ducking under and then out of canopies, trying not to get too soaked, and she’s under one of the canopies.
You don’t even know what made you glance up at just the right time. The first thing you register is, she has on gloves again, red ones. You stop abruptly, someone runs into you, curses, apologizes. She looks straight at you. You look back. A moment of shock. And you go on. For half a block. Then, as if she mesmerized you to do it, you go into the drugstore, buy an umbrella — a day like this, they have them right up front — walk outside, and open it before you head back.
She’s waiting, as if she knew you were going to buy her an umbrella. You pass the umbrella to her under a waterfall of rain, and she takes it and gives you that smile. Which gives you courage to speak.
“I’ve got your pictures. How should I send them to you?”
“You have them here?”
“Not here.” In fact the camera is with you, the camera bag under your poncho making you look like a hunchback, but you don’t want it to get wet. “I could email them to you.”
“Can you text them to me? I don’t email.”
“Sure,” you say. “What’s your number?” You pull out your phone. Don’t care if it gets wet.
“Buy me a beer first.”
After a bright burst of hope and happiness, you take her to a place on Eighth where you can get a free hot dog with a beer, if you want. She only wants the beer.
“Took you long enough to find me,” she says, in that same tone she used when she asked if you were taking her picture.
“You just disappeared.”
She moves her hands around as if shaping the air. “Well, I figured you’d find me if you were interested, and you seemed interested.” She spirals her hand down and caresses her beer. You note that she hasn’t taken those gloves off, which seems odd.
What else is wrong with this picture? Guys like you don’t get to sit in bars with women who look like this. But you’re not going to question it.
“I didn’t picture you as a beer kind of girl,” you say.
“Woman,” she corrects.
“Sorry. I didn’t picture you as—”
“Oh, so you did picture me.” She gazes into your eyes. You sit up straighter and become aware of your breathing. “You thought about me.”
You nod.
“But you didn’t try to find me.”
“I thought I saw you everywhere,” you say. The words rush out. You didn’t mean to say them, but they keep coming until she stops you.
“You still haven’t given me your number.”
“Okay,” you say. “Here, it’s—”
“Write it down for me,” she says. “I don’t write things down.”
You pat your pockets, thinking you have a pen somewhere but no paper. In the end you borrow a pen from the bartender and write your number on a napkin. She takes it, stashes it somewhere, and takes a big swig of her beer. You love the way she drinks beer. It’s so unlike the rest of her image.
“I’ll call you,” she says. As she talks she makes motions with her hands, as if she’s casting a spell. Or weaving a web to catch you in. “Just for what it’s worth, I am a romantic. I like it when people write poetry about me, if they’re so moved.”
“I... I’m a photographer.”
“You said you saw me everywhere. That’s the kind of thing I like to hear. It was almost a poem, the way you said that.” She takes another less-than-dainty gulp of her beer.
“Okay, I—”
“Should I happen to call you, you can’t call me back,” she says. “I don’t answer the phone. I do read texts. I don’t text back, but I might read them, if they’re worthy. If you sent a poem for each one of the photographs that you took.” She stands, drains her beer. You stand when she does.
“Oh, finish your drink,” she says. “And thank you for the umbrella.” She picks it up. “Red’s my favorite color. For an umbrella.” And she sweeps out. You start after her, but the bartender reminds you that you owe for the drinks.
She doesn’t do email, doesn’t text, doesn’t write, and doesn’t buy drinks, and you think, Fair enough.
The rain continues to fall, but at a much softer rate, as you dash out and scan the streets for the red umbrella. Oh, they’re out there, red umbrellas. You pick a likely looking one and head for it. After a couple of blocks, you still haven’t caught up. So many red umbrellas, you doubt you’re tracking the right one. You should have bought the one with black polka dots, only it didn’t seem dignified. Your phone rings.
“Are you following me?”
Definitely flirty. You stop. Again, someone runs into you. No apology this time.
“I don’t think I am,” you say. “But I tried.”
She laughs, a beautiful melodious laugh, because of course she would have that kind of laugh. “Well now you have my number.” You get the feeling that wherever she is, she can see you.
“I forgot to ask your name,” you say. “I’m Asher.”
“Name me,” she says. “Put my name as you think it is, in one of your poems.”
So you dub her Rosalind. It just comes to you.
Like anyone else you’ve gone through a phase of writing lousy poetry. You threw the poetry away of course, on pain of anyone ever seeing it. You sit there — in Casey Feinman’s place in Murray Hill this week, an actor with three very spoiled cats — and look at the pictures. Scroll past those first ones, the landscapes, which in truth don’t quite give the illusion you were after, but they’re not bad. Some of them you legit can’t tell what they are. They look more like some kind of Rorschach test than what you had in mind, but they might still work.
But forget that, focus on the woman. Write the best poem possible and send the best shot.
The end result is reminiscent of something you read, or heard, possibly some rock lyric. Maybe “Uptown Girl.” Well, apologies to Billy Joel, and off it goes, along with the picture, your favorite. The one where she was just sitting on the bench with her legs crossed and looking anywhere but at you. You send it off, go through the nightly cat-feeding ritual, and fall asleep on Casey Feinman’s lumpy couch.