bar off Sixth Avenue. It was at about this point in his story that I more or less stopped listening, so I don’t know, with any accuracy, what happened next, although it’s possible that he became hesitant and coy with me about the rest of the afternoon.
It doesn’t matter to me at all. He did say, and of this I’m fairly sure, that the woman remarked that not many men wear homburgs anymore, and that it made him look distinguished. Or maybe he said that she said “but” it made him look distinguished. I’m also sure that she told him that she’d been divorced for almost five years, her husband having left her for his twenty-six-year-old secretary. What a perfect situation for total disaster. I didn’t mention this, of course: he was stupidly seventeen again and smitten.
It was especially boring and tiresome to hear him tell the story, again and yet again. How he bumped into the girl he’d been secretly mad about in high school, and there she was, right on the street. She’d picked up his homburg, which a sudden gust of wind had blown off his head, and waited for him to cross the street to reclaim it. He said that as he approached her, they recognized each other at the same instant, and that her face brightened as if the sun had risen in her heart. It was obvious that he’d picked up that unfortunate phrase from some noxious novel or maybe that feature on vivid language or whatever they called it, in The Reader’s Digest. He knew, he just simply knew, so he told me and told me and told me again, that she’d been as interested in him as he in her, all those years ago, but that things just work out the way they work out, or, in this case, don’t work out the way they might. He was babbling. She was married, had been married for years and years, with three grown children, one of whom she’d just had lunch with here in mid-town. She was on her way back to New Jersey, where she and her husband had just moved into a condominium. He went on and on and said they’d made plans to meet again, for lunch, somewhere near Rockefeller Center. I wasn’t paying all that much attention to him and made a show of looking at my watch, realizing, with some embarrassment, that I’d done the same thing when he’d first forced this story on me. I do recall that their planned meeting was imminent; he was so excited that he talked on, nervously, volubly, his face flushed and sweaty. I believe that Jung called this runaway speech “hysterical verbalization.” Amen. He was in this state, you must understand, over a woman of some fifty-five or so years, a woman as old as his wife. Was I missing something? Was he going to jeopardize his marriage over a grandmother? Good luck, I said, right. Really, yes, really good luck! I was still looking at my watch as I moved away, smiling foolishly at this foolish man.
The homburg, which, for some ridiculous reason, he’d affected a year or two earlier, blew off his head near the Rockefeller Center rink, so he told me. I was hoping that he’d tell me that it had been crushed by a truck or stolen by some idiot, but it survived and landed at the feet of a woman who picked it up and waited for him to cross the street and retrieve it. She was a handsome woman in her mid-fifties, a little overweight, perhaps, but well turned out in a camel’s hair polo coat and a little snap-brim felt hat. When he got closer to her he realized that she was the girl—a girl no more, of course—that he’d loved to distraction in high school, a feeling of which she was wholly and absolutely unaware. He wasn’t popular or smart or good-looking or hip or tough or talented, and she was everything perfect, even though there were some stories about her and a couple of older guys who’d dropped out. He took his hat from her and she smiled and he called her by name, how amazing, how strange it was, he said, to meet like this after thirty-five? thirty- six years. But she wasn’t that girl, it turned out, not at all, and
It doesn’t matter to me at all. He did say, and of this I’m fairly sure, that the woman remarked that not many men wear homburgs anymore, and that it made him look distinguished. Or maybe he said that she said “but” it made him look distinguished. I’m also sure that she told him that she’d been divorced for almost five years, her husband having left her for his twenty-six-year-old secretary. What a perfect situation for total disaster. I didn’t mention this, of course: he was stupidly seventeen again and smitten.
It was especially boring and tiresome to hear him tell the story, again and yet again. How he bumped into the girl he’d been secretly mad about in high school, and there she was, right on the street. She’d picked up his homburg, which a sudden gust of wind had blown off his head, and waited for him to cross the street to reclaim it. He said that as he approached her, they recognized each other at the same instant, and that her face brightened as if the sun had risen in her heart. It was obvious that he’d picked up that unfortunate phrase from some noxious novel or maybe that feature on vivid language or whatever they called it, in The Reader’s Digest. He knew, he just simply knew, so he told me and told me and told me again, that she’d been as interested in him as he in her, all those years ago, but that things just work out the way they work out, or, in this case, don’t work out the way they might. He was babbling. She was married, had been married for years and years, with three grown children, one of whom she’d just had lunch with here in mid-town. She was on her way back to New Jersey, where she and her husband had just moved into a condominium. He went on and on and said they’d made plans to meet again, for lunch, somewhere near Rockefeller Center. I wasn’t paying all that much attention to him and made a show of looking at my watch, realizing, with some embarrassment, that I’d done the same thing when he’d first forced this story on me. I do recall that their planned meeting was imminent; he was so excited that he talked on, nervously, volubly, his face flushed and sweaty. I believe that Jung called this runaway speech “hysterical verbalization.” Amen. He was in this state, you must understand, over a woman of some fifty-five or so years, a woman as old as his wife. Was I missing something? Was he going to jeopardize his marriage over a grandmother? Good luck, I said, right. Really, yes, really good luck! I was still looking at my watch as I moved away, smiling foolishly at this foolish man.
The homburg, which, for some ridiculous reason, he’d affected a year or two earlier, blew off his head near the Rockefeller Center rink, so he told me. I was hoping that he’d tell me that it had been crushed by a truck or stolen by some idiot, but it survived and landed at the feet of a woman who picked it up and waited for him to cross the street and retrieve it. She was a handsome woman in her mid-fifties, a little overweight, perhaps, but well turned out in a camel’s hair polo coat and a little snap-brim felt hat. When he got closer to her he realized that she was the girl—a girl no more, of course—that he’d loved to distraction in high school, a feeling of which she was wholly and absolutely unaware. He wasn’t popular or smart or good-looking or hip or tough or talented, and she was everything perfect, even though there were some stories about her and a couple of older guys who’d dropped out. He took his hat from her and she smiled and he called her by name, how amazing, how strange it was, he said, to meet like this after thirty-five? thirty- six years. But she wasn’t that girl, it turned out, not at all, and
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