Page 16 - Contrast1977Aprilv20n2

time), I was there too, flush against the be_at plastic,
Leslie looking worried beside me, pressing with icky words
the ears that had been licked, on Friday nights and Satur-
days, Sundays, back a track di5ta~ce of sweetening months
and into the yes sordid cave of red, red films, that sum-
mer now a light bulb out, where we met and turned it on.

The digital clock high above the tellers' office, it
blinked: five minutes left, just a few minutes to wait
after all this, all this trouble. We might well have stay-
ed out there on the yellow line. But the feet get so tired
in this life, and then there were Leslie's habits to obey,
if only one more time: "Sit when you can •. Ride when you
can •• Smoke endlessly, and drink deep of alcohol's blue
river •. Put the cap back on the toothpaste, see •• Keep
that window clo~ed -- if I don't freeze, my plants will.
And stay away from my plants! That one wilts on contact ••
I'll cook the steak till it's black inside if I like, dam-
mi t!" Five minutes. But chances were that s.illy Snyde' s
would be late again, and I'd have to sit here in agony for
twenty, forty, sixty minutes. Agony, because r loved
Leslie, and Leslie I was leaving.

The people out on the floor weren't moving much.
None of that frantic rushing. We 'were all waiting to-
gether under the dome. No sense of unity, mind! Some were
headed for Atlanta, others for Biloxi, Cincinnati, D.C. __
What's the use of listing all the places -- an atlas' index
of places, sorry cities, far removed by dismal flats and
piggy farms, hills. No one gave a damn whether the other
missed his bus. But together we waited, drinking coffee,
reading newspapers, yapping. Under the ring of lights.

Then I lost sight of the people standing and saw
only penguins, waiting on a floe of southern ice. Penguins.
Wobbling a bit from side to side, like bowling pins not
quite struck down; huddling together but not embracing __

strangely apart, tile saddest animals on earth, glass-eyed,
armless, awkward things, steaming through the incredible
green ocean on their floe of ice, animals wobbling and
huddling, waiting for the floe to arriVe anywhere as though
it could, lost in a Jovian sea. Stationary, actually. Like