she staggered in high heels

                                              across the lounges stardust linoleum like a somber female 

daddy longlegs                                                                                                                      

and if youve ever paid any real attention to a cellar spider                                                  

its spot of a 5mm long body  globose  suspended effortlessly between 50mm long legs

                                                                                                        (hold that ratio in mind) 

and then paid particular attention

                                                        to its phenomenal gait  its ungainly strides        

feeling-way staccato-like upside-down across a painted ceiling surreptitiously

                                                                                                                           descending 

a slick paneled wall or apparently stumblebum traipsing across an irregular rawcut 

timber  fe-manoevuring its splinters spurs rasps and minute blowouts

                                                                                      oddly possessed and elegant     

she went

I wasnt the only one following her with my eyes

I also watched other watchtowers  subtly slide their skulls  little by little  like hunters 

through mounted telescopic sights leading their prey

                                                                                              I for one couldnt tell if she

was inebriated or unpracticed unsteady in new heels                                                                       if wed been forced into their five inches wed be crawling  perhaps mewling we had a 

fear of high places or blanching beneath the whirling fanblades overhead that 

threatened to decapitate us

she went

I saw she wasnt wearing a handbag   likely a guest

                                                                                    she had sat alone at a cocktail table 

bathed in the rawhoney glow of overhead spotlights and her features licked 

passionately by the dancing candle at its center

                                                                                               I held my breath               

that she might return                                                                                                   

that her ratio                                                                                                          

her hips to waist to breasts                                                                                            

a rousing hourglass                                                                                                

might favor me as I favored the fragile daddy longlegs                                  

capturing her briefly in a wine goblet  only to release her unharmed outdoors away 

from sloppy unaware footsteps

if the spider were less clandestine                                                                                                     or as attractive as she                                                                                                                    many necks would have craned and bent and favored her gentle passage to wherever it 

was she was ascending when I interrupted the barkeep and bothered him for a wineglass

an odd request from a man sitting at a bar sipping a tumbler of a double whiskey neat

obviously expecting no one                                                                                                                    a clutch of paper at his elbow                                                                                                      

a pen tucked behind his ear and                                                         

a couple of folded magazines pressed under a leathered hardbound of Melvilles Moby Dick

she went

and didnt return

but then to the best of his estimation                                                                                           neither did the daddy longlegs

                                                                                              or was elegantly transformed

1919,  Saturday,  29  3. 14