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
