I saw her last  Saturday

lit her cigarette  foreign  pungent  dark 

introduced myself

she asked me if Id like a drink as she put her silver case away

--   You slumming

--   You really asking me that

--   Icebreaker

--   Gamebreaker

--   Check  Your move Queenie

she eyed me while taking a drag

--   You like games

A player

--   Id like a drink  Spirits  Straight

Your choice

she said something out of the side of her face to the barkeep

he took down a dusty bottle  wiped off its neck cork  poured two neat
fresh glasses

she pushed one to me took the other

--   To strangers and strange

I took it

--   Strangely strange

she kissed my glass with hers  sipped

I sipped bigger

she knew her liquor

I got the next

she got the third

small talk  dark humor  other cigarettes

her evenings end she took my number

I didnt ask for hers

her game

leaving she said shed call

--   Maybe Monday

it was Thursday

I wasnt waiting

maybe I was

I went down to the tobacconist

bought a Hemingway Short Story

walking back I past a ruined shale mound

reminded me of one that a backhoe destroyed on the south end of town

trenched to put in a lighted church marque

church needed to advertise

I pulled chunks of rock out  exposed seashell fossils

paperweights  curios

placed near whalebones skulls cut-crystal decanters Id been meaning to fill

maybe I was waiting

at the foot of the shale I saw two spent cellophanes

rubbers

a broken pint of whisky

its bottom tilted  slivers like canine  a slip of liquor held

two stone knob

she held them

I took her from behind

she doubled back

said I owed her a nightcap

I said a nightcap            or a fuck

off to the side of the road

headlights dappled us

I dug how our shadows danced on the shale face

she had the cellophanes

opened her purse

they laid against her case

strange

maybe I was

I liked it 

                                                                                                                     

1550,  Thursday,  3  12. 15