By the end of January Lindy was out of my thoughts. We had gone our separate ways. I like to finish a story so I’ll mention now the last two times I saw her, years later. The first was a very strange encounter, or rather, half-encounter. I was walking up Telegraph avenue one sunny afternoon some two years later, in Winter, and there she stood, like an apparition, standing some ten feet in front of me and talking away to a merchant (a street vendor) about some wares of his. I was struck by seeing her after such a span of time and wondered why I hadn’t seen her sooner as I walked this street a hundred times in the intervening years. Maybe she’d been away somewhere, or else it was pure chance.
I walked up to her side, slightly behind her and stood there. She didn’t notice me as she was so engaged in talking to the merchant. I admired her lovely face which hadn’t changed a bit in all this time and memories flooded in. But now other thoughts intruded. Why didn’t she notice me standing by so close? I hadn’t interrupted her or made a sound, but it had been half a minute already and I still went unnoticed. This seemed uncanny. Now I began to think maybe we shouldn’t meet. I wanted to but it was as if something was wrong. I decided to give it another minute. She talked on with the merchant and listened to him, oblivious to me. But I was standing so close it was creepy. The minute passed and I very quietly took a step back, thought about it, but not to renege on my self-wager, I turned and walked away, marvelling at the experience, as Milton puts it:
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Then, the last time in a long diary entry for June 29th, 1985, a Friday night:
“1 a.m., high on speed. Then we three head to the Plough, pretty high, where, after getting my first beer I run into Lindy and her boyfriend. She lives in Aptos now (for the past six months). She is pretty drunk. We go outside to the steps around the corner to talk privately, she smuggling a beer out. I ask her general questions about how she likes it there, how she’s doing with her kid and ex., but she doesn’t want to respond, hinting unhappiness. She tells me twice how she wonders and thinks of me with pleasure, as a classical person, how ‘neat’ it is, how our affair was a good friendship. I grimace. She claims to have no friends there, wants me to visit, as a friend i.e. no sex. She looks older and worn, her face harder, not soft. On her way in she talks to George privately. I go in and chat with her boyfriend, who comes up to me and asks about our old partying relationship and drunken nights. I tell him a little and he tells me how she overdoes it and needs to settle down. I wish her well to him. Then they split. I stand by the bar, watching girls, and talk to Mike Huston. After a half-hour she returns to find her glasses, gives me her phone number. I hug her, lifting her up, saying goodbye”.
That’s it for her. That night was full of other, new encounters for me, so I gave it little thought. So much for past loves. “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” “Where are the snows of yesteryear”.
last post ...
This autobiography is on hold until I begin and finish posting my novella 'Wet Chip'.
Here is the link to my next autobiography post, long overdue:
https://www.publish0x.com/robert-oreilly/love-xlqdjzk
