Sally...A Draft and Simple Story

I got on the 

Stamford line train

paying for my ticket at the kid's rate. 

I made up frivolous stories to pass the time. I pretended I was French and spoke with a heavy accent to generic men in suits about my life in France. I wished I was from some where else, other than New Rochelle, on Wilmot Road, living in the woods, in a small red house with pot belly stoves covered lids  made of a cream colored porcelain. 

I yearned to stink like a French woman on the Metro with hairy armpits. I pissed my mother off when i began smoking Gitanes--later Exports-- and watched cult and French movies on the VCR. I smoked from a silver mouth piece, and sat upon the couch like a diva from a Charles Adams novel. 

I hated the cold and I loved the summers spent lying out on the dock with are tenant, Sally who worked for the government, doing what I'll never know. 

She was a drunk or at least my Mom told me so. On summer days, we lay side by side on the dock,  tanning and listened to the oldies but goodies station. Occasionally, she would walk up the hill and make another drink, a scotch over ice, sometimes it was a bottle of Smirnov. 

Sally was as obsessed with tanning as she was collecting empties. She spent hours a day running up and down Wilmot Road, wearing a pair of shorts, the kind that had the seam up the sides and were then, back in the early eighties what one might sporty. No matter how long she jogged, her thighs were thick and cellulite dimpled. They jiggled up and down. I hadn't noticed until one day my mother said,

"If she stopped drinking, she might loose the cellulite".

I wondered why Sally didn't have a man in her life. It made feel sad and lonesome for her. During the week, I never saw her. She must go to work behind doors that close fast, the kind where you need a special plastic card to enter. It must be top secret and I never asked her about her work.

I couldn't understand how someone might live alone in that guest house.

I can't remember how old she was... just the freckles, her far away look upon her face, and the sound of ice cubes against a rocks as she poured another in the kitchen overlooking our backyard.

 

Please bare with my technical issues...such as type is too tight. I'll be back in Jersey City on the 16th and will deal with it then.