marie

I don’t know how I forgot to tell you this story:

On our first day in New York City we went for a walk down a busy street, I forget which one. As we walked, we slowly overtook a man who was very easy to pick out of the crowd, even while he was still half a block away, because he was stopping every so often to talk to people only he could see, or to break into song, just like they do in the movies sometimes. Other people were giving him a wide berth as they passed him and we did, too.

I couldn’t tell if he was crazy or high as a kite on something he cooked up in his bathroom using ordinary household ingredients and a few over-the-counter medicines. Whichever it was, we passed by him while he was very loudly singing a song that was all vowels. I thought we’d never see him again but, minutes later, he went running past us up the block, then stopped in front of a store where a mannequin dressed as Marine Antoinette stood out front.

Mr. Crazy Singing Man was very taken with Marie. In the time it took for us to cover the distance between us, he worked up the courage to kiss her, then take her into his arms and kiss her more deeply and, finally, sweep her off her feet and dip her in a way that would have been, again, almost like something out of a musical if it hadn’t been so, ah, carnal.

After we passed by I once again made the mistaken assumption that we’d never see him again. Minutes later, he went running flat-out up the middle of the street, dodging taxi cabs.