I’m sitting at a familiar, but not that familiar, bar. I’ve been here maybe a dozen times in the last ten years. It’s in my dad’s neighborhood. And as I wrote the other day, I’m currently staying in my dad’s home.
This is a paean – a brief portrait of a beautiful woman sitting at the end of the bar. She reminds me of a distant cousin of mine I met in my twenties, on whom I had an ill-fated crush. We met at a family reunion. She was from Australia. I am from the US. We met in Europe on the forty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the country from which we both emerged. My cousin’s name is Danielle. I have no idea where she is now or what she’s up to (she’s truly un-Google-able), but the woman at the end of the bar looks strikingly like she did back then: a long, angular face; tweezed, narrow eyebrows; bright red, full lips. She’s wearing a Flashdance-style cropped sweatshirt that reveals a bit more of her clavicle than the sweatshirt would have as originally sold. She has a lovely clavicle. She’s got earpods in and sunglasses perched atop her forehead. She has a high hairline, and her hair is in a topknot. It’s straight and brown, and not so long. She’s busy, engaged with her iPad, which is in landscape mode on a stand. She does not look happy.
I can’t tell what’s on the bottom portion of her body, but her knee, propped against the wall, is bare, so maybe shorts, or maybe a skirt.
She’s delicious looking, even if stressed.