Of course wed never met. Though actually, oairs, ireet, we oftencame face-to-face; but she seemed not quite to see me. She was never without darkglasses, she was always well groomed, there was a sequential good taste in theplainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her,herself, shine so. One might have thought her a photographers model, perhaps ayoung actress, except that it was obvious, judging from her hours, she hadnt timeto be either.
Now and then I ran across her outside our neighborhood. Once a visitiivetook me to "21," and there, at a superior table, surrounded by four men, hem Mr. Arbuck, yet all of them intergeable with him, was Miss Golightly, idly,publicly bing her hair; and her expression, an unrealized yawn, put, by example,a dampener, on the excitement I felt over dining at so swanky a place. Anht, deep in the summer, the heat of my room se into the streets. Iwalked down Third Aveo Fifty-first Street, where there was an antique storewith an obje its window I admired: a palace of a bird cage, a mosque ofmis and bamboo rooms yearning to be filled with talkative parrots. But the pricewas three hundred and fifty dollars. On the way home I noticed a cab-driver crowdgathered in front of P. J. Clarks saloon, apparently attracted there by a happy groupof whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning, "Waltzing Matilda." As they saook turns spin-dang a girl over the cobbles uhe El; and the girl, MissGolightly, to be sure, floated round in their, arms light as a scarf.
But if Miss Golightly remained unscious of my existence, except as a doorbellvenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. Idiscovered, from the trash-basket outside her door, that her regularreading sisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that shesmoked aeric cigarette called Pies; survived on cottage cheese andmelba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-ihe same sourcemade it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were always torn intostrips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing.
Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamhewords that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.
Also, she had a cat and she played the guitar. On days when the sun was strong,she would wash her hair, and together with the cat, a red tiger-striped tom, sit outon the fire escape thumbing a guitar while her hair dried. Whenever I heard themusic, I would go stand quietly by my window. She played very well, and sometimessang too. Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boys adolest voice. She knewall the show hits, Cole Porter and Kurt Weill; especially she liked the songs fromOklahoma!, which were hat summer and everywhere. But there were momentswhen she played songs that made you wonder where she learhem, whereindeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked ofpineywoods or prairie. O: Dont wanna sleep, Dont wanna die, Just wannago a-travelin through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her themost, for often she ti long after her hair had dried, after the sun had goneand there were lighted windows in the dusk.
But our acquaintance did not make headway until September, an evening with thefirst ripple-chills of autumn running through it. Id been to a movie, e home andgoo bed with a bourbon nightcap and the Simenon: so much