Meeting at the Building
He walked in and there she was, at the fourth and furthest station. He went over to her. “Hi Mr. C.” She hadn't called him by his first name in a while. He guessed she wasn't about to start that again. Not just yet, anyway. Then again, her colleagues were right there; they could hear.
“Hi P------. I've got some holds, don't know if you want to work with me.” She turned and got them off the shelf. She looked terrific from her braids—she once told him they take many hours to do—down to her black shoes. It struck him later that she was—is—like some Russian women inasmuch as she always does herself up nicely, with exquisite taste, before appearing in public.
“How you doing,” she asked on her return to the counter.
“Not too bad. You?”
“I'm just hoping to get home before dark.”
“Well, you've got time,” said he. She looked a touch skeptical. (It was not, come to think of it, the first time she'd been skeptical of his words.) It was about a quarter to five on a November evening. Given the look she gave, he continued, mindful as always of both advancing age and looming political and environmental disaster: “I guess time's running out for all of us.”
“I don't know if I'd say running,” said she.
He leaned closer. “Or maybe dripping, huh?” he asked with a smile.
She asked him if he'd walked. “Yeah, it's nice out.” Thinking of a place he had passed on the way, he continued: “Did you know there's an obstacle course outside the city jail?”
“What, all around the building?”
“No, on that little lawn. Where they have the razor wire?”
“Mm hm. Well, maybe the PO-lice use it.”
“I don't know. I've never seen anybody using it.” It had struck him that anyone who did use it, officer or inmate, would likely be sort of embarrassed to be seen in the act by passersby. Obstacle courses are sort of a summer-camp thing, no? “I just think it's kind of an interesting thing.” They said their goodbyes. He had to admit that the encounter had gone better than their last phone call.