Walking To A Party

A woman walks toward me on the street of a small beach front town in California.  She is in her prime, although she probably does not think so.  She thinks she is getting old.  She is under pressure because there is always more that she wants to spend money on than money to spend.  She is thinking this as she walks toward me.  She does not say as much, except in her walk.  

She is almost not aware that I am walking on the same street that she is.  Her dress is appropriate for December at the beach in Southern California.  It is night.  Night comes early, although the near winter sunset lingers in a way that it does not in the warmer months.

I have come to the town in search of a place I will be going soon.  I do not like being lost when I have somewhere to be.  I take the time to prepare, mapping the drive ahead.  I know that it will be a long drive back home, after.

I remember the town even though it is unlikely I have been there before.  I can't really say I have not been there; I have driven past thousands of California towns on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, more towns than there are. 

I don't know why I remember this town.  This one is low, next to the train, but it looks like one along Sunset Boulevard where nobody stops on their way to the Pacific, except the people who settled and give you funny looks for even driving through, let alone buying a six pack of Coke at the grocery store.  There is apparently an attitude that comes with the territory.  It is unclear what is behind it, as it reaches deep into the psychic core of what California is, or is dreamed to be. 

This is not active California, this is California at rest, at peace like the Ocean beside it, wondering what has brought about any change in circumstance at all.  It is the California that you can set down in the middle of Kansas or Oklahoma in a slight hollow and keep.  The Ocean is the sky, and the sky is wondering; both are high and reaching toward the star that is going away.

She walks past me quickly.  I do not take my eyes off of hers in order to see if she looks at me.  I know she has, before, as we did the dance for space on the sidewalk, but that was distant.  She is five feet from me now, and I just want to know if she is going to look or if she is going to walk past as if there is one destination only down the road. 

Her eyes do not move, not up, not down, not away, not toward me.  I still feel that she is seeing me as we pass.  I ask myself if I could have been attracted to her.  She is older than I remember myself, but not older than I am. 

I recall when I first walked through small California villages where middle aged women were heading toward whatever it was they were heading toward. They have not changed much.  I know them better as my contemporaries now, but still I do not know if the same singer sings inside.  We are so far from where we started. 

There is something about walking past an attractive stranger that has always intrigued me.  It is a left over from living in cities where people walk. 

In the California night, there are strangers you do not see, and then there are those you see but whisk past you as if they are spirits in another place or time.  Occasionally, the pace is such that the smell of the shower they took, or the perfume that was splashed on in a religious exercise of self, escapes and speaks about a life condition.  Sometimes I wonder how bathing products can have such differing effects on so many people. 

She has on a coat, and the leather does not smell like new leather, and the body splash does not smell like imitation coconut oil, and the perfume does not make me want to sneeze, but there is a scent that quickly moves on, in time with the experience of two people passing.

I think she is headed for a party.  I climb into my car and drive up the hill.