– 86 –

7

Passing him on the street, she fails to recognise herself and someone else says hello to him instead. Cool Hand Luke went to jail for cutting the heads off parking meters, she remembers. Taking the shortest route between two points she feels like an idiot now, for all the foolish things she plans to do in the future. Thumbed books offer their approving faces and she rushes in to Poetry and inhales some little-read pages of Donne, which smell particularly good. Lovely stiff pages like starched dust.