Karen Carlson

                  AFTER GILDA

Just before Kenmore Station, a young man pushed through the crowd behind me.  His hand cupped my ass as he slipped ahead of me to reach the door.  As he continued towards the front of the trolley car, I saw other women's heads bob and turn in choreographed sequence as he passed them.  Five, six, seven feels in twelve seconds.  Brilliant.  I hugged the empty cat carrier to my chest.  It felt as heavy as it had on the trip out here.  Gilda didn't weigh much. 

("You left your carrier!" yelled Dotty the receptionist as I left.  "Yes, I did," I replied, and let the door close behind me but she was persistent and followed me onto the summer sidewalk.  "We can't keep it for you."  "You must have other people who would want it," I tried.  "No, we can't do that."  "Please don't make me take it," I said.  "You must," she said.  I did.)

He got off the train.  So did I, followed him to another trolley, also going downtown.  He headed for the back of the car.  So did I. 

(My boyfriend Dave had moved out two months before, after I caught him with the nine-year-old who lived in the downstairs apartment and her best friend.  "We're not supposed to wrestle on the mattress when Lucy's home!" she cried when I walked in to the living room, which had a little nook made out of bookshelves with a mattress on the floor, the perfect setting for smoking pot.  When I asked him what was going on, he called me a tight-assed prig and left with his guitar and his stash and his assortment of computer manuals.)

I put Gilda's carrier down and stood in front of him on tippy toes so my butt was at zipper level and backed up into him, felt his fingers at his fly, then pulling my hippie skirt up, while the passengers in front of us faced forward as if ordered by an unseen drill sergeant.  The train pulled into Auditorium station.

(After Dave left, I cut up his shirts and jeans and made a patchwork skirt with a ruffle on the bottom, a hippie thing of mismatched colors and patterns, like nothing I'd ever worn before, to prove I wasn't a tight-assed prig, though, of course, I was.)

The train doors opened and brushed my flouncy skirt down and stepped away from The Feeler with the loudest, shriekiest laugh I'd ever heard on this planet, attracting the attention of even the most bored commuters who'd seen everything on these subways.  They turned and saw him, swollen and poking out of his pants, then his frantic attempt to tuck it back in. Some laughed with me, some gasped, one puffed-up hero-wannabe yelled "Man, what the hell do you think you're doing?" and stepped around me towards The Feeler and someone started towards the driver.  I stepped over the cat carrier and out the rear door of the train.

("You have to have your cat examined before we put her down," said the vet.  "Why?" I asked.  "It's our policy," the vet said.  I paid the $40 examination fee. I paid the $30 burial fee.  I paid the $20 euthanasia fee.)

I took the next train to Macy's, where I bought a peasant blouse and a floppy raffia hat with flowers embroidered along the brim to go with my skirt.