Sketch: Claudia and Lewis

They’re walking down a downtown street when a classmate spots her. “Hi Evelyn,” Claudia says to her classmate. They talk for a minute as if he doesn’t exist. Meanwhile Lewis thinks of how he will introduce himself. An old man like him and a beautiful young woman like her walking down the street? He needs to come up with a way to introduce himself. He could say, I’m her uncle, but then that would be lying, and maybe she’s not one of those improvisational yes, and people, maybe he should say something that is in the realm of truth without giving away its subtle undertones, without suggesting the existence of subtlety. So he can say neighbor, as in, the person who lives next door, which is what he is. Neighbor implies, we were walking and we bumped into each other. He could say that. He will say that. And so he says, “I’m her,” but Claudia takes his words away from him.

“This is Lewis,” she says.

This is Lewis. People always know what that means. No modifiers, just the man and his name. She’s wearing the prettiest red dress a woman has ever worn and he’s wearing the best thing he could find in his dusty closet. They can see it, he thinks, she’s going out with some old man.

A quick shake of hands, old mannered Lewis with downcast eyes nodding nervously Hello, followed by a quick chat before the classmate leaves.

Old man Lewis in raspy voice intones, “Oh, shit.”

“What do you mean?” Claudia asks.

“They’ll know now." 

"Well, isn't that the point? What's two people walking down the street?"

"Hell if I know."

"Exactly. I don't, either. And they know even less."

He lets his head sit on that one.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, you know,” she says. “Besides, all my friends are always raving about Humphrey Bogart, about Cary Grant, about Frank Sinatra.”

“But Humphrey’s distinguished,” Old Man Lewis says, stretching out his hands, in a I mean, look at me kind of way. “I’m falling apart.”

“Over my dead body,” she says, unaware of the line’s implications. Or maybe she is.

This is how they met: she ran every day from seven to eight am, and his house was on her route. He picked up the newspaper at 8. And it was like clockwork: he opened the door, and there she was, at the far end of the street, heading towards his house. By the time he was picking up the paper from the mailbox, she was right in front of him, running by, her moist shirt describing the shape of her thin body, the circumference of her breasts, the lines of her clavicles. And she always gave him a hello, muttered between huffs, just a simple gesture for her, probably; but to him her hellos felt like little golden fronds that she gave him every day. He carried those hellos to bed sometimes, let them flit about in his imagination. And as hello mounted on hello mounted on hello, he decided one day to bring out with his old body not only his two hands to pick up the paper, but in one of the hands a thermos with water in it, cold water with ice to offer to the runner. He was out by seven-fifty that day, the paper tucked in his left armpit, wearing a long-sleeve button-down too nice-looking for that morning, but not nice-looking enough for the runner, he thought. When her figure emerged from the end of the street, he cleared his throat and stood like another mailbox beside the mailbox, looking at her, waving with his right hand. He heard that morning’s paper thump on the ground beside him. He was assaulted by an impulse to pick it up. So he began to bend down. But then he would miss her response to his wave. So he returned to his position and looked at the runner, who was waving back. And he waved back at her wave. He didn’t know her name yet. But he didn’t ask it first. He just held out the thermos like that, communicating in semaphore before saying, “I thought you migh be thirsty.”

She must have realized the effort that he put into it, the whole performance. The clothes, the waking up, the thermos and the water, the unplanned falling of the paper. She must have understood that he was not only saying thank you for the many golden fronds she had given him, but that he wanted to take the next step in the relationship: he wanted to give her golden flowers in turn.

So she stopped and put her hands on her knees, head bent down panting.

“That is so sweet, thank you,” she said, huffing between “thank” and “you.” She stood upright again and he handed her the bottle and she drank from it lustily. He could see her neck bulging, could hear her gulps. Thousands of clear beads rested on her face. Some of them trickled down. Her eyes were closed, and for a moment it seemed like she had the peaceful expression of a sleeping baby being caressed by a mother’s hand.

She gulped one last time and took the bottle away from her mouth and breathed out, the relief coming out of her like fuel exhaust. “That's some good, cold water! Thanks, sir.”

“Call me Lewis,” he said, stretching out his other hand. She shook it.

“Claudia,” she said. “Nice to meet you, sir.”