Michael Chabon

She wore, today, several layers of red and white, T-shirts mostly, with a skirt here or there, and many different kerchiefs and bracelets. Her red-brown hair, cut in a neat, heavy-banged, lopsided forties style, left her bowed profile only partly visible, but she seemed to have a look of deep concentration on her face and did not hear me as I slipped past and headed down the hallway to Arthur’s section. I remembered he’d said that she was punk, but her demeanor and her neatness were not, and she clearly placed an un-punklike emphasis on looking somewhat traditionally feminine, pink fingernails and ribbons. I wondered what she was, if not a punk.

Arthur had his lunch bag ready and quickly slipped a bookmark into what he was copying, as I came in.

“Hi,” he said. “Are you ready? Did you see Phlox?”

“Hi. Yes, I saw her. Phlox, ha ha. What a great name.”

“Well, she certainly likes you, boy. You’d better watch it.”

“What do you mean? How do you know? What did she say?”

“Come on, let’s eat. I’ll tell you on the way out. Goodbye, Evelyn—oh, I’m terribly sorry, Evelyn. This is my friend Art Bechstein. Art, this is Evelyn Masciarelli.”

Evelyn was one of his co-workers, his superior, nominally. She was a tiny old thing who had trembled away her life in Hillman Library, and, as Arthur later told me, was “in a therm” over him. I walked over and shook hands with her, very conscious of, and somehow more comfortable with, the formality with which Arthur had made the introductions. It allowed me to choose to be for her whoever I wanted to be, and I chose to be bright and young, fresh from the sun of the outer world and free to return to it, as she was not. After I had briefly held her small, wet hand, showing Evelyn all my charming teeth, we made a courteous farewell and left.

On the way out, of course, we came upon Phlox, drinking from the fountain in the hall. She had to place a protective hand above her breast to keep all the gear she wore around her neck from getting into the stream of water when she bent over.

“Phlox,” said Arthur, a slightly mocking tone in his voice, “I have somebody I’d like you to meet.”

She straightened and turned to face us. Her eyes, in the middle of all that hair and scarf, were the bluest I had ever seen, and they widened at the sight of me. I felt exposed by the bareness of my shoulders. Her face was long, her skin smooth, she had a broad, unflawed forehead; she was unquestionably beautiful, and yet there was something odd, wrong, about her looks, her clothing: something a little too, from her too blue eyes in their too direct stare to the too red stockings she wore. It was as though she had studied American notions of beauty from some great distance and had come all this way only to find she had overdone the details: a debutante from another planet.

“Art Bechstein, I’d like you to meet Phlox,” Arthur continued. “Phlox, I’m sorry, I don’t know your last name, but this is my friend Art. He’s a wonderful person,” he finished, somewhat strangely, and suddenly, under the weight of her regard and of Arthur’s overintroduction, I felt compelled to impress but no longer wanted to—I wanted to back up the hallway, put on a pair of black horn-rims and a heavy coat, and come out again, this time farting and seized by grotesque tics.

Phlox had not yet spoken. She stood there, her hands poised at her sides, wrists bent upward, fingers slightly splayed: a really classic pose that cried out for a sentimental, string-heavy sound track, that rush of Borodin to mark the Moment Every Girl Dreams About. She looked at me for a long second or two.

“Hello, Art,” she said finally. “I can’t believe you know each other—I mean, I can’t believe that Arthur knows both of us. How are you?”

“Quite well, thanks. How are you?”

“Fine. I’m—Arthur says you’re not from Pittsburgh.”

“He does?” I looked at Arthur, who was looking at his hands. “No. Washington. No, well, I’m almost from Pittsburgh. My mother’s family lives in Newcastle,” I said.

“She’s dead.” Sympathetic smile.

I looked at Arthur again. His fine hands obsessed him.

“Uh, yes. A long time. Are you from here?”

“I,” she said, “am a very important part of Pittsburgh,” and she fixed me with her twin blues. There was a lull in the action.

“All right,” said Arthur, “that’s enough.” He took my elbow.

“Um, will you, um, will you be visiting the library—visiting Arthur—are you having lunch together?”

Arthur, adopting a sort of medical voice, explained the nature of our rendezvous, my liberty from my job that day, his unfortunate lack of lunchtime, and pulled me away, promising Phlox for me that she would see me again. Then we walked out into the blinding noon.

“Whew,” I said, “that is one bizarre girl. What did you say they call her?”

“Mau Mau. Only that was when she was punk. I understand now that she’s a Christian.”

“I knew it had to be something. What will she be next?”

“Joan Crawford,” he said.