Liliana Paz

Walked to Flakis again this morning, to buy some food. Everything covered in snow, swaths of clouds and clear sky alternating overhead. Hit a couple of flurries going and coming back. Flakes thick, but no wind; they were gently floating, sinking down.

Cindy Lauper's I drove all night blaring into my tympani, i thought of Liliana. Don't know why this music, syphoned off the 80's, stolen from the net, canned into the tiny mp3 in my pocket and yet freshly being fed to my brain, should make me think of her.

Liliana was my italian teacher in highschool. She was from Trieste and, ten years before, had been a student at the same school she was teaching at now. Single, in her early thirties, beautiful, long blond hair. She had that natural-yet-parfumed-up, slightly unkempt quality i have since then encountered in a few other italian women. There was a delicate dawn of transparent hairs above her upper lip. Her classes were fun, and a few of the boys --Jorge, for one-- had the hots for her.

I met her again this summer, at the 10th year reunion of my class. I was coming out of the coffee shop and there she was, walking down Duvin's main street, a huge hungarian sheepdog held tightly on a leash. In her 40's, you could tell lots of things about her now, just by looking at her face, her movements. She loves her dog, is thoroughly dedicated to her. Still single, this is the companion of her days and nights, same as my cat for me. She loves baking in the sun, more than is good for her, the face told me, and she enjoys her cigarettes now and then. That impish smile of hers has also carved its lines: now she's always the accomplice. Whatever expression she assumes, you know she knows what you're talking about, and that she thinks you're naughty, naughty.

We exchanged a few words; not many, as i was with a crowd and we were going somewhere. She patted the dog's head and the sun caught briefly in her etereal moustache and unchanged hairstyle.

She's kin, another loner, like me. It's good to know she's out there.