Following Richard  Brautigan

Corey Mesler

ISBN: 978-1-60489-047-1 Trade paper $16.95

ISBN:  978-1-60489-046-4 Library binding $27

 Pages 160

*How Richard Brautigan Was (Is) a Conduit of Pure Love and Pure Destruction

After I left City Lights bookstore I felt a bit down.  My shirt smelled and my quest was fizzling.

I am walking down Columbus when I see her.

She is reading Revenge of the Lawn and swaying toward me on the sidewalk.  She seems practiced in reading and walking at the same time.  It’s not easy.  Try it some time.

She was (is) as lovely as a fairy dancing in a sunbeam.

She has chocolate colored hair and freckles and her body moves with the grace of an ocelot.  She was (is) lithe.  She was (is) willowy.

“Ah, Brautigan,” I try as she draws nigh.

She looks up. Her eyes were (are) grey.  She stops my heart.

“Yes,” she says.

“I loved that one,” I say.

She looks at her book as if she can’t remember what she is reading.

“Uh huh,” she says.

We stand at an impasse.  A great gulf opens up between us and if I do not bridge it quickly she will diminish like a morning’s frost.

"I—" I begin.

“You’re not from here,” she breaks in. 

My accent.  Hick is what she’s thinking.

“Right,” I say.  “Oklahoma City.”

“Ah.”

“Right.”

“Well.”

“Jack,” I say, and stick out my hand.

She stares at me for a second. Is this a knife I see before me? She is unsure.  She wants to fix me like a photograph.

“Sharilyn.”

I don’t take it in. I am lost in her eyes.

“Hm?” I say.

“Like Marilyn with an S.  Or Sh. My parents,” she says and shrugs.

“Lovely” I say.

She laughs a quick laugh, almost a bark.

“Really?  Sharilyn?”

“You,” I say. I don’t know where it came from.

She hesitates a heartbeat.  Then she beams.

“I’ve never been called lovely before.”

“You should have been.  Every day.”  I have a tendency to go too far, too fast. I reined in.

“My, aren’t you, what? flirtatious?”

“Do you want to get a cup of coffee?”

Again the heartbeat.

“Sure,” she says.  “I’m on lunchbreak.”

“Ok,” I say.

“You have a Franz Kline smear on your shirt,” she says.