ESMERALDA came in wearing a green dress. She arrived with the others, pointing out her name at the registration with her pretty ringed fingers. Her name was there, as was mine just a few lines away. I was surprised that she even remembered me. I was certain I had been entirely forgotten, maybe even on purpose.
She had skipped town months before, but here she was again. I asked Esmeralda where she had been. If she only knew how many bleak nights I had walked home thinking of her, or half expecting her to appear from some shadow or behind some corner, only to whistle alone in lonesomeness. She said that she had been busy. ‘I’ve just been busy,’ she said. Esmeralda was a busy kind of woman.
In the summer, during the festival, I would watch her walking up and down the street. She was always talking to someone, and she was mostly in a good mood when she wasn’t having one of her sad-looking sulky sad days, when she drooped in the corner staring out the café windows and sighed.
I asked Esmeralda why she hadn’t responded to any of my love letters, but she told me that there was no need to. “Pole vaja ju.” No need! She did this fluidly, as if she was dancing between the registration desk and the coffee. There were many bureaucrats in white shirts buzzing around. Her potato brown hair was pulled back. There was something about those eyes too. Esmeralda has clever, fox-like eyes.
I could see her soft comforting milky whiteness poking out of the top of that dress, the same way you might see a gold coin reflecting the sunlight at the bottom of a pool. “But you do know that I love you,” I told her. Esmeralda only smiled, her smart eyes drawing up into half moons. She placed a finger on my lips and said, “Hush, hush, hush.”
north! 