Purse stores are referred to

Purse stores are referred to. “Can’t we elders wander negligently about?” They were buying lingerie, the widows of tattooed sailors. They were college girls picked too early.

That afternoon, a cartoonist show at the mall. Bands down at the record shop. The girl that reminds me of her leaned in shockingly. Dead air. Not the natural, genteel conversation I’d prepared, but the boring, too-plastic receding of quick wit. Perhaps I was too many days older, and strode around like any fast-food dealer that she’d met in her barmaid days. But maybe she was a little short-tempered with her husband, things like leaving the Lysol in the vestibule where she’d fallen over it over the course of her life, and as hard as you tried to forget her name, the records remained. You’d remember the girl forever.

In fact, she remembers you. Though you didn’t know it at the time, she would go on to birth books about you. Your life, and your sex life. You could feel the girl’s eyes on you as you noticed her tape recorder.

You picketed outside the library, hoping for a glimpse of that infamous author.