You & Me by Padgett Powell

Author:Padgett Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US

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This talk of specious lingerie has had an adverse effect on me.

How so?

I dreamed of a Japanese girl. She walked by me in a sheer peignoir, if that is the term for a short jacket. My bedroom French is not vast. Underneath were the obligatory bra and panties. They were embroidered with a perfect bold black Ottoman design. So that there was the likeness of a sultan’s signature on the mons.

What was adverse in this?

It was so striking that as she passed, without regard to me, of course, I was taken by a sigh of resignation, and then I nearly wept. I teared up. I thought of my wife.

You have a wife?

I had a wife.

Oh. Of course. We all had a wife. Wife is a synonym for past.

So I had a vision, inspired by this well-designed and well-positioned embroidery, of my wife in the perfect past, before it . . .

Became the past.

Yes.

And you cried.

I could have. I looked at the girl, who had walked by me and stopped on a gymnasium floor with padding on it for floor routines, and who stood there not thirty feet away still not regarding me, and I could have wept, but at this point I am offended by my sentimentality and getting everything in check, and finding fault with the girl. What is she doing in a serious gymnasium in high-fashion slut gear—you know, that kind of takedown.

Perfectly sensible defense. She looked good.

No. Delicious.

I feel your pain, dude.

Really striking underwear, I’m telling you.

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