Free 14 Stories by Stephen Dixon Page B

first names, I’ll grant you, but it isn’t a very odd first name so it’s really not much of a coincidence after all.”
    â€œBut what I find even more curious is that I’ve seen you almost every morning for months and always thought I knew you from somewhere. Till just before when for the first time I felt certain who you were.”
    â€œI’ve seen you too. You walk very fast. Though going to work mornings I see lots of the same strangers from time to time.”
    â€œI don’t. Maybe because the school I teach at is so close to my home.”
    â€œCould be. Though one man downtown I see every day without fail, unless I’m late starting out that morning, is always getting out of the express across the platform as my local’s pulling in. And besides you and some schoolchildren and a lady, there’s a man I see practically every morning going into number 8 up the block as if back from work. And there’s this I’m sure husband-and-wife team who a few times a week are already in the same seats of the first car of the subway I take to work. And of course the I-don’t-know-how­many I repeatedly see climbing out of the station and while I’m walking to my office building and in the elevators up and down and restaurant I’ve my lunch in most days and counter place for my coffee breaks. And quite often I’ll get one or two both coming and going along the same streets and in the same stations and subway cars and stops as mine and all on the same day. It’s a big city, but you’d be surprised. Excuse me, my light.”
    â€œWait till it turns green again.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know. For your health, or a coffee then, or a beer.”
    â€œOh, how do I say this? I’m with a man. For a year now. He stays with me. I’m sorry. Nice talking,” and she cuts through traffic to cross the avenue against the light.
    I see her the next day. On the opposite sidewalk heading for the subway she’ll take to work. It’s between 8:35 and 8:36. I’ve had the breakfast I have every weekday, given my father his daily insulin shot while he lay mostly asleep in bed, kissed my mother goodbye. “Good morning,” I yell when she’s directly across the street. She looks. I wave. We’re walking. She nods, doesn’t smile, never lingers, hurries on. All the clothes she’s wearing I remember from different ensembles on other warm sunny days. I watch her till she turns right at the park and I don’t see anyone enter or leave any buildings on her side. Nobody else even seemed to be on the street when I yelled. The block’s still empty of people except for two women in a passing car. Now a man leaves 34. Now a girl leaves 46 and a woman blows a kiss to her from a window on the third floor. Now the super’s helper lugs up a garbage can from the basement of the apartment house at the corner called The Delmoor. I’ve seen all these people as I’ve walked to work, though I don’t think more than once a week.
    On the remaining school mornings I’ll wave to her if she’s looking my way, but nothing more outgoing than that. And next time at a store, if I happen to be near enough to speak frankly with her, I’ll apologize for what she might have thought was my presumptuous behavior on the street yesterday and explain I honestly believed she was the young woman I used to be a substitute teacher for and I wasn’t coming on with a line. She might then say she likes comparisons even less when she hears the same one a second time, and walk away. Or she could say she realizes mistakes are made and comparisons are inevitable and so it might have been she who was somewhat abrupt that day, and walk away. Or she could say “Will you please try and combat these impulses you seem to get of stopping me every time you see me to speak about yourself and this junior-high-school girl?” Or she