Free Alone and Not Alone by Ron Padgett

The Chinese Girl

    When I order a coffee that is half-real, half-decaf, with half-and-half, the women behind the counter invariably give me a blank look and wait for something to come clear in their heads, and when it doesn’t I repeat, slowly, my order, gesturing with my fingers to demonstrate the half-real, then the half-decaf part. When it finally registers on them and they fill the cup, I point to the carton of half-and-half. Then one of the two—they work in pairs—asks, “Shu gah?”

    However, the youngest of the morning crew of five understands better than the other four, so I always hope to have her wait on me, not only because of her better English but because she is the cutest. Of course not all Chinese girls look the same, but descriptions of them tend to sound the same, so I’m not sure that it would help to say that she has straight black hair, parted in the front and held in place by the bakery uniform’s light-green kerchief, a slightly flattened nose, and dark eyes, with a small mole on the right above her top lip. Her modest demeanor lends her an air of innocence. She is what, around eighteen?

    I always look forward to seeing her on my weekly visit to the bakery. This morning when I walked slowly along the display case of dazzling muffins, buns, rolls, danishes, and other pastries, trying to decide among them, I heard her voice on the other side, asking, “Can I help you?” Never before had one of the crew left the cash register area to do this.

    Concealing my surprise, I asked her, “Are the croissants ready yet?”

    â€œI will see.”

    When she came back from the kitchen she said, “Five minutes.”

    â€œThen I’ll have one of these danishes.”

    â€œYou want small coffee, no? Half-regular, half-decaf, with half-and-half?”

    Astonished, I said, “Yes, that’s right. You have a good memory.”

    â€œI remember
you
,” she said, causing my heart to flutter. But my composure returned when she asked, “Shu gah?”

    At the register she handed me the change from a five. I took a single and, pointedly ignoring the tip jar, handed it to her, saying “This is for you.
Sheh sheh
.”

    â€œThank you,” she said, lowering her eyes and almost imperceptibly drawing back.

    I got the signal, so I headed toward an empty table, where I removed the plastic lid from the paper cup and took a bite out of the danish. A band of steam rose from the coffee, like a curtain on a miniature stage. The Chinese girl and I are living in a remote part of China. Our past lives have been erased. She is unspeakably devoted to me and I adore her. We say little, passing our days in a state of calm I could never have imagined.

Smudges

    Smattering of gray puffs    rocks are they
    large ones but    if you pick them up      light
    too light      but fun to lift      and marvel at
    they don’t make “sense”     they
    aren’t broken they are what      you
    have laughing in you      almost out
    smudges come out      of the rock
    you breathe in      and out      the same gray rock
    each time as if looped in a cartoon
    of a sleeping man      from whom z’s
    emanate

    Smattering of gray puffs      a man is one of them
    a cloud    a smudge      a powder of stone
    from which a city arises      with people in it
    and ideas      that flow toward you and through you
    it’s too late      it’s already happened     to the next you
    and the gray smudge    that is your face    turning
    into your next face    the one you forget
    as soon as it happens    as you