Looking For Claudette Colbert


I am looking for Claudette Colbert – she’s due any minute now.

I have watched the patrons file out, satisfied with their night at the movies, as they systematically closed the cinema. The car park ahead of me was nearly abandoned when they hit the lights - that was the last job of closing - leaving me in the humid darkness.

I rapped on the pavement with my fingers and the more I smoked the further back I pushed my hat until I realized I had pushed all that my head would allow and took it off altogether, throwing it to the asphalt; let it deal with my frustrations. Asking all those who past if they have seen her only gave me looks of horrid surprise that I was even talking to them let alone asking the whereabouts of a dead film star.

Finally she shows – not the way one imagines but then what does happen the way one imagines. At first sight of her I muster all the energy one can muster in such dampening weather and one by one pick up my leaden feet still asleep from having sat on them as opposed to the ground. I eye her and she me with her painted eyebrows in perfect questioning arches and her cupie-doll mouth poised. What I was to say to her was unimportant (I will think up some flip remark when I get there just to break the ice – we will go from there), but I do not need to think as much as I am for it is she that starts things off when she says in her proper way:

‘You’re daydreaming, boy.’