Yellow Cabana

It’s a Sunday morning, the clouds are out in all their glory; my kind of Sunday morning good weather. Rosy is at her table. The one she sits at every morning, rain or shine. The one with the yellow cabana and the small pots of hydrangeas and lilies and things… She’s out there, today, Sunday, in her morning casuals, her hair done and lipstick on, a long slim white cigarette dangling off the sides of her index and middle finger.

She has to be somewhere in her sixties. Cool sixties.

I imagine she was a catch in her day. A lady who never stepped foot outside her house without her face and heels on. I imagine she swayed her hips side to side when she walked. Calling for them boys to pay attention and you bet your two boots they did; them good ole boys.

I imagine she met Bukowski when he visited Playa Del Rey back in the 70’s, maybe smoked a few long slim whites with him in a smoke filled Prince of Whales, listening to ping pong balls flying into ping pong bats and cool blues pouring out of overhead speakers… While a dark haired beauty on an alcohol fast sips hot tea at a corner table.

I imagine Rosy drank gin and tonic. He’s a whiskey guy. He shared ideas with her that found their way into poems he wrote that became books he wrote that became books he sold that became pedestals he struggled to stand on being that he feared heights so… Not water though.

He was a water man.

If they spent a night or two together, I imagine it was glorious in a cool sixties kinda way. He, not a man known to return; I imagine that after a time, she never saw him again. Only on paper covers and in salted memories, but that was cool with her.

Long slim down to the last puff, she gently sweeps her hair off the left side of her left brow. She puts out the crackling butt, gets out of her dark brown garden chair… Slides her patio glass door shut.

Yeah, that was a half-smile I just saw on her face.

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