The real-life version of a famous speech from "Citizen Kane"
I can see her still, that bouncy, light brown hair, that trim figure, those respectable legs under the hem of that blue uniform; you could steal a glimpse of them whenever she left her post to show some dowager where the bath salts were.
Had she ever noticed me, I wondered, that skinny, greasy-haired, infatuated fourteen year-old, in the store every day but never buying anything, only there to procure images of her, images I could take home and let run wild in my dreams?
I doubt it. Any modest effort I might have made to make her look at me, a too-loud cough, a carefully engineered moment of eye contact, a walk in front of her, proved too modest...then again, it could be that every one of them registered, that she knew very well what I was up to, but that the cool friendliness she had to exhibit every day as part of her job was such a part of her now that there was no other mode of reaction, no finding anything cute, no being repulsed or brought to anger - nothing but that slightest of smiles, accommodating but just, just enough to get her through her day, just enough, perhaps, to get her through her life.
I never saw her in any other temperament, never saw her with the gloves off - except in my dreams, of course, where I saw her with everything off, sometimes the two of us making love right in the store, rattling the countless tubes of shiny lipstick that surrounded her, toppling the packages of panty hose that hung above until they rained on top of us. Though she would definitely have to be the teacher - she was some ten years older than I, at least - in these fantasies, it was I who was in total control, pleasing her as no man - or boy - had ever done, cracking that precious code of civility that entrapped her.
Finally, the tradition was broken. One fateful afternoon, on my way, solo as usual, to the movies - Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, which I had seen countless times - who should be at the same bus stop? There she was, out of the uniform, smoking, and in conversation with a friend - in all ways released from the bonds of professionalism.
I sat a few rows behind them on the bus, and observed the back of her head as that billowy hair of hers bounced, swished and flung about with every verbal volley between she and her companion.
To my amazement, she rang the bell just before my stop. Could it be that she - they - too, were going to this same movie?
Indeed they were. Again I sat a few rows back and watched. No need to pay attention to the film; I knew it so well I could recite the dialogue. No, contrary to my plan for that afternoon, I had paid to see her. I sat raptured as she wriggled from the last casings of her cocoon, as she tittered, snorted, and outright guffawed; dignity, at least for one afternoon, be damned! Thanks to the assistance of one of my then comic idols, she came fully alive before my eyes, like Gene Wilder watching his creation do same.
Alas, she and her companion did not make the trip back with me. I was fourteen, and had no other life to go to. They, being young adults, had who knows: drinks in a bar somewhere, lunch at a nearby restaurant, maybe even - horror of horrors! - grown men to meet.
The next day, I returned to drugstore where she worked...only to find that she wasn't there. Nor was she there the day after, nor the day after that, nor the day...
Perhaps that was the cause of her raucous laughter in that theatre, her abandon. Funny as the film was, perhaps to her, it wasn't that funny. Perhaps the film was merely the device by which she could celebrate her liberation from the bonds of propriety; released at last, she was free to let it all out.
That greasy-haired fourteen year old became forty, and scoffed at populist film critic Roger Ebert for calling Everett Sloane's speech about an unconsumed infatuation with an anonymous woman from his adolescence the highlight of Citizen Kane. If that's the highlight, screamed the forty year old, what the hell are you looking at?
Then, one day, after a long absence, the brunette from the drugstore made a comeback in his dreams.
He had been too hard, he decided, on Ebert.
