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By Diana D. Drumm
Estelle sat waiting. She waited; not for Godot, not for god, but for a masculine step. Coiffed in her best trench, owl sunglasses and French twist, she crossed her lean, long legs at an iron café table, every few moments looking up from her novella and coffee to not discover George Peppard. Although she froze herself to this certain temperature of cool, each breath was a prick on her confidence. Her mind wandered away from the pages and down the rabbit hole of self-critique, none of which was too positive or founded. The resounding, repeating question in her head was why was someone not beside her, not a girlfriend to dish the latest gossip over croissants nor a lad who would egg her on until she downed the pint, but someone who would lift her up on the train and not believe her when she tearfully said ‘I’ll be fine.’ But that’s only in the movies, right? The likes of Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant have been long dead. In this age, one could not hope for such a man as even that pursuit was considered backwards and deemed too ridiculous to credit with any realism, even post-modern. Many options lay before her once she finished that coffee. Amongst those many, she narrowed her choice down to three; she could order an espresso at the counter and become even more neurotic off of caffeine, she could go to the library to find her next literary treat, or she could go to the closest bar and get drunk. Being the overly confident yet somewhat paradoxically paranoid young woman that she was she did all three, in that order.

‘Hi, what can I get for you today?’ ‘Um, a double espresso.’ ‘Would you like a muffin or anything else to go with that?’ ‘No, thanks.’ ‘Would you like a rewards card?’ ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’

She took a sip and winced slightly, not as much as she had at three vodka shots and a lime wedge, but more than when Myra turned out to be Myron in Vidal’s now-classic. Although her mind rang with recriminations, she allowed herself a heap of brown granules. Now this poised and chic young woman became addled with caffeine and sugar. Clutching her tote, she hurriedly walked down the street, nearly skipping, and every few moments letting out a gaping smile and a few words or hums of 1960s doo wop. To each person she passed, she smiled and nodded, only for the best response to be a rushed ‘Hey’ accompanied by a strained head nod. At the cemented library, she leaped up the stairs with her gazelle legs and reached the English literature section. She browsed the aisles, every so often stretching to her tiptoes to not only check the titles but as an outlet for her now bounding energy. She found Salinger’s Franny and Zooey and, as she deemed his second work pretentious enough without being cliché, she checked the nearly worn-out red book. Seeing its state, she wondered whether it was maybe too predictable of a read. But as she had never read the Catcher in the Rye, she reasoned that she needed at least one Salinger in her repertoire. With her extra-scholastic pick in hand, she returned to her apartment, made the appropriate calls for a mad night out and tousled her hair in preparation.

Put the blame on mame, boys, put the blame on mame.

She woke up. This wasn’t her bed. It was her floor. The top of her dress had become undone and her underwear rumpled in the corner. She stood up only to fall onto the sofa. While deciding to wait a while until the next attempt, she surveyed her living room. Gin bottle turned on its side. Thankfully for her carpet, she emptied its innards before she left the apartment, though her liver was not quite as thankful. The coffee table somehow had moved a half of a foot in the night. Then it all came back to her. Estelle sure had fun last night. The sort of fun she would not want to share, but probably would end up telling her girlfriends over coffee, who would, when future conversations were lagging, mention to others and be overheard by a school gossip, and would somehow reach the ears of the man/boy/thing that she had been envisioning as her Gary Cooper, even if they had not quite met yet. After a day of attempting to be Audrey, she had gone to bed as Gilda and woke up with only herself and a woozy
 


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