Selling fake flowers in the mall (Dec. 17, 1981)

                                                                                                                          December 17, 1981

 Patty Joyce popped up in the Morristown Mall, a slim cartoon figure whose life revolves around violence and pain. She hugged me with more than the cordial greeting of old friends. She said we had a thing once and her eyes said she wanted it to continue. Things like that frighten me. She called the man she's living with a bastard. Jimmy calls him a nut. But she's been living with the man for three years. Two years ago, she and I hit off heavy. She was looking for a ride down off the mountain-- like Felice had with a cowboy named Tim in Colorado.

 But it stalled and she won't make the commitment to leave her man until she had a replacement. The one time she did she nearly died from loneliness, rolling joint after joint to fill in the space. At least now there's a light on in the house when she comes home.

 It shocked me to see her in the mall though, selling fake Christmas flowers from a tent-like structure in one of the mall's wings. Jimmy and Frank actually discovered her two days earlier, and with Jimmy there's no missed opportunity for scoring pot.

 Though I remember the tarot reading he'd given her the last time we'd been together, sitting in her West Paterson apartment, the word "violence" coming up again and again. Jimmy never mentioned names. Her boyfriend nearly killed her for waking him up.

 Patty tells me that her boyfriend knows about us.

 WHAT?

 I'm not romantic enough to like the idea of dying in my lover's bed. But Joyce seems to be entertained by it. I wanted to remind her that there had never really been an affair, only momentary weakness in which we both contemplated it. But time twists memories making some more significant than they were. Jimmy pulls me aside and tells me not to get involved.

 I'm afraid it might be inevitable.

 Next year seems to be looming over me with portents of change. The women of my past seem to be parading before me with warnings of war. I drive home in silence. Patty is on Jimmy's mind, too. Or perhaps only the discount he's gotten on her pot.