looking in

we were sitting in the window of a top floor apartment in the 10th

we were watching the people, people must have been watching us

and then, from across the courtyard and three or four floors below...i saw something

something oddly timed and perfectly lit

just the light from the television at the end of the bed, a white and blue filmy light, like a Hopper painting

and then a woman, arms dangling at her sides, grey hair dangling on either side of her face.

she was dressed simply and timelessly:

a long grey skirt and a long navy cardigan over a white blouse and grey slippers

she shuffled from the doorway to the bed where she knelt and leaned forward like a teenager watching her favorite program

then, two minutes later, she rose again and left the room.

she must have done this ten times, all in a perfect and unnatural rhythmn.

and then we noticed that light was on in the next door window

a man sat naked on a bed, leaning slowly forward and backward, touching his toes

and then he began to dress, very very slowly, a perfect counterpoint to his neighbor and the two of them were playing together in harmony and totally unaware of one another

once his pajama bottoms were on, he pulled a sock from a drawer beneath the window

he stretched it carefully over his right foot and stood up and sat back down

the woman entered and exited the room again and again, back and forth

and the man pulled another sock from the drawer and put it on and stood and sat

and then he opened and shut the window three times, we were suddenly afraid he would look up

but he didn't

he twisted from side to side and touched the window lightly and sat back down to put on his night shirt

i wonder what my neighbors see...

she's really something else.

this morning she was wearing grey and black.

suddenly i couldn't see her anymore. i like to think that she got stopped by the cops after grilling those three stoplights on rivoli.

also saw an enormous man on a little green dutch bike. his butt was spilling out over the sides of the seat. i chuckled to myself.

one of these mornings i am going to witness a death...

i just know it.

she is probably 32, but she looks old for her age (from the neck up). her body is fantastic; long slender legs and shapely arms with just enough muscle and a teeny tiny waist. she dresses to accentuate this figure too, euh i guess you could say that... this morning it was an electric blue poor-man's hervé leger bandage dress with a bright red vinyl (poor-man's marni balloon) bag and black wedges from (and this is just a guess) bata.

her lipstick matched the bag and she even wore a matching red...wait for it...headband...

she might be crazy, at first i thought she was just a plucky, sporty frenchwoman eager to arrive at work on time, then last week she spit a mile as we sat at the stoplight and lately she's been laughing like a maniac and "revving up" (as much as one can "rev" a bicycle) at all of the lights. she jumps over lane dividers and swears at busses and taxis, she clangs her bell at everything in her path, pigeons, pedestrians, pieces of paper... i keep a safe distance between my bike and hers.

thankfully i stop just before the place de la concorde because i would really hate to see her work that circle...a place so dangerous that french car insurance won't even cover an accident there, where last year alone there were 41 accidents. she's gonna get squished...plucky, sporty, frenchwoman sandwich. i'll have to make a witness statement, be forty minutes late to work and probably have nightmares for the rest of my life and be forced to take the metro.

this morning i did something stupid. i knew it as soon as it happened...i glanced in her direction and (i couldn't help it) i giggled, like, out loud. and she blurted out some obscenity that i couldn't really hear because stevie wonder was too loud and she revved her bike and took off (and spit about a hundred meters later) now she wanted to compete with me. crap. suddenly a row of handsome bikers in matching grey suits fanned out next to me making a perfectly staged diagonal, more perfectly even than four actors could have made after a week of rehearsals. they laughed too, but she didn't hear them.

her wrath is now focused squarely on me. and i am either going to have to wear lower heels and bike faster or take another street to work in the morning...

to be continued...