I leave my apartment and step into the cool morning. I am planning a visit to my dentist, Cynthia, the very thought of whose white lab coat makes my heart jump jump jump like a drum in an old jazz recording. It is April. The street is wet. The rain has been falling non-stop.
My dentist's office is within walking distance of my small, well-kept bachelor pad. Visitors always take note that I keep an exceptionally clean house for a bachelor. I tell them it's because at night-time, I never stay there. This is true. At night, I go for one dry gin at a bar around the corner. And then I dance--- but only the slow numbers --- as the hours rattle down their ecstasy. Tick tick tick. I sleep beneath a gazebo in the park, a garland of flowers for my pillow, and when I awaken, the dew of morning has glazed my head. At night I dance with women strange and beautiful, but not yet with Cynthia. I am visiting my dentist Cynthia because I am trying to get Cynthia to dance with me.
"Hello my dear," I say, brushing away brown hair from the perfection of her face.
"Can I help you sir?" she asks, well aware that the condition of my white teeth has not changed since yesterday.
"I should think not, you kind woman. I have never had a cavity."
"I know that. So why are you here," Cynthia says. She smiles into her question exactly the way that sun is smiled into rainy April. I smile back at her exactly the way that silence is smiled into a first kiss. At the moment, my heart is two figures in bare feet dancing slowly beside the sea. In the next moment, I sense that Cynthia's heart is a black clarinet with white, white keys. Therefore, my heart has become a radio tuned to a jazz station, which plays forever the slow contralto of a clarinet.
"You make a good point." I say this cheerfully but slow, like the high note of a trumpet pierced with the possibility of sorrow. "Perhaps I will see you sometime."
"Perhaps you will," she said. "Good day."
B.
My work is slow and endless. Some say that life is a drudgery, and that work is pain. But all day long, I see a woman in a white dress dancing to beach music. The breeze of the ocean tussles her hair.
"We need you to take care of this," my boss explains.
"Yes," I say, shimmying and swaying to the melody, a beautiful reggae tune if ever there was one.
"Why are you so happy today?" my secretary asks.
I'm looking at this office and its cubicles. But all I see is a large dance party at the end of a pier. The sea breeze swirls around me as I sidle up to the bar. Seated there is someone I recognize, a tall brunette with the whitest arms. The Wurlitzer on the reggae number seems to lift the flags which decorate the pier. The Tikki torches blaze with wonder.
"Because it's April and it has just rained," I tell my secretary. It is true. I have always found the rains of April to be ravishing.
"Do you want your paycheck?" my boss asks me as I am leaving. It is Friday, and the young people (such as I vaguely am) want the cash to buy the drinks to make the love.
"I could go either way," I told him. "The world is paying me in spiritual gold right now, and I do not want to disturb my heart, since it has become beautiful fire in an huge antique lamp perched 90 feet above the earth."
This was true. I started to walk down towards the bar where, I would soon learn, two dry gins were waiting for me. Along the street, I removed my jacket and tie and left them lying on the road. I purchased a pair of sandals from a street vendor, and I tied my dress shoes together and threw them over a power line. As the sunset became twilight, my heart became a dance number, something up-tempo with a guitar. My pace quickens as I see, standing beneath the yellow street light, the figure of a woman in a green skirt. The skirt is too long to be immodest. It is too short to be for anyone but me.
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