It was down there, at his physiognomy shop when he suddenly got painfully bored. Not a single customer had showed that day, or, according to the books ----for the last century-Plus!-Nobody! Also, I believe the other shopkeepers thought of him as ‘a tad’ different, and maybe, a little ‘touched’, but obviously incredibly persistent. Anyways, it’s them that call him a fool, not me. I’m just the narrator.
So …his tools are a little rusty. Yes. His favorite tool, his physiognomy %@$#$%, his trusty measuring device, just the other day ---well, it just snapped in half. He lifted it up and …it crumbled. He chalked it all up, his situation, as another victim of the ‘great recession’? But he even had to shake his head after that thought, and started pacing.
So he pressed the elevator button, to the street level, with the thought that some fresh air would do him good. But once at street level he looked ---way far ahead, and decided to go for a walk. There was a lot of foot traffic. His eyes jumped to the people’s faces. It was a good day to be a physiognomic? He was still fascinated.
He kept walking. He laughed to himself. He knew the people better than they knew themselves, he thought, just by a slightly turned-up nose. He felt better. He kept on walking. Now, faster he walked. His shoulders straightened. He now seemed taller than the rest of the foot-traffic on his Market Street. He had the perfect vantage point to view their faces. He could even see who was up to what?-the previous night.
He kept on walking, but took a left and was soon in the subway. For a moment he was fascinated as saxophone sounds showed the way to the trains, with the musician’s huge cheeks telegraphing the next pitch.
But …he briefly looked down at the hat, the musicians register, and started counting something on his fingers. It was, perhaps, a comparison between the twos, him and the musicians, per annum, before taxes, salaries. Suddenly, he needed ‘a moment’?
He sat down.
He had a close view of the symmetry of the saxophonist’s cheeks bursting what sounded like musical laughs. It was good. He sat there all afternoon ---the musician too. The musician, for the most part, loved Charlie Parker, well, more than not. But as soon as he changed the mood to Miles Davies ---the miracle moved. A particular woman smiled a wonderful smile.
He stood up. The musician stood too. They took their hats off. She loved Miles Davis and stopped to grab her purse. She had heard the music on her approach, to somewhere, to the trains, and dropped a bill in the musician’s register. She leaned against a wall and lit a smoke. She didn’t make another move.
Both men briefly walked in circles. Then the musician almost strangled his saxophone, and was soon playing as if possessed, he was MAD, as Miles Davis was screaming in that subway hallway. Soon, hundreds of people were following that particular, smiling woman, smoking a particular cigarette, leaning against that subway hallway, happily waiting for the N-train.
The scene played on until the N and other trains made their approach. That particular woman, the miracle, now unknown to her was being followed by a physiognomic going through a ‘rough-patch’. It was her cheeks, the symmetry, a dimple even, “Wow,” he exclaimed to me later.
He kept following her ---for over two decades. As earlier mentioned, he was one persistent f-ing guy, self admittedly. You see, he thought he used to be a king, and now, after two decades following a miracle, he was worried that it might lead to nothing, or, a man simply holding an empty bag. He decided he must, now!-at all costs ---at least give her a call, probably not text her. He was still working on that.
He grabbed and dropped his phone, but: “Hi!” “Hi!”
“I’m a miracle-agent, looking for a particular woman that smokes a particular cigarette, and likes Miles Davis.”
“I thought you were a physiognomic.” The miracle says ---stunned.
He laughed, “What story have you been reading? Those cheeks are worth billions!!!!!!!!
The End
