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Perfect Lady


by Ann Bogle


I want to write a story about a woman who lies to men about her height.  I've been urged to write about my first experience with the thoroughbreds—exercising early behind the tracks at Saratoga.  I've been asked to write a story about a female character named November Chaunce.

I promised a Tea Party member that when I got home from the fresh-water hurricane that had blown in across the Lake that I'd write an essay about why I am a liberal; we had taken refuge in his boat parked at Fletcher's and talked of gay marriage (all of us in favor of it) while his Republican cohort had rubbed my unresponsive arm, unresponsive though the Republican was rich.  I preferred the Tea Party member who was married but cuter.  He worked as a caulker, a tub and basin man.  He had sold marijuana after he'd lost his license to a DUI.  Then he'd lost the right to vote.  He complimented my pretty feet. 

I vote at a Recreation Center after voting for years at the Presbyterian Church where I was baptized and after that at a Lutheran Church that used to be a Methodist Church where I also went to Alanon.  I want to write about the woman in the Alanon meeting I called “Perfect Lady,” who, though not the oldest or most senior, was the figurative leader.  I told them, “I feel lucky.”  A cloud of smoke seemed to rise behind my head.  She cross-talked, “We don't say ‘luck' here.”

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