Coe Review

on weekends, that I had a handle on most of his women: I knew what time
they'd show up, which ones he was going out with that night, and, with a mix
of fear and delightful anticipation, which schedules might conflict, which girls
might scream, which ones would cry, and which ones might get physical and
slap him. The girls came with such diverse, yet equally eccentric, personalities,
that I came to feel I knew them intimately in a very short time. They
came to know me, too, and, if Henry was running late or didn't show up at
all, they'd sit with me, probe my mind for answers to their questions about the
mysterious Henry, and, when I made it clear to them that I was as much of
an observer as they, they'd tell me things. The better I knew them the more
it seemed like they'd sit for hours and hours, rambling on without my saying
a word, inventing their own lives right there in front of me, soaring through
memories with descriptive detail, interpreting them, interpreting Henry's
language, posing rhetorical questions that, a few times, I'd made the mistake
of answering, such as "Don't you think he meant this or that" and following
them with an immediate "Of course!" or "It couldn't be!"
Chloe. Chloe shuffled in to the coffee shop almost every night around
seven o'clock. She wore patent leather boots up to her knees, and her thighs
poured into them like waterfalls. She was an artist, and paraded that fact
around on her body with every necessary accoutrement dangling on her purse,
her wrist, her neckline—two bracelets, one hemp and the other turquoise
mounted on silver, a dog tag necklace with a rusted edge, bearing the name
Charles Goodwin, whom she never met or heard of, a thin piece of Vietnam
World War II antiquity that fit the "outcast artist" aesthetic, long seventiesstyle
dresses with psychedelic circles and eye popping splashes of yellow and
pink, shade and sunshine groove, and sunglasses that she wore even when
inside, mahogany red on brass rims. She was a walking canvas, so that art
and artist were indistinguishable. She had a manifesto of sorts that it all came
down to the fate of astrological signs and palm lines, and she made it clear
that she embraced the undeniable fate of an unappreciated, forty-year-old
suicide/artistic martyr, a being that no one would ever really understand and
that would be her legacy.
It took her several meetings to remember my name, and of those times
I watched her glance my way and stop cold with embarrassment for having
forgotten me. She would escape to some excusable chore, like going to the
bathroom or buying a drink, all the while covertly snapping her fingers at her
memory. She rarely ventured a guess, but I always relented first and found
an excuse to announce myself.
"Hey Chloe, how are you?"
"Ya ya... I'm good... ya know... I've been working on some stuff... getting
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