In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

Catalan bota, a souvenir from Ula's days at Salvador's, and from his
neck swung a rawhide laniard with a tiny high tech monocular.
On the promenade along the River, he stopped and pulled a
cigarette from one of his tattered cargo pockets. Shooing away the
usual swarm of gay cruisers like so many flies, he lit up and leaned into
the wind against the rail to face the statue of Liberty and the harbor's
armada of bobbing sail boats. He flicked his speed-smoked butt into
the river and raised his eyepiece to the Lady, then let it drop only to
raise his arm again, this time holding the wine skin high above his head
to squirt a stream of gold into his open mouth. So with tasseled bota,
Don Quixote wandered on, his Dulcinea as out of reach as a mirage.
By summer's end the park was packed, even on weekdays, and
the only place left to catch the sea breeze without going all the way to
Coney Island was Pier 40 at the west end of Houston. Around the
corner from the old fishermen, he drifted to an old bench and watched
the freighters pass.
Penny sat down a few benches down, facing the Lackawanna
docks with the Palisades vanishing into the thick summer haze. He
didn't acknowledge her being there, just a few benches away, as he
scribbled in a notebook. The Circle Line went by twice. Today there
was even a barge, not a cute one with lace curtains, but a heavy drone,
humming downstream, a no nonsense industrial rust belt behemoth.
They watched this one pass by. Her heart tightened, and she knew his
did too, because he got up then and walked away.
Just before Labor Day Ula beckoned to Penny from inside the
Yohji store. Penny hesitated as this was their first encounter alone since
the sunburn. The bald sales girl stood with her armload of white shirts
like a Nubian priestess at Ula's side.
Penny rang the bell and walked in the shop, filled with racks of
cleverly contrived albeit conservative clothes. The stack of shirts were
for him. Ula was replenishing his closet.
"Tell me what you think of this one, Penny."
Ula handed her one of the shirts. Penny took a while to find
that the buttons didn't match up in the usual fashion.
"Okay, but how will he figure out these buttons drunk, huh?"
"Ha, ha, ha. Precious, Penny! Don't you get it? That's the
challenge!" Ula screwed up her face at the shirt. Penny walked out of
the store.
Crazy bitch. Penny wrenched one foot over the other and
locked in her lotus position. Did a few rounds of yogic kapalabhati to
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