She was always called Vivian, never Viv or Vi or anything else. She insisted, in her cold, firm, aloof way. And she was beautiful enough to make it stick.
I had had a major crush on her back in high school, but nothing came of it -- she was, as I've mentioned, aloof. Always involved in her Art projects. She was different, separate, into a world of her own construction.
Years later, eleven years after high school, we got back in touch. We arranged to meet. And that's how I came to be sitting in that dingy little bar in Soho on a weekday afternoon.
It was an old man's bar, lots of wood and cigarette smoke. I nursed my beer -- plenty of time to get drunk later if she wasn't still beautiful.
Oh, but she was.
Vivian ambled into the bar and my jaw dropped. Still tall and fairly thin, she had blossomed. Her thick dark curly hair was full and wide. Her slightly slanted green eyes were as bright as ever, and showed luminescent in her clear pale face. She had a small straight nose and full dark lips.
She wore a black raincoat, jeans, two mismatched carpet slippers, and three pheasant feathers in her hair. She ordered a vodka and we talked.
"What are you working on? I'd love to see it," said I. "Yeah? Well, ok, sure. Let's drink up and go," said she. We drank up and left.
Her place was nearby, in an old loft building with a cast-iron facade. The elevator opened directly into her space, which was large and open, no walls at all. One short and one long side were floor-to-ceiling windows. The ceilings were 15 feet high.
The loft was spotted with work areas. Painting, sculpture, and pottery in the front (the latter looked long unused), welding and photography in the back, away from the windows.
Vivian kicked off her slippers into a huge pile of other shoes and boots near the door, and hung up her raincoat on a nearby peg. She was wearing no shirt or bra, and her breasts were better than i'd hoped: not large, but full and perky. Her nipples and areolas were nearly crimson, like her lips.
