Miss Mermaid

Blue skies to accipere (take to one's self.) Sun dapples my desk. At 3 p.m., I will meet my 83-year-old friend, Dee, for a Fellini film. She will come rushing in, those long strides, that tilted almost pelican way she walks, looking fabulous, five minutes to show time. "Am I late?" Breathlessly describe the three buses she took to get there. Then we will settle in for the theatre of the fantastical and the strange. Actually, the film, I VITELLONI, was neither. Filmed in the early 1950s after the war, a tale of four slackers in a small Italian village by the ocean. Classic scene: a young woman crowned Miss Mermaid 1953. "And she almost didn't enter!" her kerchiefed mother cried. The boys hung out together, lovingly exchanging cigarettes and girls. The cad found redemption with Miss Mermaid. I had forgotten how much I love old black and white films, the crisp silhouettes, the way the camera lingers on people's faces. I brought Dee a rose to honor Fellini and wore a pink scarf that blew away from my neck as I walked. Wore John Lennon-like sunglasses which Dee thought "very Hollywood." Wonderful to see her. Wonderful afternoon.