In Alaska

She had coppery hair; this isn’t a metaphor. It was shiny, metallic, like fine copper wire. And it was styled, her bangs sprayed stiff and pin curls by her ears. Her eyebrows were painted on her wide open face. It was impossible to guess her age, she could have been forty, she could have been sixty, her skin was perfect and smooth. She was covered in beads, dangling earrings and bracelets and necklaces, and in front of her, the work table, covered with beads too, shiny plasticy things,  reflective, like her perfectly lacquered nails. I wasn’t shopping, but everyone was so friendly, so chatty, and there were hardly any visitors around. I stopped to talk to everyone, every single person, to ask them about their crafts and where they were from and what they were doing. And everyone wanted to talk. But this one, with the copper hair, she made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

“Seattle? I lived down there. Off Rainier Avenue. I was getting up the nerve to get on a plane to fly home. It took me a year and half.”

“A year and half? Did you think about taking the ferry?”

“What, are you crazy? And risk drowning?!?!? After that crazy bus trip across the US, all the way from Philly, and then, to drown? No way…”

“I fell asleep, and when I woke up, there was this man leaning right over me. He had his big face right in front of me, and all this blond hair everywhere, sticking out, he looked like Jesus. And he says to me, ‘Can I buy you breakfast?’ And I pulled my baby right close on my lap — she had black black hair, but this white streak in it. She was born that way. People kept trying to buy her off me, she was so pretty with her white white skin and that hair. So I pulled her right close on my lap and I just shook my head no and I didn’t speak to anyone on the rest of the trip. Just held on to my baby all the way to Seattle. And stayed there while I got the nerve to get on the plane back home to Alaska.”

“Did you see any movie stars down there? I love seeing movie stars”

“I saw Richard Simmons in the airport once, in Phoenix. You know who I mean?”

“Oh yes. I do. I saw Hugh Jackman once. Now THAT is a handsome man. And so polite. I told my husband… you know how you have a free one? How you can have any celebrity once and it can’t be the thing that ends your marriage? I told my husband, I said, Hugh Jackman.”