Genevieve La Salle enjoyed her morning walk down Douglass Avenue.
She kept a small
apartment in a three-story brownstone across the street from Lowry Park, with
its natural spring and gentle stream that filled seven small pools before diverting
back underground and continuing along its aquifer where it emptied into the
Jewett’s Lake at the bottom of the hill.
Genevieve walked three-blocks east to the bottleneck
where Lyndale and Hennepin Avenues merged, and traffic was always heavy,
crossing the six lanes of traffic, in front of the Methodist church with its tall—slender
steeple, and its cross that looked more like a rising star than a symbol of
Christ.
She turned north for
two curving blocks, past the Five Ten on Groveland, past Saint Mark’s Episcopal
with the Basilica of Saint Mary clearly in view; there she crossed Fifteenth
Street and wound her way through Jewett’s Park.
This is the route Genevieve
took to work. It was not the most direct path to the hospital where she worked,
but she enjoyed the stroll, even on a muggy morning like this one.
She could walked down
fifteenth, along the southside of the park, but she preferred to go over the
bridge that crossed a narrow stretch of the lake, where she would stop to feed
the ducks and goldfish crumbs of crust that she had trimmed from her morning
slice of toast.
Genevieve
had left her apartment that morning feeling well-composed and pretty; she
walked slowly so as not to overheat.
Her spotless white
and freshly starched uniform crinkled as she went. Her white shoes were quiet
on the pavement, her long dark curls were tightly coifed under her nurses cap,
and her cape was flowing in the breeze behind her.
Genevieve wore the
accoutrements of her office with pride.
She
walked past the shuffleboard and tennis courts, there were some young men playing
at their games; she liked to see them shirtless and sweating in the sun.
Genevieve was always
on the lookout for one particular fellow, who looked to be her age, though perhaps
a little younger…he was tall and handsome, and always wore the same shabby suit
that looked like it needed some mending.
She
would often see him sitting on a bench reading the paper, or perhaps writing in
a notebook and smoking, which she did not like. He was fit and handsome, and he
had an air of mystery about him that she found alluring.
He
looked intelligent and thoughtful, so that Genevieve didn’t mind his
cigarettes, or that from time to time she saw him sipping from a flask.
On
occasion they said good morning to one another. He was always polite, and she
was always demure, but she did not see him today, which made her sullen.
Genevieve
had been thinking about him the night before, she had dreamt about him, and because
of this she had been thinking of him all morning, wondering what it would be
like to dance with him, sit down to dinner or walk arm in arm.
Now, she felt the
emptiness of disappointment that comes…not from losing something that you once
had, but from not getting something you expected to have.
Genevieve
was still thinking about him, and palpably missing him, when she checked into
the nurse’s station at Abott on the east of the park; she felt a hollow in her
guts.
Maybe
I’ll see him this afternoon, she thought to herself as she began her rounds;
now she was feeling hopeful again.
If I do see him this
afternoon, Genevieve determined, I will be bold and ask him his name.
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