The Ladies

From Hell? I Don't Care

I dream about them.

I know I shouldn't.

But I do.

"New Rule Launched for Cars Used Less Than 50 Miles a Day" Lady looks tired. I know, from experience, that that it is not a good thing to say to a lady, that she looks tired -- you think you're being sympathetic, and you feel sympathetic, but she tends to interpret what you said as a critical comment.

Yet I will say it here: "New Rule Launched For Cars Used Less Than 50 Miles a Day" Lady looks tired. She looks like we should have figured out what she is telling us -- what she has stayed up late to tell us -- already. This Lady has problems, less readily soluble problems, of her own. We wonder whether she will be with us much longer. Is she being dreamy? She is certainly — to a dreamlike extent — blond. And yet things could, and should, have gone better for her. She has seen marvels, in her time -- this "New Rule" among them -- but she has also known sorrow, known neglect and even betrayal. She has what seems to be a microchip at her neck, just half of it (my estimate) visible above the photo's margin . . . And who took that photo? Was she or he about to resist taking her into his or her arms? As I do, in my dreams. (Do resist? Or do take?)