CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, THE THIRD ONE

The third, but much more interesting, encounter happened in New Orleans in 1978, on one of the the most enjoyable long weekends of my life.   Lots of fun activities and sumptuous dining to the finale:   HAVING OUR PORTRAITS DONE by an artist in his studio around Jackson Square.  Sis and I were sitting in a little plaza with our portraits in great cloth covers leaned against the bench, enjoying ice cream cones and the passing parade of strolling folks until her husband arrived from work to take us home.

Far away, we saw her approach---a smaller woman in a ground-sweeping skirt of pale gray, her high-piled white hair glistening in the sun. She walked as if onstage, using a posture more related to a catwalk than cobblestones, or a Ziegfeld showgirl on a high stage stairway---one white-gloved hand on a hip, the other extended gracefully forward, as if for a courtier’s kiss. She swayed the forward hand side-to-side with each calculated step, clearing her path and garnering an assemblage of onlookers who parted before her and remained in her wake like the Red Sea, staring at her strange progress down the cobbles.

She was so beautiful, with that shining hair and her pearly costume and the grace of her bearing, and not until she was right in front of us did we realize her gender. On closer look, she was wearing a delicately-lacy white blouse, with a skirt-matching shawl, and she was truly the ideal of every Grandmother Norman Rockwell ever drew---simply stunning in her perfection, but for the almost-imperceptible cheek shadows.

We watched her go her way, and went home ourselves, for we had to get dressed for a Dinner Theater evening. We drove twenty miles out into the suburbs to Sis’ house, and then possibly twenty more in another direction to the theater. We were sitting at our table during cocktails, telling DBIL of our afternoon’s outing, and were just describing the beautiful “lady” we had observed, when I happened to glance two-tables-over, same level, and THERE SHE WAS.   ( cue Rod Serling music here).

Right there so many miles from where we first "met."   With a very tall, high-chignoned young woman in a pink pants-suit, sandal-heels higher than her hair,  French manicure, Liza lashes and not quite enough Max Factor to hide the beard shadow. They were with two gentlemen who were enjoying their company immensely, and seemed to have a wonderful evening together.

Just the coincidence of that odd, interesting moment in the Square and seeing the same unmistakable person at such a remove, the same evening, transported into our presence again---that was a strange thing, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Nor how beautiful she looked in the afternoon sun, swaying her way through the admiring crowd.

Moire non, of the other wonders of that weekend.