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46 T h e S t o r y o f a C o at We talked about Baroness Pannonica driving her Silver Pigeon to the Five Spot to chauffeur Monk home. I was happy not to talk football, the inventory of skulls in a cave in Somalia, the democratic vistas of the Cedar Tavern, or about Spinoza. We were saying how the legs go first & then from the eyes mystery is stolen. I said how much I miss Bill Matthews, that sometimes at the Village Vanguard, Fez, or Small’s, especially when some cat steals a riff out of Prez’s left back pocket, I hear his Cincinnati laugh. Then our gaze snagged on a green dress shifting the light. If you’d asked me, I couldn’t have said why I knew jasmine from the silence of Egypt, or how water lives only to remember fire. As we walked out of the sanctuary of garlic, chive, onion, mushroom, & peppery dough, we agreed Rahsaan could see rhythm when he blew wounded cries of night hawks at daybreak. The heat of the pizza parlor followed us to the corner, & two steps later I remembered the scent of loneliness in my coat left draped over the chair. I had fallen in love with its cut, how it made me walk straighter. When I passed the young James Dean coming out the door with my blue-gray coat balled up in his arms, I didn’t stop him. 47 I don’t know why. I just stood there at the table. But, David, years after I circled the globe, I’m still ashamed of memories that make me American as music made of harmony & malice. ...

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