Impersonal Attractions by Sarah Shankman Page B

waiting for.’”
    “Aw, come on, Sammie, let’s don’t get serious about that tonight.”
    “You’re right. And you’re probably going to find a perfectly wonderful man. Every bit as cute as me. Right here.” She patted the letters in Annie’s tote. “But while you’re doing this thing, be careful, okay?”
    “Sure. But if anything ever does happen to me, you promise me one thing.”
    “This is your last wish?”
    “Right.”
    “What?”
    “Promise me you’ll sprinkle my ashes over Robert Redford.”

FOURTEEN
    The classroom Annie used at State two nights a week was standard: green chalkboard, rows of uncomfortable desks, a NO SMOKING sign that she sometimes chose to ignore posted prominently above the podium. But she hoped her classes in creative writing weren’t standard. She really worked to make them good.
    “Pass your papers around the circle to me, please,” Annie said. “It’s show-and-tell time.”
    The class groaned. Becky Beckwith stammered, “But you didn’t tell us you were going to read them out loud. Mine is very personal.”
    “They’re all personal, Ms. Beckwith. Everyone’s story is about a personal experience of meeting someone.”
    “ Mine’s so personal, this chick’s gonna blush if she reads it out loud,” a tall, young, black man said to his friend.
    How little he knew, Annie thought. She hoped some of them would be that good. Grist for her own mill.
    She read through the first one quickly. Gladys Chiu, a meter maid, had met her husband Dennis while giving him a parking ticket. He had raised hell with her until he’d noticed the tears rolling down her cheeks. By way of apology, he had insisted on taking her to dinner, and eight months later Dennis was walking her down the aisle.
    “Gladys, you one brave lady,” commented the young, black man, whose name was Cornell. “You be giving me a ticket, I sure wouldn’t be marrying you.” Cornell winked at Gladys and flashed Annie a smile, testing the waters. Was banter cool in her class?
    She read a few more stories—nothing out of the ordinary.
    Cornell volunteered to read his own. He had met his current lady love on the #22 Fillmore bus, which, as it snaked its way from Pacific Heights down through the ghetto of the Western Addition, was better known for muggings and mayhem than romance.
    “I was sitting there, reading my karate magazine, and I looked up and there was this chick that knocked me out, man. She was beautiful. She had this little kid in one arm and a bunch of packages in the other and she was trying to stand up on the bus in these skinny high heels. So naturally, being the gentleman that I am,” Cornell’s smile was a dazzler, “I gave her my seat, snowed her with my rap, carried her packages home for her, and man, I ain’t hardly gone home since. Cynthia is one fine lady, for sure.”
    “You gonna marry her, blood?” asked Cornell’s friend Mac.
    “I don’t know, my man, but if I do, it’s gonna be on the Twenty-two Fillmore and we gonna dress you up like the MUNI man and let you collect the fares.”
    The class laughed. It was nice to see them relaxed, having a good time. Of course, the revisions weren’t going to be so much fun.
    Eve Gold, a blonde whose zoftig good looks were holding into her early sixties, reached across Annie’s chair, gold bracelets ajingle, to take her paper. She too wanted to read it herself.
    Eve had left Long Island years earlier, but her accent would always give her origins away. She patted her carefully coiffed hair and began.
    “My daughter Linda is married to her stepbrother. My husband Al is married to his son’s mother-in-law.”
    Eve smiled around the circle as people shook their heads, trying to get a handle on what she’d just said. It was a practiced line, one that Eve knew would get them every time.
    She continued. “It happened like this. One, my daughter Linda married Richard Gold, who is now a doctor. Two, my husband Leonard died. Three, Richard’s