The first time they saw each other she was sitting on the sidewalk leaning against a wall. The first thing he noticed was that she seemed quite odd. She wasn’t sitting on a bench, or even the curb. She was simply sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the sidewalk. She was not reading a book, she was not writing in a journal, she was not doing anything—just sitting. When he looked at her she looked right back. She didn’t speak, she didn’t smile, she just looked. The second thing he noticed was the sin on the wall above her , a yellow sign shaped like a triangle that said ELECTRICAL HAZARD. She was smoking a cigarette, which seemed like a dangerous decision. It wasn’t until the third thing he noticed that he noticed the third thing he noticed which was that she was very beautiful. Maybe beautiful isn’t the right word—she has an odd face and she looks pale and frail as if she might crumble if you touched her the wrong way. No, certainly not beautiful. In fact, he thought, she probably wouldn’t turn many heads, but she was so so odd, and there was something captivating about her oddity that it was easy to mistake it as beauty, and he was fairly certain other men would think so too.
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