Sorry About the Camera

I remember your name, Edie Shofar,

even after thirty years.

Not because my memory is so great,

but you wrote it down for me, along with your address.

That slip of paper is somewhere

in a box of relics from my past,

lying casually alongside casino chips from Monte Carlo

and a menu from the halal Pizza Hut in Abu Dhabi.

You were beautiful and unpretentious,

a middle-class Sephardi girl

waiting tables at the Texas Bar during summer break from

studying chemistry in Tel Aviv.

You told me if your father knew what a dive that place was

he would have never approved.

The contours of your face faded long ago,

but I know you had eyes like polished onyx.

I can’t imagine you recall such details about me,

if you remember me at all.

In the dead of the afternoon, I would come by

to drink cold Maccabees

and fill the ashtrays with Marlboro stubs.

There were so few customers you would sit with me for hours.

We’d talk about life, flirting just enough to keep each other’s interest.

Once it got dark, I’d settle my tab and head up the Carmel,

but the next day always found me back talking to you.

It never meant anything.

I was thousands of miles from home,

wanting a sense of normalcy, to feel like someone cared

for those few weeks I was in town.

You wanted a new Kodak camera.

That’s why you wrote your address on that slip of paper.

We were going to write each other and

I promised to buy you a camera, once I made it back to the States.

Neither of us wrote, so I don’t feel guilty about that,

but I wish I’d kept my word.

Afterall, you’d already given me what I wanted.

Thank you for that, Edie Shofar.

I am sorry about the camera.