Anna Karenina

Taking the streetcar to cross the Willamette River from northeast to southwest, I take the A line instead of the B line and am late for my noon appointment downtown. Google Maps fails me, I must trust the printed word--a diagram of unfamiliar street names and intersections, with the colors purple and red designating the difference between the A and the B lines.

The A line streetcar is almost empty. There are five of us, two older couples and me. One couple gets off the streetcar at the first stop west of the river, where all the new high-rises have been built. They're both extremely old, hearing aids and walking sticks old, but the moment they step on terra firma they hold each other's hand. All they care about in the world, all they love about it, is each other. I want to be like them someday, I think, watching them walk away, holding each other's hand until they disappear.

Now there are three of us, myself and an older Spanish couple on vacation in Portland from Barcelona. She's sort of glamorous, living in the shadows of a recent facelift, heavily made up–dark red lipstick, black eyeliner–and she wears a yellow baseball cap with the word "GLIMMER" in small gold sequins above the bill. He looks like a small dictator, perhaps Franco's grandson, whose lost his country to a democratic coup. They sit in separate seats, close enough one another to speak but far enough away to have their own private thoughts. Even though I'm the only one besides the driver on the streetcar, I get the feeling that I'm the last people in the world they'd ever talk too and, if they did, they'd talk through intermediaries.

I get off the streetcar at 10th and Clay and walk to my appointment, a half-hour late. Drew says no problem, and we walk up the street to Goose Hollow Inn for lunch. A good lunch and good conversation ensues.

After lunch Drew has to go back to work. He says that if I walk down 12th I'll run into Powells Books, so I do. I want to look for the books by Italo Svevo I haven't read, and the new bio on Stevens by Paul Mariani. Then I can catch the B line streetcar on Lovejoy for the ride across the river home.

And everything goes to plan, except one thing: only the A line travels across the river in the direction I'm going.

The A line streetcar is coming in 8 minutes. When it comes there's only one seat left, the seat for me. There's a young woman sitting in the seat opposite, reading a book. Two middle-age man are standing, holding on to the metal bars to brace themselves for the ride. They talk about sports, the weather, not as if they're good friends but as if they know each other. I take the Svevo book out of my backpack and take a good long look at it, not wanting to read on the streetcar for some reason but wanting to think about reading, to think about the future pleasure of reading Svevo at home in my black armchair. Just before I walk off the streetcar at 7th and Grand, I have the thought that a day like this in Portland is preparing me for my old older age when my eyes and attention span are sure to be compromised, but when I'll have all the time in the world to read.

And to the young woman in the seat opposite to me reading Anna Karenina, good luck.