Chapter 4 pt.2 (Draft)

 SOLOIST

I must admit in the course of our whirlwind romance I didn’t get to know her as well as I imagined. I remember her as a very beautiful and shy young woman, with an air of glamour, which was a rarer quality back in 1999 than it is now. She was slight with very light hair and a sweet sweet smile. She reminded me of the actress Britt Ekland, but with an paler and even more flawless complexion. It always struck me as a beautiful contradiction, her lithe form partnered with that giant of the stringed instrument family.

Her father had emigrated from Germany as a young man just after the war. First to London where he met her Mother and then together to the US. Apparently she had never been to Germany. But she seemed to epitomize a modern European, sophistication to my provincial Mid-Atlantic bull-in-a-china-shop. She once told me she missed the food she had known growing up, her English Mom's version of her Father's favorite German dishes.

Still, she seemed to flourish with a diet limited to an occasional piece of fruit. She would sometimes produce elegant fruit salads with careful pineapple slices (not chunks) and a colorful assortment of whatever was in season. It never failed to impressed me. 

She wasn't much of a singer. But when she did, her voice reminded me of Eddie Brickell (who at some point married Paul Simon). It always seemed to be asking a gentle question. It was kind of voice that calms the air and frees time to slow its rigid progression. 

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