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This is Joyce

I met Joyce as I was walking home on 65th street near Amsterdam Avenue.  I was behind her as she was pushing her shopping cart.  I could tell even before I met her that she was flamboyant.  She was wearing a low-cut blouse with thin straps and sporting a big red hat with a large bow.  And although there was no forecast of rain, nor any clouds in the sky, she carried an umbrella.  When I stopped her to talk, she was happy to do so.

Joyce pointed out that we were standing in front of the building in which she lived.  I noticed her shopping cart had no packages, yet she was returning home.  I asked her why she had the shopping cart.  She said she always takes it with her when she goes out for a walk.  With a family album?

As we were talking, one of her neighbors came out of her building a middle-aged woman- who attempted to fix Joyce's strap that had slipped down off her shoulder.  Joyce immediately pushed it back down saying she liked it that way.

She had been a movie actress.  She began to rummage through her shopping cart and took out a photo album.  She showed me photos of herself as a much younger woman in a bathing suit.  I asked if I would recognize any of the names of the movies she was in, she couldn't recall any.

 

I asked if she was married.  She told me that she had been married, but her husband died many years ago.  He was a movie producer and they met while working in Hollywood.  When I asked her age, she said: "the doctors tell me that I am 86 years old."

Slightly odd, very happy and continues getting old and getting out.

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