No show at the snow ball January 26, 2014

  

I don’t know why I expected our poet to show up at the Snow Ball in the county seat, but I did. K and our former temporary boss were supposed to be there, too, but I didn’t see them  -- although if they came late when the crowd thickened it would be easy to miss them.

Both K and our temporary boss had pressed me to get them complementary tickets.

Our temporary boss went last year and was so impressed he said he didn’t want to miss it this year.

He did not tell me who he went to the event with last year, Since I wasn’t covering the county seat beat until this year, I didn’t go, although I imagined hm inviting our poet, since it is the kind of event she would have liked, and she might have been impressed by it and beholden to our former temporary boss for inviting her.

I have no proof whether he did or not, but I suspected that if he did take her last year she might have been impressed enough to accompany him this year as well – perhaps a scheme on his part to rekindle what they had together when he was still temporary boss, a scheme even my vivid imagination could not imagine working for him, had she actually even considered his request.

He would have to had told her I was covering the event and this would have been a perfect excuse for her to decline. I suspect (if any of this was remotely true) she would have declined even if I was not going to be there.

All this may be conjecture, my suspicions pumped up by his persistently asking me to get him the tickets. He may well simply have wanted to be part of the art since and his request had nothing to do with the poet. He is trying to create a niche for himself as an arts writer, hinting about how trapped he feels, especially because this is how he started in the news biz and how he managed to offend the local arts establishment in Asbury Park when he wrote scathing reviews, and his editor was forced to relocate him to a beat at some tiny backwater town.

He has sung the praises of the arts scene where our poet lives and may have gotten more deeply involved the more deeply involved he got with our poet (again speculation). As an arts writer, he may have found an excuse to attend any art event she might be involved in (becoming by default a stalker in his own right).

It is possible that he believed our poet could not resist the opportunity to dress up for the Snow Ball (as she possibly did last year, and often does when performing up north – you have to love the way she looks in that black dress of hers).

I suspect he misread her, and certainly didn’t pay attention to that one poem where she said she never goes back (an exception she made only recently with the man she had a moment with in the sun early in 2013).

But as noted above, none of the suspects showed up, and yes, I was disappointed, aching as much as our former temporary boss might be to see her dressed to the nines.

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