At least that’s what some woman, long-haired and dreamy, had told him at the mid-town library as he poured over telephone books and maps of Manhattan. It had been luck, seeing Kate’s picture in the arts section of the New York Times. He’d been living in Coney Island, on Mermaid Avenue, not far from Woody Guthrie’s childhood home, selling hot dogs to fat bored ladies and their children, when he’d happened upon the article about the forthcoming Kiyoshi Awazu retrospective in ‘75. The curator, her name was now Kate Strauss, talked about the importance of Awazu’s contributions to urban design. He studied the picture of her in front of MOMA, the black-and-white jacquard print of her wrap dress, the softness around her waist where it did not sink inward as sharply as it had once, the fullness of her checks, the crosshatching at the top of them near her eyes, like pie crust, the wisps of silver that nested like spiderwebs in her dark, straight hair. The same woman who appeared at the entrance to the apartment building, an attaché in one hand, purse in the other, and stepped toward the idling car.
