Time Magazine’s 2001 Person of the Year
by Anthony Richardson
Howard sat on a chair at his usual table in the library finishing his sandwich (wafer thin ham between medium white bread, no houmous) and studied her face. He had decided long ago that he loved her. He liked her teeth and her shiny black hair, which were both a little too long and made her look like a studious rat. Her face never turned towards him and he wondered if it ever would. He scratched his throbbing leg in reflection.
Howard and the girl had met before, briefly, at a summer fête the previous February. It wasn’t technically summer, but everyone agreed that bouncy castles were cheaper in the winter; much effort was made to put on a brave face. It was on the bouncy castle that they had spoken for the first and only occasion: she had been summoned off by the owner before her time was up. Overcome at the injustice, she tried to attack the inflatable rubber with a stiletto held above her head. Howard had managed to intercept with a clumsy somersault and bravely took the impact of the heel with his thigh, certainly saving a child.
‘Forgive me’, she murmured as she buried her head in his armpit. ‘The man said five minutes and when he called I made it three.’
‘You can never trust those festive bastards,’ Howard replied. ‘You pay a pound and they shaft you every time. Two pounds if you don’t wear socks. They don’t even check for veruccas’ The two lifted themselves up from their tangle and bounce-limped away. ‘Thank you for stopping me,’ she whispered. ‘A girl can lose her mind on her own at a Summer fete in February.’
She walked barefoot across the grass and away from him. Her squat frame lurched on seeing the cake bazaar, shrinking with each shuffle. ‘I never caught your name’, he called.
Her hunched body twisted around as she craned her neck towards him.
‘It’s Rudolph Giuliani’, she replied.
‘Rudolph Giuliani? Like the 107th Mayor of New York City, born 1944?’
‘No’, she replied. ‘Never heard of him. I can’t read.’
And that was all he knew about her. Her name, her illiteracy, and her uncompromising stance on the minimum number of recreational bounces during the peak hour. As he turned away he felt a rush of wind and saw the girl with hatred in her eyes, skipping and shrieking back towards the inflatable, brandishing her teeth. The deafening explosion of stale air and latex could be heard as far away as the ‘I guess your weight’ stall.
Perhaps it was shock. Perhaps it was shame. Perhaps it was something entirely unconnected, but from that glorious day onwards Rudolph Giuliani turned her back on society, spending day after day in the library drawing vaginas. She sat silently, every now and then coughing up a bit of rubber, before carefully adding it to a saliva strewn pile. True love affects mankind in mysterious ways, compelling him to suffer hardship and discomfort in pursuit of his goal. Some feel an angelic hand brush innocently across their neck and vow never to wash again. Some treasure a receipt or a sock or a discarded chocolate wrapper which their lady has left. Howard’s love was such that he never removed that stiletto from his leg, which caused no end of pain or infection. Whenever he felt faint from loss of blood; whenever he had to cut a left-footed-high-heel-shaped-hole in a new pair of trousers, he thought of that perfect encounter and smiled.
Howard’s eyes returned their focus to the text on the page. He had taken a book randomly from the shelf as an excuse. It was Essays on Pope ed. Rogers 821.531 R103. Men around him on the same table held superior sandwiches (ciabatta straddling Parma ham or pâté or houmous), spoke of Nietzsche and annotated their leather bound copies. Rudolph Giuliani glanced up occasionally from her sketches; her grey pointed nose twitching furtively in the direction of the intellectuals, each glance shredding Howard’s heart. He hated her longing looks and her head’s shy retreat back to her page. It was evident that Rudolph Giuliani lusted after their knowledge. ‘She desires education and erudite bonds’, thought Howard. ‘A man who will provide captions to her drawings of vaginas.’ Howard yearned to compete with their wisdom. He could not be faulted for his devotion. These men did not look toward her in wonder; they did not have rashes as a result of a skin allergy to Scotchguard Protector. But she admired their intellect, and he could think of nothing more intellectual than scrawling an inspired piece of literary criticism in a library book. Howard stared at his page. He didn’t know the first thing about Pope. Especially not about the importance of proper nouns in The Dunciad. Yet he had to act or he would lose her forever. He unzipped his bag and retrieved a plastic biro. His hand trembled as it gripped the pen. Sweat gathered at the roots of his hair and trickled down the back of his neck. He applied ink to the margin:
If you can’t annex talent, you can at least borrow your rival’s name.
He exhaled. There. It was done. He didn’t know what it meant, but nor would she. With a hopeful smile, he turned towards Rudolph Giuliani. She hadn’t noticed. Her eyes kept to her page, her nose twitched as now and again she allowed a sneaking look at the intellectuals, who were still discussing and frowning and scribbling, their sandwiches half eaten on the table in front of them. Howard bit his lip in despair. Perhaps she craved measured discussion, not researched annotation.
Frustrated, Howard changed tack. He needed to assert himself with debate. He needed to say something clever. Something insightful. He had it. Howard swallowed and cleared his throat. He cleared his throat again. His crackling voice interrupted the discussion of the men.
‘Of course, we see both phrases regularly in modern society, but is there really any discernible difference between the caveats “beware” and “be aware?”’ he looked at Giuliani, then at the men. Nothing. Her head stayed motionless as she shaded a clitoris. An intellectual coughed, made his excuses and left. Howard persisted in a less assertive murmur: ‘It seems a waste of letters to me. Have you ever seen a ‘To Let’ sign and added an ‘I’? So it reads…? He tailed off. Absolutely nothing.
The two remaining intellectuals stared at him incredulously. Silently they packed up their books, tucked their chairs under the table and walked away. The general consensus among them was that an idiot had disrupted their ‘Is God dead?’ seminar with inane toilet talk. One intellectual vowed never to admit that he had once committed that very same act of graffiti in his youth.
Howard sighed and rose from his seat. It was useless. He picked up a half eaten sandwich from where an intellectual had once sat and studied desolately the pattern of rosemary and focaccia bread, preparing to leave the place for good.
Rudolph Giuliani slowly lifted her head from the page and trained her grey eyes for the first time on Howard’s dejected form. Steadily, she put down her sketching pencil and raised her skeletal arms into a position not unlike that of a sparring boxer. She rose to Howard’s height and smiled. In a controlled and deliberate manner, her arms and hands began to create rhythmical patterns. Howard became lost in her pupils as her nose twitched once more.
‘Hello’ She signed, her brittle arms becoming more bold and defined as her confidence grew stronger. ‘I don’t know your name but I have been aware of your presence since you first sat at this table. I remember you and the day we met but I felt so ashamed of what I did that summer’s day in February that I never deserved to see your face. My eardrums burst on that bouncy castle. I became deaf with the impact because of my foolish rage; mute with the rubber lodged in my voice box. You tried to stop me and I am thankful. After that day, there was nothing left for me to do but sit in this library in your presence, pretending to study the female anatomy. As the months wore on I longed to communicate with you. In the evenings I studied sign language and prepared this speech; during the day I sat here, working on the definition around the labia. The truth is, I could never tell you how I feel (her arms becoming tired with frantic, passionate motion). It was only when I caught the scent of the houmous that one of the other men left, and my stomach turned over with hunger from a lack of breakfast that I caught your eye and felt strong enough to carry out my desire. I know that my love for you is requited. Your furtive but longing glances. The stiletto. Take me away. Let’s leave this library. I know you care. I need someone who will love and take hold of me. You are that man. You understood me when I lost myself at the fete. You looked past my ghastly appearance when others cringed. I’ll teach you sign language. And when all this rubber is gone from my larynx I will be free to speak again. Please leave with me. I know I’m not pretty. I know I’m unstable. But I am eternally yours.’
Howard took in the final flourish of her flapping limbs. The two stood in silence, their eyes locked together as their surroundings whirled and melted away. She waited, frozen with expectation. ‘She’s mental,’ he thought as he put his bag over his shoulder and wrenched the heel of the stiletto from his thigh. His trousers became warm and wet as he hobbled away. ‘If she’s just going to wave her arms around a bit and not even talk.’ He threw the stiletto into the recycled paper basket. ‘What a waste of a year’
