One of the Angelas (KOI 16)
Columbia. Fall, 1974
Angela Mueller belongs to a class of women with which I've been beguiled since my mid-teens. I can count -- let me think -- oh, a couple of Angelas in various poses and situations over the last twenty years. The odd thing is that despite mutual appreciation and real, everyday affinity, none of the Angelas -- not even the current example -- ever really tangled themselves in my usually sticky heartstrings. Maybe the reason is a pure class thing. No, no, that couldn't be.
But most Angelas had strained to finish high school and some failed, and most no doubt are still straining, cheerfully enough, simply to cope with everyday life. But I'd like to think -- and so would you, I bet -- that Angie Mueller and I fell together for the simple reason that our simple bodies liked to simply strain, cheerfully enough, with one another.
We blew some late afternoon languors together in the summer and fall of 1974, in the trailer court we shared next to the Interstate that ran through College Town. Becca and I found employment in Centerburg the following spring, and though Centerburg was just down the road apiece, neither Angela nor I felt any desire to continue our pattern of behavior once it became too inconvenient.
Like I said, Angela Mueller was sort of a type, a working class midwestern Germanic type. Her body was nicely sized, but a bit squarish and with an obvious farmgirl strength that went beyond mere muscle tone. In my high school days, my friends and I would have said her face "looked like somebody's mom" -- it was pretty, high-cheekboned and strong-chinned, with a supple severity about the mouth that made the curve of her plucked eyebrows all the more strangely alluring. Her brown eyes had an intelligence that made her situation seem remarkable. That situation was: aged twenty-six, ten years married, with a job as an LPN on the graveyard shift. Her husband was a career Navy man, who sent regular checks back to the trailer from the sunny South China Sea.
Angela's "weakness," I suppose, was a mere lack of ambition. She was cheerfully ready to take comfort where it presented itself easily, and to ask or plan for nothing more.
But love of easy comfort served to set off her strong but unassuming form cheaply and well. Look at her over her scrambled-egg and coffee breakfast this warm October afternoon. Her brown hair is awry as usual, her feet bare, her strong legs and rangy hips squeezed into ten-year-old Levis. Her inside-out sweatshirt has shrunk with years of washing. The powder-blue sleeves stop halfway down her light tan forearms. When she moves in any direction, a flicker of flesh appears above the waist of her beltless jeans. The shirt itself is comfortably loose, but not so loose as to conceal the curves beneath -- the full breasts, the peasant shoulders softened by the thick cotton.
"Hi, hon." The kitchenette has a homey burnt smell of toast and frying pan. Angie scoops up the last forkful of eggs, takes her coffee cup and moves to the sofa where I've just collapsed. It's three p.m. My classes are finished for the day. I've got two hours before Becca has to be picked up from work.
Sipping her coffee, Angie sits back against the arm of the sofa opposite my corner. Her feet rest on my lap. Her faded jeans have a special shading over her tight crotch. An inch of midriff shows between the ragged waist of her jeans and the bottom of her sweatshirt.
Angela follows my eyes as they take her in. She smiles.
"Some night, last night," she sighs. "We were short an orderly, and I had to vacate two stiffs practically by myself. That night nurse isn't worth diddly..."
Angie takes a last sip of coffee, digs in her heels and scoots over to me.
