Helen (formerly) of Troy hides out in Atlantic City
Before dropping out of her life, Richard seemed to awaken something in Helen, or perhaps brought it closer to the surface, for afterward, though she felt the same and wore the same dowdy clothes, she was no longer shrouded in the same anonymity.
People noticed her more. Strangers would greet her out of the blue or stop by the booth at the flea market where she sold “No Tie Shoelaces” to tell her their pet theories. The man who worked at the parking lot next to the market abandoned his post to explain to Helen that the reason we only use ten percent of our brains is because that’s all we have time for.
A man who’d just lost $7,000 at blackjack told Helen, as he wove a pair of purple tieless laces into his wingtips, that the reason he’d never been lucky in love was because he was colorblind and therefore lacked an intuitive understanding of harmony.
The young woman who sold Helen Italian ices during the dog days explained that the reason men and women can’t get along is because they were originally two different species from two planets, brought together on Earth by a master race from yet another planet who wanted to see what sort of offspring they’d produce.
And once, on a quiet afternoon as Helen sat daydreaming at her post, a young man wearing a backwards baseball cap walked by and exclaimed, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world!” He laughed as he said it, not in mockery, but as though he were so lucky he could afford to toss off the most extravagant compliments to anyone who crossed his path.
Though the phrase was normally one to make her wince, Helen laughed right along with him.
No need to set your sails before the wind,
Or journey far to find the long-sought goal.
From dark India let Perseus bear his bride,
From Hellas let the Trojan steal his girl;
In Rome of lovely women there’s no dearth;
“Here you shall find the pick of all the earth.”
–Ovid, from Ars Amatoria
Dawn Corrigan’s work has appeared in print and online journals including Six Little Things, Six Sentences, 55 Words, Nanoism, Rumble, Tuesday Shorts, and elsewhere. She’s an associate editor at Girls with Insurance, and her nonfiction appears regularly at The Nervous Breakdown.