_Scholfield_, by Geoffrey Burling

     A man named Scholfield lived above the bar on Hawthorne.  She knew this 
because one July evening, while she was out back having a smoke, he came home 
with his friends who called him Scholfield.  She knew it was his name because 
the next day, before going in to work, she stopped out in front to look at 
the mailboxes and found the name Scholfield there, printed in block letters.
The printing looked as if it had been done by a draftsman, and she wondered 
as she sold beer and talked flirtingly to the regulars if he was a student, or 
maybe he worked downtown in an office.
     When she was out back having a smoke, standing in the graveled alley 
behind the brick building, she had an eye out for him.  He always came in by 
the wooden stairs in back of the building, and as she smoked she wondered what 
this said about him.
     Most of the time, she didn't have an eye out for him.  A guy in a leather 
jacket roomed in the house across the graveled alley, and while she was having 
a smoke the two of them would talk flirtingly.  He said he worked at the used 
record store in the next block, and said he used to work as a roadie for 
Van Halen, but she had never seen him in the used record store.  Once, in a
hurry for work, she had stopped at the Plaid Pantry up the street for a pack of 
cigarettes.  Through the glass door she saw the guy who wore a leather jacket 
at the cash register.  He did not see her.  Although the long lines at 
Fred Meyer made her late for work, she bought her cigarettes there, so he could 
continue to tell her he worked at the record store.
     She knew which window was Scholfield's.  One night, her shift over, she 
waited behind the bar for the guy rooming across the graveled alley to see her 
and invite her in.  She had changed into a denim miniskirt and wore rouge to hide 
the acne scars on her cheeks.  She looked up to see a light on in one of the 
apartments.  Through the window she saw on the wall a drawing of a man inside 
a square and a circle.  She knew it was a reproduction of a drawing by Leonardo 
da Vinci, because she had seen a picture of it in grade school.  Until she saw 
the poster, she had been thinking about whether she should move in with the guy 
she was waiting for.  After she saw it, even while she rested her head on the 
shoulder of the guy who did not work at the record store, she thought about 
Scholfield.
     She had talked with Scholfield that summer, once or twice.  He seemed to 
know a great deal, and had an opinion about everything.  He had read much, and 
she had seen him come home carrying books from the library.  One free Saturday 
afternoon she walked over the Belmont branch library, looked at it from the 
sidewalk, and wondered how many of those books Scholfield had read, if not all 
of them.  Walking home, she tried to imagine what it was like to have read 
so many books.
     One September night, while she was out back having a smoke, Scholfield 
came up the graveled alley with his friends.  She smiled, but Scholfield's 
eyes were on one of his friends: the friend had found an old shoe, and began to 
kick it around like a soccer ball.  The other friends joined in and at last 
Scholfield himself joined the excitement.  Running and shouting in the dark, they 
all looked identical to her.  Then the shoe tumbled to rest in the rectangle of 
light from the doorway to the bar, and she saw the stiching joining the sole to 
the rest of the shoe was coming unsewn.  This reminded her of one of her pairs 
of dress pumps; yesterday she had discovered the fabric near the base of the heel 
had frayed, revealing the white plastic core of the heel.  This had upset her 
because she could not afford a new pair, and she had no shoes to wear if someone 
asked her out to a nice place downtown.  She ground out the unfinished 
cigarette under her shoe and went back to selling beer.
     From then on she made herself not look up when Scholfield came home, until 
it no longer mattered to her.