Scene (Seen) near Boston's Copley Square

She had a cap of bright white hair in a swinging cut just below her ears. Her smartly-cut jacket in tangerine stopped at her waist to display her black well-cut slacks. Black wedge shoes lifted her about two inches above the ground which was important because she was five-feet tall at the most. Her body was more gently square than curved.

I was watching her out of a taxi window. Here’s the important thing: As striking as she was in general her face revealed her as being in her unsurgically-altered late eighties. But there’s more. She drew my attention because she was crossing in the middle of a block -- Boston style -- and was giving the classic “What” gesture with her shoulders and face to the taxi that had just braked to avoid her. Her upper body gesture with the accompanying facial expression could measure with the best of “street” language. But there’s more. As she made these gestures -- somewhat incongruous in the gorgeous outfit and coming from the small person capped with such a striking haircut -- she was putting a dark (Belgian?) chocolate into her mouth and held another one in her other hand.

She walked on through the next lane of traffic and proceeded with constant energy diagonally across Copley Square, a paved place with a fountain, a few trees, a few flower beds and some sculptures, in front of the Boston Public Garden.

As my taxi moved on I almost told the driver to let me out. I wanted to follow her, maybe talk with her. WHO are you? But the weight of groceries piled into the taxi’s trunk held me snared as my taxi moved on.

Who was she? Her clothing could have cost a lot or could be made up of expensive pieces she’d saved for years. The haircut was both casual and stunning in the way that either costs a lot or maybe was done in a student academy. The chocolates? Who knows?

But there was so much more: the spirit, the mien, the persona, the being that she was. Did I invent her? No, my good imagination is not that good. A fantasy? No, I was sane that day under the blue skies.

If she continued her diagonal path through Copley Square it would lead to the Copley Plaza Hotel with its gilded entry hall, its brilliant chandeliers, its Oak Room bar the most elegant in Boston. Was she staying at that stately hotel after dropping into Logan Airport on her private jet -- a roaming trillionairess who did as she pleased as the years ticked into larger and larger numbers?

Was she a free spirit who would continue on past the Copley Plaza into the deeps of the South End of Boston to her studio apartment where she had lived for decades? The South End with its historic brownstones sprucing farther every week from its polyglot past, some of its artists yet hanging on.

Who ever she was, she was a vision. Maybe an avatar? From the past? From the future? From the slippery now that some of us yearn to inhabit?