Two Readers

That they were reading, not what they were reading, mattered.

Two Russian women on Sacramento Street, of the age that carries a cane and wears more clothes than necessary because it is always cold, waiting outside for a friend inside, agreed to be photographed by a passerby happy to see two people reading.

One reads a paperback, a romance, the other Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. She who is reading Tolstoy won't look up from her book for the photographer.

The photographer, on his way to a lunch with his friend, a writer, was pleased to report when he reached the restaurant that he had seen the two ladies reading. That the sight had made him happy, that perhaps there was a future for the activity in its native form, despite evidence to the contrary.

After a fine lunch with his friend, spent talking mostly about literary matters, he walked along Sacramento Street, passing the bench where he'd earlier encountered the two readers. He supposed they might be at lunch themselves, or napping, books by their side.

The poet James Wright, when asked who he wrote for, said "for one intelligent reader."