More Solitude

She wanted to be a detective and catch the bad guys while wearing a flattering red lady-suit and carrying a mother-of-pearl-handled pistol. She was the beautiful buxom bottle blonde. She lived alone in a walk up tenement with dusty venetian blinds and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, swaying whenever the L train roared by. She played La Traviata and Ray Charles on her phonograph. She painted her nails red, and sometimes played solitaire while baking biscuits, greens and gravy. She sometimes went undercover as a male taxi driver, overheard everything and wrote it down. Eventually she reinvented herself as an undertaker to have more solitude.