Late one afternoon, while waiting for a Fifth Avenue bus, I noticed a taxi stopacross the street to let out a girl who ran up the steps of the Forty-second Streetpublic library. She was through the doors before I recognized her, which waspardonable, for Holly and libraries were not an easy association to make. I letcuriosity guide me between the lions, debating on the way whether I should admitfollowing her or pretend coincidence. In the end I did neither, but concealed myselfsome tables away from her in the general reading room, where she sat behind herdark glasses and a fortress of literature shed gathered at the desk. She sped fromone book to the next, intermittently lingering on a page, always with a frown, as if itwere printed upside down. She had a pencil poised above paper -- nothing seemedto catch her fancy, still now and then, as though for the hell of it, she made laboriousscribblings. Watching her, I remembered a girl Id known in school, a grind, MildredGrossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her stained fingersthat dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turnedtoward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be moreopposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship,and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the averagepersonality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo acomplete overhaul -- desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. Allright, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had incommon with Holly Golightly. They would never change because theyd been giventheir character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: theone had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. Iimagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for itsnutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never bedifferent. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined stepthat took small notice of those cliffs at the left. Such profound observations made meforget where I was; I came to, startled to find myself in the gloom of the library, andsurprised all over again to see Holly there. It was after seven, she was fresheningher lipstick and perking up her appearance from what she deemed correct for alibrary to what, by adding a bit of scarf, some earrings, she considered suitable forthe Colony. When shed left, I wandered over to the table where her booksremained; they were what I had wanted to see. South by Thunderbird. Byways ofBrazil. The Political Mind of Latin America. And so forth.

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