The San Remo Striped Turtleneck

93 MacDougal Street.

You’re tucked into a booth at San Remo Café. Pressed-tin ceiling. Black-and-white 
tile floors. 

A second espresso on the way. The dollar salad, too. You survive on those.

In your hands, Tennessee’s new work-in-progress. He's asked you for notes, with a caveat scrawled on the cover page: 

"Not too kind. Not too honest."

On you, wide-legged cropped chinos and this turtleneck sweater. 

Wire-rimmed glasses perched on your perfectly pert nose. An array of silver rings on your fingers. 

Your fingers on the very pulse of a literary movement. 

Years from this moment, in 1960, it’s here at the San Remo that writer Ron Sukenick sees blue jeans on a woman for the first time. 

Is that you, too?