this year's girl

She walked into the Costa Cafe like she was walking into a yacht.
I felt her before I saw her.
A ripple went through the cafe.
Heads turned.
Most girls can't wear hot pants.
My counsel to any that ask me is: Don't wear hot pants.
Hot pants leave your legs with nowhere to go.
They upset other females, discombobulate the males, and frighten children.
They'll bring you the sort of attention you don't want or need.
This is the first time I've ever seen a girl wearing hot pants who didn't look like she wanted or needed to hide.
There was an aura about her.
The rest of us could hide if we wanted to.
It was some entrance.
I mean it was an entrance that worked as more than just walking through a door.
Outside of the film world, I've never seen anything like it.
This was the sort of scene beloved of Hollywood.
It was like an Audrey Hepburn film.
Only this girl is better looking than Audrey Hepburn.
So she walked in.
Like in a movie.
The arrival of a new phenomenon into the lives of the jaded Dublin pseudo intelligentsia.
She walked in to the Costa Cafe on Dawson Street during a bright September mid afternoon, and everyone stopped drinking, and everyone looked, and everyone wondered.
Her blonde waist length hair was tied back giving her as near a demure appearance as she will ever achieve.
Her gentle clear eyed face shone with an improbable innocence.
Gentle and clear eyed.
The most beautiful face imaginable.
The soul shows on it.
She is this year's girl.
Evgenia Tarasova.
Luminously pretty.
Hopelessly sought after.
Multifariously envied.
Creating a splash of colour, energy, spirit and sedition in the modish self contained youth worshipping world that passes for Dublin society.
Every year Dublin has a new this year's girl.
Someone who briefly becomes a source of dreams, speculation, and obsession among the wealthy urbanites, the rugby players, and the College students who make up the passing social scene.
This year it's her.
This year's girl.
The title doesn't necessarily connote happiness or accomplishment or a great life to come.
It just means that for a brief hour as the old year ends, she will be the story.
Her story will touch other stories.
The story of cold old Dublin will be about her.
It doesn't happen to many.
Just one person every year.
She will be talked of in hallowed hallways she never suspects.
Loved by fools whose name she never knows.
Yes.
Her fame is still relatively restricted at this stage.
Perhaps it will always be so.
Destiny will decide.
For now she is a shining phenomenon, a jewel that dazzles, but remains paradoxically unknown outside of the select echelons in which she walks.
College kids downing pints in city pubs, speak longingly and fantasistically of her.
Young rugby playing Blackrock yobs who are wont to beat teenagers to death outside night clubs, covet her like gold, stalking her through the dance halls, dreaming of securing an introduction.
The spoilt brattish children of foreign ambassadors invite her to their parties and hope desperately she might accept.
Euro trash royalty, sons and daughters of meaningless Counts and Countessas, seek her companionship and advice.
The occasional poet with an eye for beauty, such as myself, I know her.
This year's girl.
She is in her shining days.
Still there is an innocence to her.
Truly.
She is a treasure, but a relatively secret treasure, famous but possessed of a comparatively local fame, much talked about but only really known among a quite narrow group of Dubliners.
The spoilt rich snob urbanites.
The louche feckless rugby players.
The lovers.
The dreamers.
And me.