Kristi-Ly Green

Yvette Gilbert wears Yvette Gilbert’s gloves, the fingers of which are shaped identically to Yvette Gilbert’s nose. Yvette Gilbert’s nose is long and lean, and deserving of compliments – just like the gloves. When Yvette Gilbert raises her arm to wave at you in a busy museum or a dreary café, it looks as if five of Yvette Gilbert’s noses are sniffing the air, and that’s how you know it is she. Now, most people would think themselves cursed or ill-omened to have gloves the shape of noses, or fingers for that matter, as well. But Yvette Gilbert has ten of the longest and sweetest, most beautiful fingers, that perfect strangers risk their own lives to admire them, and Yvette Gilbert considers herself to be lucky. There is nothing like an admirer, so Yvette Gilbert does speak (otherwise she is modesty in girls). But she knows that her fingers are the shape of her nose, and has garnered a whole repertoire of useful gesticulations de-signed to accommodate the asset. When, for example, you are crossing the street, she will calmly remove her hands from her coat and point toward the other side of the road. This way, says Yvette, the cars know I am coming (meanwhile I, who have tried it alone only once, found it not so effective, missing a narrow death just as I started). So instead, I take Yvette, and we meet in the concert hall, and when the pianist stands up to be received, Yvette waves her hands from their place in her gloves, and the audience claps all the harder. Why, every conductor this side of Pa-ree knows to look for those noses when he turns from the stage, wipes his brow. ’Til the man catches sight of the hands of Yvette, no evening is ever a success. Yvette Gilbert’s hands symbol lucky.