Snapshot: Intimate / Anonymous

One of the things I love about living in DC is the forced intimacy it creates with total strangers. Here are some moments that stuck out lately.
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Two women, sitting opposite each other in the front window of a nail salon. Their fingers drying in the same magic-blue-light-machine on the table top, their toes doing the same on the floor. Heads inclined in opposite directions, bent over gossip magazines. Like those paper chains where you fold the paper in half a lot, cut out a heart, unfold, and there: a whole string of identical hearts.

On the metro, I study the rings on your right hand as it grips the rail 3 inches from my face. You like dark jewels set in gold and you keep your nails done. You fixate on my feet in their silver sandals. I feel your eyes and wiggle my toes; you look elsewhere. Caught you.

On the bus from New York, from the seat behind me: “Baby, I told you I didn’t sleep with that white bitch!” The silence becomes electric around me as everyone starts to listen.

From my office window, I watch you climb the stairs, happy you’ve found some shade. You put down your backpack. You take off your shoes, slowly. You pop the top on your tall boy of whatever in the paper bag. You drink, slowly. I watch you.

I read your discarded shopping list: what are Crushers?

I am crossing the street. I am watching the sky. The clouds are grey-green-black and moving much too aggressively. I am listening to the thunder. I am trying to beat it home. We cross in the middle of East Capitol and you say: “Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” I nod emphatically and we smile.

On the train, a man and a woman across the aisle from each other. She reads the paper, he reads a book. Both are emotive readers. I watch her face, all puckered eyebrows and shaking head. His eyes are big Os of surprise and his mouth is slack. I imagine that I introduce them, they fall in love, then they read next to each other in bed just the same way.