“Please, sir, plague me with your presence; I’ll be in that first train car,” chanted Dalia to herself as she reapplied her mauve lipstick. The woman in the seat across from her watched her with a smile. Dalia shot the woman a fleeting look, her eyelids recoiled and relaxed in a half second’s time and stood up. She walked to the sliding door as the train slowed, jerked, one hand reaching for the back seat handle.
“How many times have I told myself not to look?!” Dalia chastised herself, her darting glances dancing as awkwardly as she tried (& tottered,) balancing on her 2 inch heels. Briskly smoothing her perfectly pressed pantsuit, she straightened her posture and readjusted her purse so that it settled on her shoulder just as comfortably as a moment before. She took one conscious breath. Now, calmly and decisively, she focused her eyes on a crack in the outdated wooden platform. Slipping her fingers into her slender jacket pockets, she felt the plastic wrapping of a fortune cookie. Despite how sensitive she tried to be of her surroundings, she somehow overlooked this giant bulge in her front pocket for hours. The train jerked to a halt; “damn those new drivers;” ripping her hands out of her pockets, her jaw clenched and bicep tensed gripping the seat yet again in preparation for a stumble.
Stepping with a purposeful stride out of the car, she turned left and realized she needed to turn right; “just like every day, damn it!” Her eyebrows furrowed in support of her eyes searching quickly for any witnesses to her aloofness. Dalia followed a few yards behind the sparse crowd that regularly gets off at this stop at this time.
“5:45pm.”
Her steps less important than before, she reached back into her pocket for that fortune cookie. “Tell me something I don’t already know. I dare you.” She actually murmured this aloud, but one could tell by her demeanor that she had no idea she did so. The plastic packaging, ornery as all others, wouldn’t open until she used her teeth. The fortune cookie snapped in irregular patterns that were instantly demolished by her teeth too. She leered at the fortune she kept wedged between her thumb and forefinger…
“You are headed in the right direction. Trust your instincts.”“How many times have I told myself not to look?!” Dalia chastised herself, her darting glances dancing as awkwardly as she tried (& tottered,) balancing on her 2 inch heels. Briskly smoothing her perfectly pressed pantsuit, she straightened her posture and readjusted her purse so that it settled on her shoulder just as comfortably as a moment before. She took one conscious breath. Now, calmly and decisively, she focused her eyes on a crack in the outdated wooden platform. Slipping her fingers into her slender jacket pockets, she felt the plastic wrapping of a fortune cookie. Despite how sensitive she tried to be of her surroundings, she somehow overlooked this giant bulge in her front pocket for hours. The train jerked to a halt; “damn those new drivers;” ripping her hands out of her pockets, her jaw clenched and bicep tensed gripping the seat yet again in preparation for a stumble.
Stepping with a purposeful stride out of the car, she turned left and realized she needed to turn right; “just like every day, damn it!” Her eyebrows furrowed in support of her eyes searching quickly for any witnesses to her aloofness. Dalia followed a few yards behind the sparse crowd that regularly gets off at this stop at this time.
“5:45pm.”
Her steps less important than before, she reached back into her pocket for that fortune cookie. “Tell me something I don’t already know. I dare you.” She actually murmured this aloud, but one could tell by her demeanor that she had no idea she did so. The plastic packaging, ornery as all others, wouldn’t open until she used her teeth. The fortune cookie snapped in irregular patterns that were instantly demolished by her teeth too. She leered at the fortune she kept wedged between her thumb and forefinger…
…She imagined its author laughing maniacally over The Primordial Typewriter and a cookie batter cauldron with utterly spiteful delight – laughing at each letter – cackling even more mightily at the spaces between the words. Those blank spaces. Uninterruptible. un-interpretable. They cemented that damned phrase into intelligible pieces on that small life-corrupting piece of paper....
More to come, maybe.
No comments:
Post a Comment