She leans across the table towards the face and asks, “Are you a man or a woman?”
The body across from her is wide and chesty, held together by a dull green jacket about to split open freeing layers of winter clothes. The head is covered by a flowery scarf underneath a well-used black-knitted hat. The face is round and shiny giving the impression of being slick but not soft. A pair of black glasses hang on the bridge of a bony, broad nose. The eyes look into hers across a well-situated brown bag of food and a paper cup.
“Does it matter?” The voice is smooth as blades on ice.
She sits back to consider. Her eyes blink. The mouth joins in with a puckered, lowered lip. The automatic powers – blinking, puckering, and yes, considering.
Before her thoughts come, before her words are expressed, she watches as the body across from her stands up. Before she speaks, a hand as big and thick and long as an imagined giant opens and offers her a mint. The kind twice-wrapped in yellow paper.
The gift is held under her nose; it is impossible to ignore. She looks up over the top of her plastic sunglasses and shakes off the offering.
“Take it.” The voice insists.
She takes a sip of the cooled off milky coffee from a paper cup and keeps her head down. The body is right, she figures. For weeks, no – more than weeks, months she’s been sick. The coughing. The headaches. And worst of all, the sleepless drip-down-her-throat nights accompanied by wandering in the lightless but familiar rooms, hoping for relief that never comes. It is some instinctual impulse to do; to take some action against what comes in the shape and size of threats to the body. She concedes, the mind doesn’t seem to be able to win – it’s a miserable weapon, often no protection at all. In between these recollections she wonders if the mind and the body are allies – in cahoots with one another. All of this appears in a flash.
She wants to follow the collusion conspiracy but when she opens her eyes the muscular hand remains open and still and the mint, like a butterfly lure, sits on the plump ridges of thick skin.
“Do you work with your hands?” She asks as if she already knows the answer.
The stocky fingers close like the mouth of a snapping turtle catching hold of a passing prey. Just as fast, the hand, now a fist, disappears into the pocket where the mint once lived. There is a shuffle against the grey-speckled table with thighs moving forward and hands grabbing the previous arranged food bag and coffee mug.
She looks up. First, she watches the body scuffle with the uncomfortable, little chair, pushing it back. Then she feels a yearning, a pull from within her to tell the body to stop the move – to stop the leaving. It, too, was very fast. Quick as a wink, she’d say to others who might listen. By the time all this appears in her mind the the body is out of sight. Leaving her mouthing the words to an empty chair.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I’ve lived as a man and a woman
Image Credit: Fly