Keith

Sometimes I let my backpack sit next to me on the train. Like a few weeks ago, for example - right before I met Keith. He came into the train and seemed confused about where to sit. Though there were other places all around, I felt like I should move my bag, in case that was his holdup. I asked him if he wanted to sit. He sat.

"I like friendly people," he said. "People who smile seem to know the same thing I do. I like to think they come from the same place I come from."

"And where is that?" I asked.

"My mother's womb," he replied, smiling under his sheety, white mustache. His teeth were yellow and few.

"Me too," I laughed. "I come from 'my mother's womb,' too."

"We musta been womb-mates," he suggested. "Two thousand years ago." He had sparkly eyes.

I looked on confusedly while he held up his brown leather briefcase and explained the perplexing circumstances surrounding its lost strap hook. He looked like a veteran - camouflage cargo pants, light denim jacket, long white hair.

"People who aren't friendly just walk around... look at 'em, they're in pain." He gestured to the full row of passengers across the way. "They read newspapers and play with their electronics to hide their eyes." I could see the river behind them as we crossed the bridge into the city.

"Maybe they're just in pain for now," I offered. "Maybe they're short on sleep or sick or whatever."

"You might think so. Although you're a woman! Women don't think. You're lucky you're a woman, so you don't have to think."

I was silent. With two stops to my destination, it seemed like a bad time to tackle that statement.

"Ya know, people like me go to the movies and get ideas down in Hollywood, you know? They'll do anything in Hollywood. S & M people like me, who cut off their tattoos with razor blades and go to the movies..." He trailed off.

"What?" What?, indeed. I was lost at his rapid shift of conversation and frightened by the content it brought. I wasn't even sure I had heard him correctly.

"Never you mind. You just pretend you didn't hear that, smiley. What I meant to say is, I'm going to the movies. Goin' to Lowe's to the movies." He laughed.

"Oh, okay!"

I clung to his mention of the movies - I made sure we did not stray from that topic. Meanwhile, my mind raced through images sprung from his confession and the mere utterance of 'razor blade'. I wondered if he had a sharp object with him - in his briefcase or the pocket of his white undershirt. I was afraid of Keith. I had trusted him with my smile and ears and personal space, and somewhere between his long mustache and Black Swan, he betrayed me. I arrived at work feeling ridiculously naive.

Furry Friend

A beautiful girl came on the train last night holding nothing but a stuffed puffin. She looked like a model - tall and blonde with a clean white coat, Uggs, trendy fur hat. But her bird was not stylish or novel. She was way whiter than its smutty, sooty fur. She carried it in a hug and placed it on her lap when she sat, without a hint of embarrassment.

Museum Advertisement

Paul Revere looked like Jack Black, I think.

The Coldest Night Yet

Weather.com says it feels like 20 degrees Fahrenheit tonight. And I rode my bike home from work. I thought I was going to die of hypothermia and freeze onto the grates of a gutter before I was halfway to my destination. I cursed my prickly frozen thighs, my numb finger pads, my cartilaginous nose, my neighborhood far away. And then I saw a woman in a too-big poofy coat and an orange stocking cap, pushing a shopping cart full of torn garbage bags uphill in the middle of the street. And I am warm at home now with hot tea in my belly, and I have no idea where she is.