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She is seated in the bathroom stall, staring at her black leather toes.
She is in the space beside life, because life is where we aren't animals; we
are people. We aren't little bundles of chemicals, nutrient-processors who
eat to live to procreate to die. In life, we are as we appear on the outside;
we are delightful ornaments. We take quiet breaks to attend to our primal
needs; like looking at childhood photographs on a quiet afternoon, it is a
hidden but repeated activity. The stomach does not exist, nor do the
intestines, nor the heart, bladder, the uterus. The processes of our organs
are as irrelevant as the dust in the air.
Behind the door marked, LADIES, this is obvious, but she isn't
thinking about it. She's thinking about how her skirt is too tight around her
hips, and wondering how long until intermission is over; she's calculating
how late she'll get home, how many hours of sleep she'll get. She's wiggling
her achy toes and cracking her knuckles. She hears the ladies' room door
swoosh open, and, still thinking of minutes and hours, she looks up, and
that's when it happens--nutrient-processor meets people--she glances through
the space between stall panels and what she sees is a pair of eyes, little
black pupils looking square at hers.
Well, the clash freezes the moment, like a cold front meeting
Eastern Seaboard humidity. Sink woman and toilet woman's muscles all lock.
Toilet woman is sitting in perfect silence and stillness; her blood ceases to
move in her veins. and she is suddenly aware of the coldness of the porcelain
toilet, floor tiles, and pink-painted sheet metal.
Sink woman's people-ness suddenly breaks; she yields to the
inclination to blink. All machinery restarts, and toilet woman looks back at
her shoes, actively not wondering what sink woman is doing at her sink that
takes so long! She remains silent until the second swoosh of the door signals
her solitude's return. The roar of flushing water is at last permitted.
And escape is complete.
She doesn't look in the mirror as she washes her hands. As she
pushes the door back open, the powerful warbling from the stage rushes her to
her seat once again. John turns to her and says,
"Sure took long enough. What, did you fall in?"
"Sh," she says to him.
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