“I’m running a marathon tomorrow, so I’m not having any carbs,” the woman at the next table intones while her server stands impassively, waiting. “Are there any carbs in Chicken Parmesan?”
Katie’s eyes widen in the manner familiar to all married couples, the universal sign for, “Holy shit are you hearing this?” which, indeed, I am.
“Not that I don’t trust you,” she continues as we pause to eavesdrop, “but ‘Siri, are there carbs in Chicken Parmesan?’”
The woman sitting across from me on the subway continues her ritual: placing her fists on the line of her jaw and pushing her knuckles up to her cheekbones, then rapidly repeating that same gesture over and over. With her eyes closed in concentration, and the repetitive nature of her movements, she comes to resemble nothing so much as a hamster in its ablutions, caught in some kind of feedback loop. As I watch, she goes from mildly amusing, to creepy, and finally to boring, as all weirdos in New York who choose to practice their weirdness in public must eventually do.
Just when I think she’s never going to stop, she stops, and begins rubbing from her hairline down to the space between her eyebrows, and all of the sudden she’s interesting again.
The grey-felt furred Frenchie, eyes huge and solemn, watches me with his head cocked at an extreme angle from across the department floor, while his owner stabs furiously at his phone with his index finger.
The dog’s ears are far too big for his head - bats envy these ears, elephants nod their enormous skulls in admiration at the sheer audacity of these proportions.
I cock my head in imitation, for no reason except that it’s fun, expecting perhaps that this will cause my new friend to cock his head further in response, but instead this seems to transfix him. His eyes widen slightly, his head frozen at it’s curious angle, but when I grow bored with our game and start to walk away, he positions himself between me and his owner, all fifteen inches tall of him bristling at the sheer effrontery of me having possibly mocked him.
