Monday, April 13, 2015

On the way home I was fascinated by the Orthodox couple sitting across from me. She was extremely beautiful. A classic Jewish beauty. Raven-tressed. Petite, stylish. He was large and slovenly, bleary-eyed. His chest and belly bulged in his button-down shirt. His wrists were too big for the cuffs. I wondered what she thought of him. What she really thought of him. They sat placidly together, neither making any visible gestures of affection nor of contempt. She looked around the train, as he did, eyes moving up, down, left, right. Once or twice meeting mine. Then he yawned extravagantly, like a hippopotamus. She didn’t seem to mind at all.