observations of the outbound 5

"Are you French? You look French" says the man in front of me, while chomping on tiny balled bites of raw ground beef out of the package. He has peeled away the plastic wrap and shoveled down the whole packet of Safeway meat. Impressive in a Rosemary's Baby kind of way. Though his head is clean shaven, Bic style, blond hair bushes from his ears and I notice a streak of blue dirt behind them, tucked in the creases. He steals an occasional glance backward toward me, trying to catch my attention again. Perhaps I should tell him that my family heritage is French.

There's a little boy on the bus, dressed in a green snowflake sweater and a red scarf. He is missing his two front teeth; he giggles at his mother and squeezes himself between the spaces of the seats which sit back to back. The bus wrenches to an awkward stop, throwing me forward in my chair and the child falls forward into the leg of a man standing up. His mother apologizes and grabs him, her hat falls forward over her eyes.