Aria leaned back on her elbows to try to relieve the ache of being too full. She watched Imani serving the other people in the line. A young man had made himself at home on a cardboard box beside her. He was slumped over his bowl of chili, spooning it into his mouth boorishly and laughing. From the familiarity of the body language and talk between them, Aria guessed that they must know each other personally. His head was covered in a purple do-rag. He wore an oversized puffy blue coat and oversized jeans that rode so low they didn’t quite cover his boxers. The knock-off gold watch he was wearing on his left wrist made the brown skin, under the jungle of black tattoos on his arm, look copper. He had thick lips and wide-set dark eyes. Even from a distance, Aria could see that his eyes caught so much light, the reflection in them made his pupils look white instead of black. In fact, the reflection made his eyes look like he was crying even when he was smiling. Underneath his carefully constructed image of bravado, Aria could see the child still alive in him inside his eyes. A five-year-old boy looking at the world as if he was still watching his father leave him. He seemed to be forever crying without crying at a loss still unresolved within him.

Aria switched her attention to the cook. Imani seemed to her to be the epitome of a big black woman. Her skin was the color of hickory. The entire length of her coarse hair was regulated into box braids, two of which she had tied together in the back, as if in a last-minute attempt to keep them out of her face and to tame the rest. She spoke with a twangy paralanguage common to the African-Americans who had spent their youth on the South Central side of the city. The way she moved her body was both slow and loose. This mannerism of casual familiarity made people feel at ease. She wore a pair of black-rimmed prescription glasses and a loose-fitting blouse with stretch pants over her heavy curves.

After a time, the young man got up and gave Imani a sideways hug. “You be good now, don’t you be gettin’ into any trouble!” she yelled after him when he turned away. He afforded her a sideways smile and a wave before bounding across the street. He held the belt of his pants up as he jogged.

Aria watched him check and recheck his watch on the side of the street until an iridescent black low-rider car drove up behind him. She watched him get into the car and drive away without ever knowing whether they had anything in common with each other. Without ever saying hello or waving goodbye.

She poked at Taylor’s side and said, “What do you want to do?”