She dipped the tip of her cloth napkin (blue and white, checkered) into the glass of tap water (which contained lemons and limes, sliced grapefruit), and she wiped the top and bottom lip. She kept the damp material over her mouth, her eyes moving all around. For a while her mouth was unknowable, covered by material. Near the glass of water a cup of iced coffee or iced tea, a brown liquid.

Next door to the diner was the barbershop with its wood paneling and a poster of men. The poster showed different hairstyles—some of the men were looking up, some were looking to their right with their profile showing, or holding their chins down. On some the faces couldn’t be seen at all, just the back of their heads and the work of the clippers. Some hair was shorter, some longer. Twenty-eight styles total. A calendar on the wood-paneled wall showed October, the corner folded over to conceal the year.

When she finally removed the napkin from her lips, crumpling it all up and placing it back on her lap, she used her hands to speak. She rotated her wrists, she clapped her hands, she held up two fingers, then four, seven, she clapped her hands together, punched one hand into the other, the right punching into the open palm of the left, as if to emphasize something. Open, punch, wave, punch, clap, punch. Then she rubbed her hands together, as if moisturizing them or disinfecting them, caressing, and the rings were eight, none on the thumbs. She moved so often and so thoroughly that her body became a blur, the fullness of the top lip couldn’t be detected, the blurry bun, the nose, the neck.

A blurry child grabbed onto her neck. The blurriness couldn’t hide the fact of this small being. He grabbed at her. This woman was generous with him. The child’s ears like her ears, the top lip the same, full, the frizzy hair. There had been placenta between them. They each wore a blue plastic bag around their neck; their backs were made of blue plastic. It was enough to drive anyone away.

A TRIANGLE

I saw the couple out of the corner of my eye. I noticed them as I stepped out of a medical building. I noticed them because everything else in my peripheral shifted but they did not. The wind was blowing the leaves, the leaves were dying and leaping, and the couple was so still. The couple was unmoving. I was too, looking at them. So it was the three of us as everything else moved, constant and full and wide. People brushed by our shoulders, sweeping our sides as they inched toward their destinations. People were busy. People didn’t care about the couple standing in the middle of the uneven sidewalk. People stirred around them like the sea, splashing against their ankles.

The man held her arms, his manicured fingers grasping hard.