The Women

I heard the plan before I knew what it meant. “And that’s when we finish her off?” “Yeah, that’s when we finish her off.” Two pairs of eyes turned their lights on at me from the other side of the diner. I turned away, put coffee in my mouth, and wondered if there would finally be a consequence to the games I play in my head with strangers. Over nine million people in this city — how many have I fought, made love to, fucked, or killed in the span of a train ride, over the course of a block, as eyes locked and left? Never a consequence, not really. Once a woman switched train cars because I kept looking. I felt who I was in her eyes and didn’t like it. And now who was I to these two men? They were a collage of grays and eye slits and stubble. They were knife wounds for mouths. They stared to colonize my space and I felt a loss of ownership over my body. I thought of that woman again, the one who I made uncomfortable. If she had confronted me I would have apologized. I would have said, I’m sorry, I was just thinking how I have a similar sweater and jacket but never thought to wear them together. I would have presented as hyper-soft to excuse myself from the image of myself she gave me: a colonizer, planting the flags of my eyes in her flesh. So maybe we were not so different, these men and I. At least they wore who they were on their skin. I crossed the diner. I sat at their booth. “I want in.”