18th
Lunch Hour
Pretty people and overweight people and ugly people and every-people all over the place flock to the big-time for the midtown monster sushi lunch special fix. Big sweaters recline awkwardly on chairbacks during a watery post-lunchtime cocktail — big women in big coats dip into the openings of plastic shopping bags — men with thin arms play at dousing their fingers into soy sauce and then knaw at their cuticles from beneath the safe underbelly of the table-top. Sourness seeps from the dimestore lime of a coke to slip into the brokenness of lips.
I have already searched the bottom of your coat pocket and have found all of your plastic crackerjack trinkets.
Your hand grabs mine. For a moment fingers crush into me, wrapping us into the fetal position until I can pull my hand away and pay for the bill.
