She sits across from me, back up against the brick wall. She has persistent closed body language and is often hard to understand due to having the knuckles of one hand constantly pressing in front of her lips. In the other, a menthol cigarette with a chewed filter dangles gracefully between two fingers, thumb resting at the end. She can’t keep eye contact and instead continually surveys the small corridor, focusing on cracks in the floor or hastily scratched graffiti like it holds all life’s secrets. Her icy blue eyes are distant and infinitely sad. She’s thin. I wouldn’t place her above eighty-five pounds. I could wrap my fingers around her biceps.
Yet still, outward appearance considered, she manages to crack a smile at least once a minute and has a wonderfully poignant way of diverting her eyes down then shooting you a passing glance while she does it, revealing a small collection of bite marks dotting her neck.
It’s hard to get her to talk. She’s quick to answer impersonal questions, but anything further requires time. She’s defensive. For half an hour I watch her chain smoke, nothing else. When I finally get her to talk, it’s five pm. The foot traffic starts pouring in with us acting as nothing but roadblocks on the humble apartment steps. Frustrated, I get up, about to ask if we could go someplace quieter. Maybe she misinterprets this, maybe she knows just what she was doing. At any rate, she flicks the last quarter of her smoke down onto the concrete, inelegantly crushes it out, and returns to the inside of the small building, leaving without a goodbye and only a passing nod and a knowing smile.
I don’t think I’ll ever figure her out.
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