anti:freeze

I was riding the bus yesterday, getting sick from the constant jerks and lurches, when I noticed a woman sitting several rows ahead, directly behind the driver. Her knees were spread wide, so her thighs draped across two seats, and her McDonald's bag took up another. She kept standing to smooth the legs of her shorts, then collapsing back down when the bus stopped. As soon as her buttocks slapped the plastic bucket seats, she squirmed, pushing her spine into the chair back. She must have repeated this ten times.

Her dishwater hair was cut into a severe bob, with bangs so straight they looked like a wig and ends so blunt they could not have been cut with proper barber shears. I imagined her standing in front of the bathroom mirror, chopping thick wefts of hair with the dull blades of her kitchen scissors.

After a while, she stopped worrying about her shorts, focusing instead on the rough skin of her knees, attempting to exfoliate with her thumbnail. She leaned over, licked her palm, rubbed the spit into her flaking skin, and scraped. Then she sat up and stared out the window. She repeated this sequence several times. Was she nervous, obsessive compulsive, or both? Later, she carried on an intense conversation with herself, complete with different voices.

I thought back to earlier the same morning, when I tried on half the summer clothes in my closet, searching for precisely the right fabric and fit, how I scrubbed perfumed salt into my legs and shoulders under a warm shower, and massaged amazing grace lotion into the tender new skin layer. Later, I dabbed plum gloss in the center of my lips for the bee-stung look I prefer. Was this any different for being private?