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She’s pigeon toed.
I watch, speedwalking 20 feet behind her, as her leopard print ballet slippers plod one after the other, slightly awkward with the angle at which they turn in. And though I have known this for quiet sometime, it does not stop me from feeling mildly surprising each time I see her. It plays against my idea of the moneyed Upper Eastide women, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing.
I’m not quite sure if its the way the sun is warming up the air, the extra half hour of sleep I stole in bed, some mild form of Stockholm syndrome, or my own forced cheerfulness taking hold of me, but I feel particularly fond of her today. The way she aggressively asks confused strangers whether or not they’re lost, then gives them very clear and slow directions, pointing out landmarks that they may pass along the way. She makes small talk better than anyone my own age and has a knack for making friends on the street.
I’ve caught up to her and we make small talk. As we near the building, she drops a bit of personal information, the subject matter of which is so startling that I regret for the first time, that we are going our separate ways. In order to satiate my own tabloidistic curiousity, I consider detouring just beyond the revolving doors to listen for another minute longer. That it took four months to get to just this one casual mention of gossip, reminds me that people didn’t always update their statuses on facebook, people had a sense of privacy and of things that went unspoken.