Girl Watching in the Laundromat

She has never been beautiful. She has never even been pretty. Cute is the best she can hope for and she knows it, working her youth, animation, hard on the cell phone call to her friend from the laundromat.

I listen to her over-enthused voice, watch her jerk-puppet gestures as she hustles her round body about, chattering. And later, I watch her, her eyes lifted to the commercial for Weight Watchers playing silently overhead, slipping pistachio nuts, one after another, into her mouth.

I may seem cool and appraising, secure in being tall, fit, symmetrical, my face in its public mask under this harsh lighting. But my heart is breaking for us both.