Jabber jabber jabber, my friend and I are on the train and I notice the woman across the aisle looking at me and she has a pad, like the pad I carry with me, and her pen is moving across the page. I think she is drawing me. I have seen this before on the trains, a furtive artist stealing glances and stealing images, quickly before the subject catches on or moves. I think it is invasive, rude somehow, even though I know that I observe and document too. Maybe it is the particular parsing of ones physicality that seems unfairly brutal to me. I wonder if, like some artists, she will give me the sketch when she is done, a sort of payment for unwitting modeling services.

She looks at me again, flips a page and I see that she is not drawing, she is writing, quickly, voluminously. Now I am really curious. My friend and I are having an old argument, one we have had so many times, and I was irritated and bored, edging on nasty and dismissive. I look at people on the subway every day, and now I wonder how I look to her, I think it won't be very nice at all.

My friend gets off at his stop, and without our conversation to distract me now I am thinking about the writer across the aisle. Do I dare to break the anonymity, the unwritten social contract, the peculiar rules of operation of this city? There are business cards in my purse. I take one out, write on the back a directive, an urgency: send me what you are writing. I put it back in my bag, on the top, ready. Do I dare? At my stop, I flip it into her lap, and slip out the doors as they are closing. Now we see what happens.