The Reader
by Maury F. Gruszko

A guy boarded the train at Delancey Street with hair the color of an old bronze and more of it than I’d ever had and there was even (and of course) one of those Superman locks cresting his forehead just so, insouciantly, and while I’d lay odds he’d never uttered the word “insouciance,” he obviously and enviously knew how to live it, leaning back with shoulder blades and the sole of a Vans pressed against the subway door and his body sheathed in black jeans and an artfully ratty black t-shirt emblazoned with the crazed remnants of the word MEMOREX. Anyway, I’m still not sure what he has to do with this beyond eclipsing the window where a person of interest I dubbed The Reader had existed for me in reflection since the 14th Street station, her image poised like a charcoal portrait as the tunnel shaded her features with cascading, slaty darkness.