Elevator

The doors to the elevator opened, and a couple new to the gym stood inside. “We’re riding it up and down,” she said. I got in and stood beside them, pressing the correct button for the top floor of the garage. 

She turned to her boyfriend and continued a conversation. “He was in a pissy mood, too. He said he was going to file a police report. Honestly, I respected the girl behind the front desk for not taking his shit. She called security to come get him.” The doors to the elevator opened, and I let them exit before me.

My mind wandered—Maybe someone took a photo of him in the locker room. Or he found someone rummaging through his locker. Perhaps an ex-boyfriend was stalking him, and he had a restraining order the gym wouldn’t honor. Maybe one of the handsy maintenance guys took too long of a look while he was in the shower.

No. 076

Caught Staring

A man my age sat on a mound of grass against the trunk of a palm tree. With his hands he caressed a dog, shaking its golden-auburn ears and making faces at it. Caught staring. I rounded the corner quickly, and the man caught sight of me, suddenly leaning backwards, dropping his arms, and returning his expression to a blank stillness. An intimate moment disturbed. I would not judge him, though I could not blame him the impulse to think so.

No. 038

Streams

For ambience, as they put it, my parents prefer to watch security camera live streams on YouTube. We had planned a family trip to the Florida Keys, and in anticipation, they watched, daily, the live footage of Duval Street. They knew which bars left their TVs on all night. They knew how often the public trash cans were emptied. It became a part of their routine to monitor the routine of a town and people they did not know.

No. 033