Marjorie Stewart (Exercise 9)

I saw the woman on the subway this morning. I was on my way to my first day of work at Kip's Diner, one of those godforsaken cheesy New York breakfast joints. The subway was crowded with people itching to get moving. They stood clumped together like little toy cars all wound up but given no track to run on. The woman sat in the middle of it, a human stoplight above the traffic. She was much older and had been offered a seat immediately by some guilty twenty-something with an overwrought moral compass. She was dressed in a magenta sweater set with a blazer over it. She clutched a Wall Street style briefcase engraved "Marjorie Stewart" close to her chest, as though it were a young child or a helpless puppy. Ms. Stewart's legs were splayed outward abnormally, her knees a curiously large width apart. Her sizable knee-span contributed to the lack of space on the car, but none of us had the cojones to scold an older woman.

We hit stop after stop and Ms. Stewart remained. Her face was transfixed: mouth gaping, eyes grinning as if they were listening to a dirty secret. Suddenly her delicate knees began to quiver slightly, teetering and tottering like a house of cards dangerously close to kicking it. Her small but determined hands gripped the briefcase and shook it violently. Her smiling eyes rolled further and further back into her head.

Morally compromised twenty and thirty-somethings panicked. Ma'am are you alright? Concerned touches on the shoulder. Someone check her heart rate. Could she be having a stroke? I stood glued to my designated spot by the car door, waiting for Ms. Stewart's brittle frame to turn topple and turn into sand.

Just as a noble man was preparing to call 911, Ms. Stewart thrusted her legs outward, arched her spine, threw her head back and moaned. Silence. The vultures backed away from the carcass. Ms. Stewart loosened her grip and laid her feet flat on the ground.

Once the other patrons realized what had happened, most tried to avert their eyesight. A few stifled their thin giggles.

The car stopped, officially in uptown. Ms. Stewart stood, gathered her briefcase, and turned to leave. As she stood, an unopened can of Coca Cola fell from between her legs. Still cold and dripping with condensation, the can's contents fizzled and popped as it rolled across the car. Marjorie Stewart left without a word. Her special little can went untouched until maintenance cleaned the car late that night.

Mural Painting for Helena Rubinstein, Salvador Dali