I was looking at nothing while my nails dried. My attention had glazed over to a dull hum after an hour of listening to a language not my own. I could only look at a TV screen frozen with the image of a girl of indiscernible race wearing a yellow and white striped bikini, her long buttered legs dangling off the side of a sailboat someplace where dueling shades of blue could capsize the vessel.

I was not bored, nor anxious, just waiting for the right time to get up and return to my car without nicking my bright coral manicure. Something shimmied in the backyard of my right eye, interrupting my brain nap. The salon’s door was open, so it was easy to see that the sudden movement was a woman stepping into the road just a few feet away. It is a very busy street filled with parking meters, joggers and Teslas. My first thought was how brave she was to risk a sprint across four lanes when a crosswalk was so near. Some cars slowed to peer at her brazenness, then passed around her as though she was just a harmless tumbleweed. She took her time crossing the road, internally focused on something unknown to me, or the drivers passing her – just a brief annoyance in their day. She was oblivious to the harsh daylight and the other lives existing around her. The late-morning sun glinted in a shrill spasm against a swarm of silver rhinestones that bedazzled her black leggings, ankles to knees. She was severely thin, Caucasian, a tangled mass of blonde, grey and yellow hair burned by the sun, highlights painted by years of careless decisions. She crossed the road in a reckless, jerking, ninja ballet. Then I noticed she was clutching a large doll, dirty and naked, her soft rubber toes bounced against the woman’s dusty ribcage, a “baby” she was protecting with a vengeance and could not be pried from her thin arms by Child Protective Services.

I hoped my constant gaze upon her would shield her from further damage as she made it safely to the other side of the street, directly in front of a family-run pizza restaurant. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, kissed the doll’s hot vinyl cheek, then patted her own wild hair as if to make herself more presentable. She hurriedly sat down in a chair next to a small table in front of the restaurant, as if she were late to meet a lunch date. I wondered how long it would take for someone to come out of the restaurant to ask her some questions. Nobody came out. She stood up and went to the restaurant’s door and opened it wide. Her back to me, I could see her frozen in the doorway. Her doll’s curls bounced against her hip as she spoke to someone I couldn’t see. I imagined the person inside telling her their restroom was only for paying customers and that she would turn, eyes back to scanning the sidewalk, her frail body thinner by the time she reached the next block. The woman closed the restaurant’s door and sat back down in the chair next to the little table. She placed the doll safely in her lap facing me. I then wondered how many seconds it would take for the store’s employee to come out and ask her to leave.

I could not turn away from the woman’s situation, dry nails, or not. As expected, a man came out of the pizza place a minute later. He walked up to the glittering ninja woman and handed her a box. She smiled and bounced her knees in appreciation. She put her head down to peer into the box and pulled out a large triangle of pizza. She set her doll down softly upon the table to her left and then briefly hefted the steaming slice in the air to admire it. Her stomach likely cheered. She lowered her fuzzy head to eat the pizza, but then her face was completely hidden by the parking meter in front of her. Now matter how I moved my head, the grey parking meter obscured her from my view.

I imagined how delicious that hot and gooey pizza slice tasted to her. Likely the best thing that would happen to her that sunny, September day. 

As she ate, I could only see small flashes of light bouncing off her rhinestoned shins while her doll stared blankly at the bright sky. As quickly as she disappeared from my view, she suddenly stood up. Pizza slice devoured. The woman set the empty pizza box on the table and carefully reunited her doll’s face to her sagging breasts. She walked away quickly, as if she had never stopped, going on with her day, a little less jerky, more regal, a few ounces gained.

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