The red purse

There’s a woman in the metro with a red purse and black thick hair showing under a head covering scarf. She’s old as only young people can be and beautiful in her own right. I can see she has seen a life I don’t know about – although I may pretend I do, as we Westerns do. I make up my mind and decide she’s from the Mediterranean. She’s so typical and so out of place; as most people who ride the Montreal metro on a Wednesday morning are – even the Western ones. I hope she were lost, so I could talk to her, but she has purpose, sitting up straight in the hard metro bench, dark eyes up front; she’s not lost – she has never been.

The homeless young boy gets in, with his long Western light hair, his big dirty pants and thin white dirty hands. He walks around rocking gently with the gentle rocking of the train. We all nod somehow to indicate our sympathy and our reluctance to give him anything. She meets his eyes; his blue eyes with her dark eyes which have seen that life I don’t know anything about. She knows better and with her sturdy hands she opens her red purse.