__hot__ — Unaware In The City V45

Inside the car, bodies press against bodies. A man in a gray hoodie is watching a video of a woman teaching him how to fold a fitted sheet. He will never fold a fitted sheet. A woman in blue sneakers is scrolling through photos of a wedding she attended three years ago. She is smiling, but her thumb moves faster than happiness. A child, maybe seven, is staring at the window. She is not looking at the tunnel walls. She is looking at her own reflection, and she is trying to decide if that girl in the glass is a friend or a stranger. You almost say something to her — she is a friend, she is always a friend — but the train brakes, and the moment passes, and you are unaware again.

You cannot remember.

Outside, the city has already decided what kind of day it will be. The coffee shop on the corner is playing lo-fi beats that loop every ninety seconds. The barista, whose name tag reads “Jesse” but whose eyes say something else entirely, hands you a flat white without being asked. You thank them. They nod. Neither of you means it. This is the contract of the unaware: civility without curiosity. unaware in the city v45

At work, you sit in a cubicle that was designed by someone who read one article about Scandinavian minimalism. The screen in front of you glows with spreadsheets. The numbers are fine. The numbers are always fine. A colleague stops by to tell you about their weekend — a hike, a craft beer, a near-miss with a deer on the highway. You hear the words but not the music. You smile. You say, “That sounds nice.” They leave. You cannot remember their face. Not because you are cruel, but because the city has made recognition expensive, and you are saving your attention for emergencies that never come. Inside the car, bodies press against bodies

After work, you wander. This is the part of the day the algorithm calls “leisure,” though it feels more like a pause between anxieties. You walk past a bookstore with a display of novels about people who fall in love in small towns. You walk past a gym where people run on machines that go nowhere. You walk past a man sitting on a milk crate, holding a sign that says, “I was unaware too. Then I looked up.” You look up. There is a pigeon on a fire escape. The pigeon is unaware of you. You are unaware of the pigeon. The man on the milk crate laughs, but the laugh is not for you. It is for someone who passed by ten minutes ago. You are already late for that laugh. A woman in blue sneakers is scrolling through

Lunch is a sandwich eaten over a sink. The bread is dry. You eat it anyway. Outside the window, a delivery driver is arguing with a man in a suit. The man in the suit is pointing at a watch. The delivery driver is pointing at a phone. Neither of them is pointing at the sky, which is doing something rare — a brief break in the gray, a ribbon of blue like a vein. You watch the argument for a minute, then turn away. You have your own arguments to not have.