#50

The flight attendant stood at the front of the aisle, gesturing toward the exits with his hands. He was very clean: hair trimmed short around the sides and combed slick and tight on the top; hands looking the right amount of moist and fingernails perfect ovals with none of the white showing. I was sitting a few rows back but I knew if I were closer I would find not a single nose hair poking outside of its nest. As he went on to demonstrate how a mask is placed over the head, I tried to imagine him not so clean: maybe patches of dryness around his ears; hair unevenly falling around his collar, greasy at the roots and weedy at the ends; cracked lips, chapped knuckles, bitten cuticles, tobacco-stained teeth. Both could be this man at different times of his life. But, I realized as the clean version handed me a plastic cup of water later on in the flight and which I accepted without hesitation, I would have a hard time trusting the unclean one.