#69

The continued lack of sleep made her head hurt in the mornings, so when two people got out of their seats on the A train, she gladly slid into one of them. A slim man in a Panera Bread uniform sat down next to her. She took out her book, and he took out his handheld video game. But before she could remove her bookmark, the man—despite his slight build—had spread his stick legs so wide apart that she had to cross her own nearly at the hips to avoid being touched.

(The touch of another man, especially a stranger, made her head ache more and her one free hand clamp into a fist.) He continued to unfurl himself and she continued to seethe. Hadn’t men done enough? Couldn’t she at least sit without being interfered with for fifteen minutes?

Fuck this guy and his fucking video game, she thought. And then, as if hearing her, a man sitting across from them bared his white teeth and snickered, the braids piled atop his head flopping as he shook his head. He was wearing a chef’s coat.

And fuck this chef, she thought. (And then her body became even more tense as she thought about him no longer cooking for her, but for someone else. Tense and tight and smaller and smaller as she tried to make herself into a paper thin slice that could be folded into an airplane and shot out the door at the next stop.)

Then she realized the chef was laughing with disapproval. He stood up and motioned for her to take his seat. He moved to hold on to the pole in the center of the train and rolled his eyes at Panera Bread. Panera Bread splayed himself even wider, looked up, and smiled as if she had moved for him. As if the chef had moved for him.

She wanted to tell Panera Bread that he was the problem, that his manspreading would have a domino effect and would ruin the day of many more people, not just her’s; not just the chef’s. But here they were, all content—at least to some extent—and her head hurt. So she did nothing.