minke: diet fiction: nice

She sat in the back of the carriage, reading a magazine like it was homework. She reminded me of a terrier - all hair and fierce tenacity, except that terriers aren't often seen wearing lipstick.

I look at her and try to imagine her life, but I can't even get started. A bit of lippie, a ring of eyeliner that extends to a point along her brow, maybe she's been doing it like this since she was a giggling teenager listening to the Cure, I don't know, it's just the only thing about her carefully manicured and coloured exterior that reveals an individual.

A wedding ring, a few more rings on other fingers - engagement? solitaire? I barely even know which finger a wedding ring sits on, and have taken a punt that I'm right after a quick survey of other passengers' hands. A necklace, a gold heart with another diamond. So many diamonds! Are they all real? Will the world run out of industrial diamonds if every suburban chick gets to have three or four?

I'm tempted to ask her, but my station is coming up, and I don't know how to talk to women like that anyway, with my dyke hands and code-filled head and platitudeless mouth.

I watch her still, as I get off the train. Nice rings, nice watch, nice necklace, nice nails; clad in an armour of nice she makes her way against the world.