Monday, June 15, 2020

A spider dangles from a thread in my bathroom. It’s so small that at first I think it’s a speck on my glasses or yet another floating wisp in my eye. I whistle a riff from a song I’ve just heard. My breath gently blows the spider around. It sways in rhythm to the tune. On my way to work, the street where the bus stop had been is under construction as usual. Workers dig up the asphalt every morning, pulling out piles of dirt and laying pipes. Every evening, they are gone. The street reopens. Cars and buses drive by. I don’t know how the workers do it. The folding chair that had been at the end, next to a vehicle blocking the road, is halfway up the street this morning, on the sidewalk, its back against a wall. One tall worker slumps in it, his legs stretching out to the curb. I scrape my feet against the pavement as I approach him. He hears me. He pulls his legs inward, his knees touching his chest, until I pass, then slumps back down as he had been. A few meters beyond him, a blond boy sits on a stone pillar at the end of a fence. His grandmother steadies him. She points to the various trucks and says single words. I think they’re in Russian. The boy repeats the words as well as he can. At the office, a coworker sits in the aisle. His legs stretch across it, like those of the man in the folding chair. We’re more familiar. I step over them, carefully cradling my coffee, and continue on to my desk.