52nd Street

She walks down the street, smiling, oddly happy.  Her legs are long and her hair is short.  She's not thin, but she isn't fat- there's nothing particularly noticible about her, though she is impeccably dressed.  In wedge heels and black shorts, a striped shirt and a large brown leather purse, she looks young- but fashionably so.  She walks down the street, nodding at passers-by and smiling at mothers pushing wailing infants in cutesy prams.  Occasionally she stoops down in front of dog walkers, looking upwards and requesting to pet their dogs.  They always say yes.  She's charming and she's mysterious- aluring in every way.  She's the picture-perfect image of the enlightened twenty-first century woman.
We move through different districts, passing homeless men and mangy dogs.  She continues walking, her shoulders back and her gaze cast forward.  She fascinates the world.  We pass train stations and strip malls.  She smiles at commuters and children on their way to school.  A cellphone begins to ring, and she draws it from her purse, quickly settling into a discussion about two mutual friends of the caller and hers who happen to be 'seeing each other.'  As she talks I realize just how much I hate that phrase and the utter mundanity it conveys; the confusion presented by the notion that two people only begin to 'see each other' once they start dating.  As I turn away from this lady I will never meet, I sigh, realizing that I lost interest in this woman long before discovering that someone so mysterious could be so saddly stereotypical.  I realize as I return to the train station where I first saw her that I lost all interest when she failed to notice the man begging for coins on the corner of 52nd street.