Midday a Month Ago on the Colma Bart line

A thin floppy haired man is grasping a worn paperback copy of Back to the Future 3, the dog earred cover displaying a wacky scene of the protagonists situated around a futuristically dated car. The man is seemingly enthralled as every couple of minutes a passage registers an eyebrow lift followed by a slight smile. I wonder if the book might somehow in this world be better than the horrible movie as I observe how entertained floppy haired man appears to be.

In the seat next to him is a man with an expression straight from a telenovela: the serious yet dashing patriarch, aged and educated, he sets off love triangles with just the sex that is captured in his gaze. A patch of black chest hair swirls out of shirt, his gold watch gleams in the sunlight, and his posture is so good I am reminded of childhood admonitions to sit up and so I straighten by back and slyly continue to watch the men settled into the seats across from me as the tape flips over and the Bart train descends underwater.