All these women are different sizes. It shouldn’t surprise her, intellectually, but it is striking. Lucky for her that the tastes of the men she left behind her ran so much to homogeneity, there are no incompatible mismatched joins in her newer arm or incongruous folds and muscles, but it’s a wonderful sight to see. Large women, small women, women with gray hair, women with no hair, women with no immediately apparent remarkable qualities – there are no women without remarkable qualities, all of them to her are scintillating strangers. Some of them stand taller than her, some top out under five feet in flat sneakers, some in dresses and some in suits, but all of them are in a hurry.

Ava is not in any particular hurry. Ava stands still, a fixed point, and watches each one vanish. There are men there, too, but she has not seen this many women in her life.

She makes her initial observations over the course of three days. One of the women asks Ava if she is looking for something. Ava tells her that she is not, but it is impossible to look her in the face and not want to ask her questions – which of these businesses is she headed toward? Is she coming or going? What is her profession? She doesn’t get to ask these questions, but she is smiled at (a microscopic flinch of the muscles of the mouth) before she is left alone on the raised curb.

One woman asks if Ava is a photographer. Records of her experiential data are buried too deeply to be retrieved, but they exist, and most of them are images anyway. Ava says yes.

One of them asks her if she would like a cup of coffee. Ava cannot drink coffee. Ava says yes.