ON THE WAY TO WORK

I shared the lift down with a woman works the streets of Brunswick and Portland Squares. I’ve seen her there, gave her cigarette papers one time.
‘On the way to work?’ I said.
‘Between jobs,’ she said.
She wore bright red lipstick and between the tops of the backs of her shiny black high heels and below where her leggings, contoured her very thin legs and small bottom, ended, the exposed skin was covered in scabs.
A few floors below our conversation a man with a bike got in.
None of us spoke to the other until I said, ‘Thanks,’ to the woman each time I walked through the door she held open for me as we left the building.