Frivolous Dressorder The Commute -
I stared at the memo. My clogs were, technically, floral. They were also orthopedic, suede, and the only thing that made the 6:47 AM death-march to the Q train bearable.
The security monitor beeped. A red light flashed. I stood there, pineapple on my head, waiting.
The second warning arrived Thursday. “Infraction: Sock color (neon coral) does not match designated ‘Business Somber’ palette (see attached Pantone chip, ‘Dreary Dove’).”
After a long moment, the light turned green.
Bubbles—iridescent, defiant, beautiful—floated through the subway car. A man in a suit sneezed. A teenager laughed. Grimes’s pen stopped moving. He stared at a bubble as it drifted past his nose, and for one frozen second, his face wasn’t angry.
The mirrored woman sat next to me. “Watch,” she whispered.
He did not speak. He simply pulled out his phone and typed.
A woman in a puffer jacket made entirely of mirrors. Each panel reflected a different angle of the station—her own face fractured into a dozen smirking shards. She wore boots covered in fake grass, and her hair was dyed the exact orange of a traffic cone.
Grimes is a man whose soul is made of cross-referenced spreadsheets. He wears the same charcoal suit every day, and I suspect he sleeps standing up in a closet. He saw me. His left eye twitched—the first human movement I’d ever witnessed from him.
