Spadina streetcar, hunched and trying to make himself smaller.

Caucasian male, early 40s, balding, with slight nose and winter-white wrist hair peaking from his shirt cuffs.

The Geographer's Library, Jon Fasman (Norton)

Page 323:

A messy kitchen is a sign not merely of solitude but of expectation of perpetual solitude.

She likes to feel the clean. That's why, she argues, she lets the grime build, fester, so that when she dumps a carton of baking soda dry into her tub her wrist will brace, her triceps burn and her thighs will dent against the edge of the porcelain. Pulling the matted hair from the drain will feel like a throat emptied of grape seeds or a pill swallowed without water flushed clear. Bleaching the caulking will feel like a sip of orange juice after a vigorous tooth brushing. Running a cotton swab around the rusted taps akin to dragging a stray lash loose from an eyeball.

Out of the corner of her eye she watches a potato bug crawl across the carpet, falling on its back at the edge. She'll leave it with the others until next week when she collects them on a strip of duct tape.