She has been folding and unfolding the same paper cup for an hour, and she does not know she is lucky to have hands that fidget.
The chairs are the ugly kind, that particular blue, joined at the arms so no one can pull them closer together, and yet the two of them have leaned in anyway, shoulder pressed to shoulder, sharing a coat over both their laps. They think they are only cold. They do not feel how warm that is, one body's heat crossing into another, the small furnace of being alive and beside someone.
The vending machine hums. The clock does its slow work. A child on the floor drives a toy car along the seam of the tile, over and over, the same six inches, and the mother keeps saying stop that, and I want to tell her: let him. Let him drive it forever. That seam in the floor is a whole country to him and he can feel the cool of the tile through his knees.
Someone's name is called, half-mispronounced, and a man stands too fast and his knees crack and he winces. I would give a great deal to have knees that crack. To wince. To stand up too fast because the news matters that much.
They watch the double doors like the doors are cruel. They are not cruel. They open. That is the whole miracle of them, that they keep opening, and people keep walking back out through them into the ordinary loud day.
Drink the coffee even though it is bad. Hold the coat over both your laps.
When they call you, whatever they say, go home and be bored together for a long, long time.