Part III: Judy

"May I sit here?"

Judy knew the words sounded strange. It was her seat, wasn't it? It would work, though; Judy rarely needed much of an opening to get a conversation started. She coughed as she spoke, though the cough sounded more like a wheeze than a cough. Damn cold; three weeks and the illness was just wearing off. The boy hadn't responded immediately which meant he was looking her over. Judging. She eyed him back through her thick-rimmed glasses.

It was a look she had grown accumstomed to receiving and recognizing, both in her job and her private life. She had never quite grown accustomed to lingering examinations from casual observers. She hid behind her glasses, wore baggy sweatshirts, and long floral dresses.

The boy was engulfed in her gaze and instinctively she looked away. Her eyes were where she was the most vulnerable. A deep blue, they were what had attracted her first husband to her ten...no, twelve...years ago now. They had been classmates in college; they had spent half a term together in some film class or other before she really noticed him. A sheer accident brought them together. Having missed a class, he asked for her notes and for the first time looked into, and was swallowed by, her eyes.

He had been an honest boy and their conversations were good ones. He could talk to her at length about almost anything. After some time, though, their conversations became more and more one-sided, Judy having realized that his insecurities had caused her to take on a motherly role in their relationship which both sickened and frightened her. They divorced, having had no children. The aftermath was horrible, prompting her to avoid contact with him while he worked his way out of depression.

Judy had never put much faith in people who searched for fame or wealth, knowing that even the best efforts almost never led to anything. Even if they did, she couldn't believe they were happy being in the public eye; for Judy, being unnoticable made her free. She wasn't surprised when it was a windfall, a chance meeting, that forever changed her life. She met Mark at a coworker's party. She thought about that night. Yes, his offer may have actually been a sincere offer to help her, though now, as then, she was highly skeptical. She read Mark as someone who simply wanted to get into her pants. What else should she have thought? He knew, though. Mark, as it turned out, was a demon of the advertising industry and was extremely good at reading people. He almost certainly had her act figured out before he had ever approached her.

She learned from Mark and grew to love him. She followed him into advertising. Everything he knew about people, their desires and animalistic need for regular infusions of pop culture, their lack of any goal beyond wealth and fame: all of this she learned from him. She became critical of her own image and then accepted it, finally understanding why she had subconsciously worn the guise of an unseemly middle-American woman for so long.

Mark could not love her back. She was too busy judging and dissecting everyone he met, skills that unfortunately rubbed off on her. Judy came to realize she was simply one of his experiments. Her love for him grew; she had never known anyone who wasn't attracted to her enough to put her own desires before his own. She lusted after a person she couldn't have. The challenge Mark posed frightened and confused her. He clearly recognized her feelings long before she broke down and confessed everything. In Judy's mind, their professional and personal relationships deteriorated after that night. Their jobs pulled them apart and soon they lost touch with each other, living in different timezones. She still recognized his work on television. It became a game for her to figure out how even though he was thousands of miles away, Mark continued to manipulate her through product placements and commericals that promoted staged utopian American lives.

"I'm sorry. I mean. Sure. Please do. It's not taken." Judy snapped back to the present. The boy was still staring into her eyes as he spoke.

His voice was familiar! She couldn't place it, though. Judy was taken off guard and she felt her studied composure slipping away. She blurted out, "Your voice...it's...?"

"That's right. I can see it in your face. What you see. You recognize the voice. Not my voice, though. Homer Simpson's."

He was right. She knew, just as she had a canned response for people who had judged her by her appearance, this boy must have been ready for her reaction to a voice that was his own and yet did not belong to him.

Judy regained her composure and steadied herself for what she expected would be one of the most interesting conversations she'd had with a stranger in ages. One, she believed, between two people that had a great deal in common with each other. She removed her glasses and prepared to envelop boy in her eyes. He was hers.