BUS STORY # 377 (Portrait # 24: Martha Stewart Living)

Martha Stewart Living (Sept 2007), downloaded from Amazon.

She’s sitting in the two-seater across from the driver. In front of her is an old-style wheeled frame for strapping suitcases to, from way back when they hadn’t started making wheeled luggage. Standing in for a suitcase is a black cardboard box with magazines inside.

She’s reading one the magazines, or rather, she is paging through it and periodically tearing pages out of it and stuffing them into the duffel bag on the seat beside her.

The duffel is brown leather, handsome but worn.

As is, I now realize, the woman herself.

Late 60s, I’d say. White hair pulled back on the sides with a barrette, neither neat nor messy. Classy black and white plastic frame glasses. Salt and pepper eyebrows and a focused expression. She may or may not be using makeup.

Her clothes, like the bag, are tasteful and worse for the wear. Brown suede jacket with a brown, fake fur collar. Tattersal vest over a white blouse with a scalloped collar and a subtle, small print I can’t make out.

Sage green pants of some soft-looking fabric. They’re a little short, and I can see a white satiny-looking liner poking out below a frayed cuff. Thick, bright blue socks disappear in high-topped brown boots that look like English walkers. They’re in excellent good condition.

The magazine she is culling pages from is about perfect: Martha Stewart Living.

I have the sense she fully appreciates Martha’s style, and not just from wishful daydreaming.

There is a story here, and I am having to settle for this small portrait instead.