Southbound, Yonge and College — Toronto

Caucasian male, late 20s, with long dark hair, wearing plain white T-shirt, brown cargo shorts, and black pool slide sandals.

The woman beside him wears crisp white pants and a crisp white jacket. Her shoes are carnation pink, as is her belt, bracelet, and scarf tied neatly around her neck. She slouches in her seat, fatigued, loosely gripping the handles of her carnation pink purse, her nails painted in the same shade. She is defeated in springtime, the sizable mole over her left eyebrow off-shade, tea rose, puce, but not carnation pink, her mother’s favourite flower. At today’s weekly tea she may as well have been wearing amaranth. 52-years-old and she still can’t do anything right.

What was he reading? Click here.

Julie Wilson is a literary voyeur, the Gossip Girl of the Book World. She tracks readers in the wild at SeenReading.com. Follow Julie on Twitter @seenreading, and @bookmadam where she runs a monthly contest with McNally Robinson.