nameless

One day I'm at the mall, reading. The mall has big windows, and that's why I'm here. Or so I tell myself. I'm sitting on a bench and reading when the old woman next to me turns and says,
"Do you speak American?"
Started, I say yes.
"What do you think of Anna Nicole Smith?" she says.
I'm usually good at small talk, but I have no idea how to respond. "I don't know," I say. "What do you think?"
"I think it's sad," she says.
"Yeah." I feel something else is required of me. "And she just had that baby."
"I know! And all these people claiming to be the father."
A few years ago I would have tried to keep this conversation going, out of a sense of obligation. But today I don't really feel like it. I smile and go back to my book.
A while later the lady mentions the weather. She says soon we'll wish for this cold weather, when it's hot and humid. She says she goes down the shore in the summer sometimes, but she has to be careful because her skin is fair. "Like yours," she says.
I put my bookmark in my book and put the book in my bag.
"I like your ring," I say. I do. It's big and bright green.
"Dollar store!" says the lady.
We talk about her sister-in-law, about the bus, about poor Anna Nicole. This woman is lonely, and it is my un-volunteered-for job to ease other people's loneliness. Will I get to this point, I wonder? Will I feel the need to go out and sit on a bench in a public place and talk to strangers, just to hear the sound of my own voice responding to someone else's? The thought strikes me as self-pitying, so I excuse myself as politely as I can, say goodbye to the nameless woman, make my own lonely way down the mall corridor, out into the windy street.