Strangers

Anonymity is permission. A stranger has no history with you and no opinion to revise afterwards, and a public place adds the one ingredient that makes restraint interesting: the possibility of being caught.

These stories take place on a night bus, at thirty thousand feet, behind a curtain in a shop, on a crowded beach. Nobody exchanges a name. What passes between the characters has to be built entirely from proximity, timing and nerve — which turns out to be more than enough.