Saturday, January 5, 2008

Thank you for letting me share your table

Since I am illegally, according to the landlady, staying in my friends' guest room and she came over today to fix a window that was broken by the storm, and the Mission branch library reading room was full, I sat drinking a hot chocolate in Cafe La Boheme for an hour or so's while this afternoon. In the middle of it, a lady sat down after asking me if one of the seats at my table was taken. She sat with a fat little notebook. She never ordered anything. She seemed to sense that her movements were distracting me from my book and so slowly inched away from me so that her chair was pulled up to the corner of the table. I just kept my face down and to the page for the entire duration of our table cohabitation. Then, abruptly, she asked, "Want to feel something?" I looked up to see her hand outstretched toward me. "Give me your hand," she said. "No," I said. She repeated, "Don't you want to feel something?" "No," I repeated. I went back to reading my book, carefully avoiding any semblance of looking up at her. Finally, after what seemed to me like hours, like time unfolding in another dimension, she got up and left. But not before mumbling, "thank you for letting me share your table."

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