There, contact once again. I could feel them following me all along, waiting for my hand to gesture to one of the little plates casually arranged all over the pretentiously faux-cheap tablecloth, ideal companion to the even cheaper paper napkins – some of which were still laying, useless, over the messy arrangement or under curry-smeared dishes.
For some reason, that seemed to irk him to no end. Not sure if it was either a forced, preposterous display of antiquated manners; or, perhaps, the awareness that I had exposed his game long ago, but his eyes kept darting from hand to napkin back to hand through water glasses, chunks of gummy rice, the usual fare of a table of too-grown kids who think making a mess is the mark of appreciating ethnic cuisine.
At any rate, the snob didn't seem to share the love for exotic flavoured food of our peers. A bowl of almond rice – I' quite surprised I remember that in the first place – is all he asked the waiter, a preppy pseudo-Indian young man more saddened than invigorated by the table of sixteen-odd students who stormed the establishment just a mere hour ago.
The rice wasn't even halfway gone by the time I caught a glimpse of the poorly-disguised game he was playing with me. On the fly eye contact.
Very Original. Or rather, somewhere in between the old fashioned and the downright pathetic. His version of the antediluvian trick went something like this.
Follow crumbs on table.
Follow girl's hand playing with crumbs.
Wait for girl to be called and turn her head.
Once girl's head returns to original position, eye contact.
Of course, with all the effort he was putting into the little trick, I had to give him some satisfaction – a shy smile here and there, an equivocal hand movement vaguely in his trajectory, little peanuts like that. Except the couple times he was peeking at my chest. No peanuts for those, sorry.
It took a while, but in the end my attempts to make him lose interest succeed. His sight slowly retracts and veils, his whole body slumping backwards and assuming the International Deep Boredom Position – provides full protection to one's more delicate thoughts while substituting less effective techniques (see Nod And Smile). Someone talks to him, he does not care and does nothing to disguise it. Shouldn't be the one to criticize, as I do even less to disguise my own growing annoyance for being where I do not want to be at the wrong time. This should be tea time. It's always tea time when you don't want to be where you are.
(Another one from Robin Behn's book. I am clearly not cut for fictional prose - not yet anyway.)
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