Let Me Tell You
A Lunchtime café vignette.
Her foot tapped along to the rhythm of the phone call; little red slip-ons dancing loosely beneath the coffee table. She was tethered to a battery pack. The mobile hidden in-hand beneath her hair, the white wire looping around her wrist and disappearing into the handbag hanging from the back of the seat. She had been listening, mostly. Offering perhaps the odd chuckle or word of support to the rambling on the dark side of the line. All between sups of tea and mouthfuls of salad. With her free hand she carefully and meditatively picked out pieces of raw onion from between the green leaves, twisting them out with the tines of a wooden fork as her eyes appeared to drift, lost in the middle distance of the conversation.
She was biding her time, it seems, waiting for the conversation to find its way to the topic she wanted most to discuss. Until, with an urgency that caused her to lean in suddenly over the table, she gripped her fork and gestured at the empty seat opposite her, “Oh! Let me tell you! Let me tell you all about it!”.
A perverse, exaggerated smile spread across her face like a kabuki mask and offered it up to the aether as if the caller could read the mischief on her lips.
And so, she told it all. Every last detail.
She told it with fat, meaty bullet-points. With succulent clauses that dripped over the dial. With tender indentations that fell apart in her mouth. Her eyes rolled. Her lips curled. Her hand gripped the edge of the seat at the thought of their red hot ears, pulsing upon receiving such potent scandal.
Her mind’s eye indulged in the wild fantasy of their fervent enlightenment. How this gossip must be heaving relentlessly upon them, intoxicating their otherwise mundane lunch break with her salacious insights. Oh! What they must be thinking listening to me tell this. They must be covering their phone for the shame and filthy tattle of it all, she thought.
Yielding in ecstacy her body folded over and bent deeper and deeper into the seat. She had pulled one foot up under her calf until it pushed hard into the back of her knee, stretching the fabric of her tights, digging with a desperate excitement to continue. Coiled like a spring, her elbow leaned heavily upon the edge of the table until it slipped suddenly and release under the weight of her wildness. With a clatter her cup overturned and a tan, glossy sheet of tea flowed silently out and over the edge of the coffee table, splashing puddles upon the white floor tiles. The steady din of the café melted for a nosey moment as heads turned and voices lowered to spy silently on what had happened, but she took no notice and skipped not a beat lost as she was in her lunchtime chat:
“And you’ll never believe what he said…”
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Such a keen eye and ear for human noticings in your writing!
Well this is a fun diversion, David! Though I think I remember that you have more of these cafe observations in this longer form. I used to write longer pieces also - perhaps I'll go back to some of those old notebooks and see what I might dig up!