Little Intimacies

Through the café window, above the net curtain, heads wearing hats bob past in profile like cut-out figures. Whenever one of these cut-outs turns and enters the café, a bell sounds on a curved spring above the door and the newly-arrived first pays his visit to the yellow-wood coat-stand set on its four claw feet about a tin tray. By one wall, on a solitary chair, sits a young man knees together who clenches a girl to his chest. She is straddling him, with her back to me. The man's chin rests on her shoulder, and he stares; he grins out; his nostrils and lips are as red as sweets. The girl's arms, flung around his neck, are alive with little jerks and movements all of which are telling him private confidences. At the counter sit two men on stools, a fat man and a thin one. They have their backs to me though I can see what they are up to in the mirror. The fat man puts his arm around the shoulder of the other, draws him close and mouthful by mouthful feeds him a plate of dinner with a spoon. The fat man grins and frequently slaps the other on the back. The thin man's lips (I see) are moist with gravy. When the meal is over, the fat man fusses over him and dribbles attention over his neck, while for his part the thin one sits upon his hands. I turn my eyes away from this fat man's luscious attentions. At a table near me sit two girls (I know them by sight) fourteen-year-olds in green pinafores. One girl is painting the other's nails. She talks into the ear of the other with sparkling eyes, interrupting her words at times with a guffaw and a snigger, all the while painting, with deft strokes, the girl's nails. Her friend is registering the sweetness of the act: she pouts her lips; she gapes; she crosses and recrosses her legs. I am not of these givers and these takers. I've never been chosen. My blue travelling-coat is buttoned up to the neck; the grey panama is tilted slightly forward which casts my eyes into hopeless shadow. Now I bend forward and suck at a cigarette. The smoke tunnels out of my nostrils. Throwing my head back I close my eyes and stroke the short beard between two fingers. The smoke is irritating some membrane of mine. I cough. I cough into my palm and wipe the wet mouth with the back of my hand. I, like most solitary men, pay perhaps too much attention to the functions of my body - I blow my nose into a handkerchief, open the piece of linen, examine the contents with a private pleasure, and fold them up.