Today I sat for six hours in a cafe at a table next to a man and a woman. She cried for three hours and laughed for another three. He handed her tissues and  murmured at her. I haven’t cried for a very long time, she says, laughing and crying. Hmmm, he murmurs. She is leaving her husband, or getting fired, or has worked seven years towards something of which nothing nothing has come. He is her husband’s best friend, her employer or her ski instructor.

 

(I tell CL about sticky eyes. A stringy tall man wearing a navy cagoule and sporting a ponytail catches my eye from the bar. He is tipping cinnamon and vanilla powder and nutmeg into a mug, and staring right into me. CL emerges with submarine stealth from her vampire notes and drills holes into his head, a little bit later.)

 

The table behind me. Someone who reminded myself of me in ten years with a Glaswegian accent, and across from her a low melodic voice. (CL says, I put on my glasses sometimes, and I’m invincible. A long pause. Uh, invisible.) Neck-craning would blow my cover; I am almost invisible behind the wrappers of  muffins, the paper cup debris and the weighty tomes of learning. I think, anyway, that he must be small and sensitive, with short but slender thumbs, and funky neon shoelaces. He has not shaved for several days.

 

I’m a new man, he starts, sing-song, I’m not joking. She does not sound entirely convinced. I look at her, moving only my eyeballs. She catches this minuscule movement, and I sense her glowering.

 

The thing is, she says, she will want you back.

 

No.

 

You will want her back.

 

I will not.

 

Divorce, she says, hurts many many people. My parents pulled even the dog in half.

 

I want you, he says. I pretend I am not there.

 

I want you too, she breathes.There is a long silence, in which they kiss or he caresses her shins or the table leg with his converse shoes, or they hold hands across the table negotiating cold cappuccinos, and she examines his slender, sensitive thumbs.

 

So, she says, finally. I am dying with suspense. What do you do? He talks about Jesus having been a youth worker, teenage pregnancy and finding himself. She still does not sound convinced, entirely.

 

…God was SO ALIVE in me that day. I went home and I said – I told her – we – about you… ? ? …??

 

Sorry, she says, scraping back her chair. I imagine he looks up at her quizzically as she stands. Wait, he says, and they disappear together.

 

And then, behind CL, a large group of ruddy-faces shouts intravenous Jesus! and raise their arms heaven-wards.