Tuesday, December 27, 2016

The Girl in the Restaurant

You saw her as you walked in her direction behind the hostess.


She was young, in her early twenties, you guessed. She was curled into her booth, feet bare and resting on the long seat. Her elbow was on the table, keeping her upright as she hunched over, dark brown hair hiding the majority of her face from view. She wore black tights, and a grey and white dress shirt with a red floral design on one side. A pair of grey ankle boots were sitting under the table.


She had a pen in her hand, one of the ones that clicked, and she had the end between her teeth and she kept her attention focused on the table. It took you a second, as you settled in at the table across the aisle, to realise that she had a long receipt stretched out across the table. She had a phone next to it, a slim thing in a gold faux-leather case, but the screen was dark, inactive. It wasn’t was she was focused on.


Her other hand was resting on the table, fingers drumming a steady thump, thump, thump that you could hear easily, despite the din of the restaurant. Not too far from her hand, a full glass of cherry-red soda was dripping condensation onto the table, the straw floating across the top. If she was aware of it’s presence, she made no move to drink it.


You wondered how long she’d been sitting there, contemplating the receipt, and whatever purchases she’d made. You wondered if she was one of those people who meticulously calculated everything they purchased, down to the cent, and was double-checking a recent purchase to make sure she’d not been overcharged.


The waitresses were passing her by, as if she didn’t exist at all, and if it bothered her, she made no move to catch their attention. One of the waitresses stopped at your table; you ordered a drink from her, but never took your eyes off the woman at the table opposite.


As if on que, as the waitress walked away to fetch your drink, the woman’s phone pinged loudly, and the screen lit up. You immediately looked away as her head snapped up, her wide, blue-grey eyes briefly unfocused, before she scooped up her phone, and swiped her finger across the screen.


You watched her from the corner of your eye, as she released the pen, still clutching it between her teeth, as she typed out a quick message with both her thumbs darting across the screen, and then clicked the button on the side and dropped the phone back on the table.


As she settled back in, hand wrapping around the pen again, a waitress came down the aisle, carrying a tray with a meal upon it. She stopped by the woman’s table, gently depositing the plate - piled high with fries and a burger - and a bottle of ketchup on the table. She followed it with a slip of paper - the restaurant had a habit of leaving the order slip with the customer, because it also had the table number - and walked away with the tray tucked neatly under one arm.


The instant the woman had walked away, the woman’s hand darted out, snatching the slip of paper from the edge of the table, while simultaneously shoving the longer receipt away slightly. For a moment, you thought she might be confused about the order, that she was going to complain about getting the wrong thing, but then she flipped the paper over, removed the pen from her mouth, and began to scribble.


With the long receipt where it was, you could see that the woman had not been contemplating her purchases, as you’d first thought, but had been writing. The entire length of the receipt’s back was covered in messy scribbles that you couldn’t read, and she was doing the same to the back of her order receipt.


Every now and then, her hand darted out to grab a fry from the plate, or to briefly drag her glass over with a loud scraping noise, and then push it away again. At one point, a waitress, who’d come to take your order, glanced at her as she went to walk away, and then, with a frown, disappeared briefly. She came back a moment later, holding a knife and fork wrapped in a large napkin, which she deposited on the woman’s table with an apology.


The woman only smiled at her, nodding her head, but said nothing and the waitress quickly walked away again, to tend to her other tables. Like before, as soon as the waitress had gone, the woman’s hand snapped out, tugging the napkin from under the knife and fork, and unfolding it to its full size. She then began to scribble away on that, though with much more care than she had the order paper.


You briefly wondered why she didn’t just type what she was working on onto her phone - surely there were apps available just for that purpose - but then you remembered that you were the exact same way. You’d always preferred to hand write notes, rather than type them. You preferred the feel of a pen in your hand, rather than the cold glass screen beneath your fingers.


You had no idea how long you sat there, watching the woman from the corner of your eye as you ate, until suddenly, she was swinging her feet from the seat, and sliding them into the boots under the table. Her hands gathered her scattered possessions, folding the napkin and receipts with care, and sliding them into the pocket of a jacket that had been hidden from sight on her far side, against the window. You realised she had finished her meal; there was nothing left on her plate but a few crumbs, and her glass was empty, save for the melting ice and opaque straw.


She slid out of the booth with the grace of water, crouching briefly in the aisle between your table and hers to tugged the zips on the insides of her boots up. Then she swung on her black jacket, fingers sliding under the collar to straighten it, and slung the strap of a small bag over her shoulder.


As she moved to walk away, she glanced at you, and smiled. Her smile was bright, like sunshine.


“Have a good evening,” she said, nodding her head slightly as she glided away.