One Apple A Day #123
I don’t know how she entered or from where she came. She appeared out of the blue. One second there was only music in the air between the tables, and a second later she was there. Standing in the half empty restaurant, looking around as if she too was surprised to be there. A tiny girl, long blond hair enclosed in a lousy pony-tail, a white t-shirt under short dungarees, worn all-stars at the feet, a small schoolish backpack on one shoulder. At first glance, I thought she was a teenager. But looking better there was something in her eyes telling me there were more days in her life than it seamed. There was also something. A sort of fear or a sense of loss, I still can name it. But it was there. In those wandering eyes and those hands holding the smartphone at her belly like if she was protecting a secret. She didn’t ask for a table. She asked if she can sit somewhere. Like if she was worry that anyone could spot that she was in the wrong place. Somewhere she shouldn’t be.
She pretended to be interested the menu, but in reality, her attention was totally on the screen on her smartphone. She wrote something, maybe a message to someone she was supposed to meet? I will never know. She wrote holding the phone with both hands and using both thumbs. She typed fast, the way we do when our emotions are guiding our words. Then she got up, and she ordered an Americano. I didn’t expect for her to have such a strong cocktail, but that was just the confirmation. You can be young of years and old of days. When I left, she was still there. With her eyes moving from the screen to the door and back. It seemed to me she was trying to connect her two lives. The virtual one going on on her screen and the real one she was waiting to enter through the restaurant door. The same door I left, leaving her and her story behind.