It must’ve been late afternoon; after the day crowd, before the evening mob. Music was playing. It was soppy shit, but Brenda was getting drunk and she smiled and swayed to the music. Her long throat was bare and looked like carved mahogany. Her hair, done up in those thin plaits that she always had, fell down her neck like black water. But her eyes … her eyes had a glazed look, as if her smile was stuck onto a mask. She wasn’t looking at me as she moved to the music. She was staring out into space, into the place between us, between everything. Then she closed her eyes slowly, and opened them, just as slowly, and saw me and the smile struggled a bit, and her eyes got a bit wet, and she reached a hand across the table and took mine, her fingers like ice, despite the heat. I looked down at her slim hand resting on my clumsy, gnarled thing. As I closed my fingers, she pulled away from me, and when I looked up at her, her eyes had lost their softness and she was glancing over my shoulder, looking towards the bar area.
