The Diary

A thought is shared between them, this old man with round wire rimmed glasses which curl around his large hairy ears and cover his wide almond colored eyes with round dirty lenses made greasy by his repeated application of his fingertips and this young woman, awkwardly beautiful with plain brown hair draping her pale face, a blue beret tilted on her head, a red scarf tied loosely around her neck.

Most of the customers who enter the coffee shop assume that they are related, that he must be her elderly father or uncle, because they shape so many similar physical features, a large beaklike nose, a strong jaw that juts slightly forward from the rest of the face, the slight sag in the earlobes. Certainly, the waitress who brought them their drinks, a latte and an expresso, made such an assumption smiling with a heartened smile which suggested that, after her shift, she would phone her father living several states away to tell him that she loves him before getting into a fight with him about her life choices.

They pay no attention to her so strong is the hold of the thought between the two of them.

She cannot look at him, the shame is so heavy on her. He doesn't want her to look at him, for it she were to look into his eyes, his anger would disappear, dissipate leaving him with nothing but the emptiness that loss would bring.

There is a black leather notebook on the small round safe table. He opens the book and sees the blue ink scrawled along the pages, sentences which may or may not have been the thoughts possessed by his wife who had been taken away from him in such A violent and ugly way. 'Ways,' he reminds himself.

"From here," he reads aloud, "things don't seem so bad."

"I'm so sorry," she blurts out, but he doubts her sincerity.

"It's fine," he falsely states, and he grabs the book in his large thick hands. He leaves the expresso unsampled on the table, a sliver of steam rising from the dark brown surface.