Savage Tales

draped my sweater on it presumptively, buried my face in my Nabokov, and used my peripherals to keep an eye out for her. I ordered a rooibos tea and croissant, but left enough room for breakfast should she so desire. I was equally ready to depart to another establishment, ready in fact to spend the whole day with her visiting our favorite haunts if we hit it off again.
    As I waited, pretending to read (I could not read with so much energy boiling inside me, with my attention fixated on keeping an eye out for her), I saw across the street a girl and her uncaring mother sitting behind a bake sale table piled high with Girl Scout cookies, the girl similarly adorned with insignia like the boxes of sugary goodness. The girl had the defeated expression of a spinster who nobody wanted. This was the wrong location for such cookies. There was a Whole Foods around the corner. That crowd didn't want fat and sugar pounded in their face. And wasn't there an article about the money raised by those cookies? Doesn't it go to fund lobbyists? Something like that.
    I'm sure the girl knew none of this – though perhaps she did, and this abetted her sense of defeat, this masochistic choice for selling – but the look on her face said she would never sell a box of cookies for the rest of her life, that cookies were no longer wanted here, that cookies and the dietary plan of citizens hereabouts would no longer be integrated, by order of the governor. And yet she held on to the dream, the idea of selling a box of cookies.
    Good luck, kid, I thought. And I gambled with myself: What should occur first – would she arrive and have her cup of coffee with me, or would the girl across the street find a customer for her unopened boxes? Thin mints, samoas, tagalongs. What was wrong with people?
    The mother sat next to her daughter and seemed oblivious to the activity around her. Her ear was plastered to a cell phone and she talked without cessation to another distant mother who probably also talked without cessation and nobody noticed that the line was cut short long ago so that nobody listened, but everybody talked.
    I thought back to the last time we had spoken. Not so long ago.
    "Do you want to hear about my day?" I had said.
    "Sure," she said.
    "I'd rather not talk about it."
    She smiled and turned on the news.
    "Can't we leave that off?" I said.
    "I thought you didn't want to talk?" she said.
    "Can't we just have some silence?" I said.
    "That's all you ever want. What is wrong with you?"
    "Oh, come on."
    "Seriously, that's not normal. You might as well be in prison, or dead. You don't want to do anything. You never want to go anywhere."
    "I go to work," I said. "I like my job."
    "You wouldn't go if you didn't have to."
    "You would?" I said.
    "I don't pretend to like my job."
    "I'm not pretending. I genuinely like my students."
    "You'd quit if you won the lottery."
    "Sure. But I'd work on my films then."
    "Do you have to use the word film ? You sound so pretentious, and you've never even made a movie. Not one."
    "I'm so tired. Don't blame me."
    "How did we get to talking about you again? Why is this always about you? I just wanted to watch the news."
    "Go ahead. It's a free country."
    "I wonder."
    "Say," I said, "are we having an argument?"
    She threw the remote at the TV, and the scratch is still on it. It's hardly noticeable except when the screen is showing something very dark, so I try not to watch horror movies on that TV lest I subtract from the ambience.
    She left half an hour later and said she'd be back for her clothes and things.
    "What's that mean?" I said.
    "It's over."
    She actually never came back for her things, which led me to believe that she wasn't serious about leaving after all.
    I looked back at the Girl Scout and her mother across the street. The sky was getting dark and moody. The mother looked up and had a cynical look on her face. Her daughter didn't seem to notice anything.
    I looked at my watch. She was late. Only ten minutes, but just like her, never giving things their proper weight.
    A waitress came over to my table.
    "Would you like some more tea?" she said. "Or something to eat?"
    "I've already had a croissant," I said. "So I've already eaten."
    "It's been a while," she said. "I thought you might want some more."
    "I'm okay for now," I said.
    "How is your book?" she said, indicating the Nabokov stories.
    "Engrossing," I said.
    "Didn't he write Lolita ?"
    "Yes."
    "I've never read that. Isn't it about