A Single Scene

Christophe sits in his default lounger in the Turkish-themed café, watching the young chicklings doing their mating rituals a few feet below the raised steps of the café’s front door. As he sits wearing his usual worn tweed blazer in a humid 80 degrees resting his philtrum on the handle of his wooden cane, almost ready to eat it.

He thinks about it for a second as a possibility.

He bats away quickly the thought like the annoying flies flittering around the lights beaming onto the patio and the young chicklings who’ve gathered there tonight.

Christophe’s hazel-grey eyes peers upward at the sight in front of him. Of the disparate group of chicklings smoking hookah and sipping on their wine or beers, reeling back from similar stories of conquest or good fortune. He scans the patio for expressions of solemnity, but finds none.

Slowly he turns to the burly Demetri and moves his knight on the chess board lying between them. Demetri snuffs out of his nose as he sees A5 to C6, noticing that his partner didn’t make an overly judicious move. Demetri rushes his bulgy fingers to quickly snatch up Christophe’s knight for a pawn and leans back into his chair, reaching for his Turkish coffee, sipping softly on it.

The chicklings on the patio, sweltering out-of-reach of the industrial fan’s spray, seem not to notice the humidity’s convening on their brows and backs and axilla. All in all, this is not the first time Christiophe had ever seen this scene before, but it was the first time he took note of it. Noticing the games they played with each other, he grew in a breath to exhale loudly. But Christophe holds in the breath for a second and quietly exhales it through his nose, bristling the whiskers underneath.

“Took your knight,” murmurs Demetri as he soaks the biscotti cookie on his lips.

It was like that one time when I arrived back at the airport from a class trip across the country, and my girlfriend's mother asked me if I needed a ride. My cell phone service had been spotty, and I was unsure whether or not I would have a family member coming to pick me up. Deciding that I was a man, and weakness (or help) was not appropriate for a person imbued with such strength (like myself), I quickly shook my head "No". Undeterred, my girlfriend's mom persisted in interrogating all of the ins-and-outs of my parents coming to pick me up with a "Are you sure?". I resorted to fabricating a whole scheme as to where and when my family would be scooping me up from the airport baggage claim. After settling on the story that they were only late due to unforeseen complications from our sailboat and its new sails and rigging which didn't seem to be as good of quality as our previous ones. "You see," I explained to my girlfriend's mom, "before we stricly had Terylene sails with a Nylon spinnaker, and it only made sense to upgrade to the new Mylar sails with the diagonal splice." She stared at me until my soul wilted from the beam of concentration burrowing its way to the depths of my mendacious psyche. I stared back blankly since I felt this affectation was the most simplistic one, and, according to Occam's Razor, the simpler the better. My girlfriend's mom relented, and I waited on the curb of the airport's passenger pick-up area until my mother and her new husband came to pick me up. It wasn't really a curb (maybe a bench?), but I felt like a curb demonstrated my despondence a lot clearer than a bench. A bench could be anything, really. Old people in parks sit on benches to feed the birds. A romantic couple sits on a bench in a park (more rustification of domesticated urban space) and smile & laugh. A bench could have an immigrant woman (from somewhere) waiting for a bus. A bench could have a tired football player reeling from a bad play during the biggest game of the season. As a result, I chose a curb. No one sits on curbs except children, criminals in handcuffs, and the destitute. I was two out of three in this instance.