the evening

And then in the evening I removed the cork from the bottle, I looked in the mirror, I waved goodbye to the person who was standing behind me at an oblique angle who was also looking in or at the mirror and who was already drinking of the wine from the bottle, and then I turned back around.

But of course it wasn’t clear to the man I had waved to as to the intent of the wave, whether it meant goodbye or hello or some other kind of greeting he couldn’t decipher, nor could I reckon as to why I had I made the wave goodbye, since the party had not even really started.

And this is why the tension between the man and myself, already pretty tight, became even tighter, and it was though we had become tied together by a sort of wire or rope that wouldn’t let us go until at least one of could stop trying so hard to get out of it.

A flower could have been cut, but wasn’t. That was the opinion of the woman who was cooking the salmon on the grill. Also cooking the asparagus.

“I says to him many times,” she continued. “I says to him, ‘ you better get yer shit together or this train’s gonna leave you at the station.’

"And to that he said nothing at all.”

Then the woman stood back a little from the short adult female she was speaking to as if awaiting a reaponse which she felt must naturally be at ready. Yet there was none at all. Furthermore, no sounds could be heard from anywhere besides the grill. Was she ill? she wondered.