Terms

She looked much worse the next time I saw her. It had been, what, eight years. It wasn't that she looked worse, I guess I just thought less of her now. Her hair looked greasy. Was she putting grease in it? If things went well enough I decided I'd ask her. Of course I looked much worse, objectively. I was fatter and I had a ratty beard. She ate lunch with someone and I watched her to see if she was the same. She ate lunch the same, or if I didn't remember how she used to eat lunch, she at least ate lunch in a way that did not surprise me. That is to say, I was not surprised by the manner in which she ate her lunch. At no point did I think, "is that how she eats lunch now?"

I watched her closely. She was eating -- I don't remember. First she sliced the food, using a very thin metal triangle attached to a wooden handle, sharpened along one side, which is called a "slicer." She used another device to spear her food, with a four-tonged spearing device called a "spearing device." The food that had been speared with the spearing device she then brought up to her mouth. Once the food was at her mouth, she parted her lips AND HER TEETH and covered the food-end of the spearing device with the inside of her mouth. Using her lips (and perhaps teeth) as leverage, she pulled the spearing device out of her mouth -- and the food was no longer on it! Ahh, but it had not disappeared -- while in her mouth, it had slid off her spearing device (perhaps with the help of her teeth or her tasting tongue) and remained there. She presently made several jaw movements which -- from my vantage point -- suggested she was working over the piece of food with her teeth, making it suitable for swallowing. Though this seems wasteful -- the food will be swallowed regardless -- swallowing unchewed food is often difficult and can lead to choking. In all, her eating was typical of people of her station, and I approved of it.

I decided I wanted to gauge her reactions to certain situations. I went into the back and found a bag of garbage. I brought the garbage back to my seat and slit the bag open. I spread the garbage on the floor. The smell bloomed. She looked back and made a disapproving face -- showing only a fraction of the face to me, but all of it to her companion -- it was her companion to whom the face was directed. I was happy to see this; it seemed to be the correct reaction. I alerted one of the employees to the garbage on the floor. She shoveled it into a can with both her arms. It only took her three scoops. Then she stood there still feeling the garbage on her skin and wondering what she should do now.

For her second reaction, I burst into tears. I wept quietly at first, but once the "ball began rolling" I was sobbing loudly into my coat. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, looking for the reaction. She leaned a bit closer to her companion -- this was it! The reaction was coming! She gave her companion a widening of the eyes and an "ironic" smile, as if to suggest -- "a man? Crying? Alone in a public place? This city...!" I was very pleased -- this was not the reaction I was expecting. I had expected her to leap off her seat, rush to me, draw my coat around my shoulders, comfort me, begin crying herself. She would weep over me. Others would back away from us, out of respect for our weeping. They would ask -- why are they weeping? And one of them would sweep his arm towards the window -- a prosecutorial arm-sweeping -- and say, "you live in this world too, and YOU CAN FIND NO CAUSE FOR WEEPING?" This would make the two of us weep harder. She would produce a bottle of warm milk from her purse and put the nipple to my lips. I would become quiet and pretend to sleep. She would pay my bill and get up to leave and return home or to work, eyes red and drowning, and she would sit at her table or desk and wish she could weep again like she wept with me, and the next morning she would see my photo in the paper because I was dead -- I had been killed by something, let's say a dog bite, or I fell in a concrete mixer. And she would look to her eyes for weeping, but the tears would die before reaching the front of her eyes. But I was wrong! I was happy because I felt I learned much about her character through her reaction. All reactions are the same to me, either way.

I wanted to gauge one final reaction, so I pulled out a gun and began waving it around, shouting nonsense. She cowered and covered her ears with her hands, with the rest of them. I was disappointed; this seemed to me to be irrational. What was the covering of the ears meant to accomplish? Surely any bullet fired directly at her ears could penetrate her hands. If anything, by covering her ears and obstructing her hearing, she was making it more difficult to hear and then obey the commands of the shooter (me, in this scenario). I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt -- perhaps she was cupping some kind of bulletproof material in her hands, and hoped to prevent a fatal earshot that way. I still believe people behave rationally, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Of course I didn't shoot her, or anyone else. There would be nothing to gauge or learn from such a situation; everyone's reaction is exactly the same. Someone had left a paper bag full of money on the counter, so I took it and left. I spent it all on bubble gum. My whole closet is filled with bubble gum, from the floor to the ceiling, and it is a big closet. When I open the closet door, the bubble gum comes spilling out, and I let it. It all lands at my feet, but when I am in a fun mood I pretend the flood of bubble gum is knocking me over it is so much and I have to backstroke out of it! I chew one piece of gum every day, but I buy it faster than I chew it, and I am planning to chop a box in my bedroom wall for a second closet.