The Cheswick Cafe on Saturday Afternoon

But enough of the humdrum that was late routine. He stepped out of his little hiding place. Having to adopt a somewhat awkward crouching position for some hours, he felt his back groan dully as he straightened it. Inevitably, as it would happen daily lately, his mind would race through the now-procedural recall of events not so lately.

It was not so many moons ago that it was himself, truly, who graced a chair in the Cheswick Cafe. Not the warm one she had vacated some moments ago, but a more unassuming teak, hard-ricked wooden chair with an unforgiving uncushioned back. It had a tiny nail hammered into it in awry fashion at the height of its back. As he sat, the nail would prick at the rear of his neck everytime he sought solace of support from the chair's back. It aided him in his battle against somnolence, and even boredom. At times, he would most deliberately poke at the nail with his naked neck for the sheer frivolity of it. He would, most embarassingly, even attempt an exercise in counting. The count would reach a somewhat high figure. He wished he could tell her, how every count meant to his desperate wait.

To cheat time he brought along other accoutrements, most significantly some of his books. However, it was nigh-impossible to get into reading them because he had to keep a lookout at the same time. Yet the act of flipping through the worn pages repeatedly grew to be somehow most comforting. He would alternate the flips with the counts at the neck. The crisp flipping, the droning counting, the reliable ticking of the grandfatherly oaked clock behind him, in menage a trois danced fatherly time away. But the routinised pacification was more funereal passacaglia than vivacious tarantella.