Staring Me In The Face

The tray did not just hit the floor. He crashed his lunch and smashed into pieces. It also serves damn right, I thought. You were staring again. He stood stock-still and looked at the food. Suddenly I got up and moved towards him. I had not intended that still did not want to help him. I listened to the woman behind the counter. Your mouth closed and has a cloth around the mess. I took dishes, put it on the tray. It was a soppy spot on his pants and they can see how bony knees were. Like the rest of him. All bones, dangling jacket and trousers hang. Stooped shoulders and miles-long arms. Then he smiled at me. A wonderful smile, raised his face and take me completely by surprise. "Thanks." I pushed the tray at him and went back to my table. I worked in a large publishing and ate lunch in the canteen. I had noticed him because he stared at me. It was strange looking. His hair was bad and his clothes were old and boring, too-short corduroys, baggy at the knees, and color-less sweater, dotted with fuzz. Often he sat alone and only returned to his food. Or he read and jotted things. A few days after the crash, he stopped on the table, I was together with Mark for proofreading, and asked if he sit down. I said the seats were and continue to eat. He apologized and took his tray fromsomewhere else. "What's your problem, Leanna?" asked Mark. "No problem. It's just that I choose who I share my food." "A bit rough on the old chap though." I shrugged. It was Mark who told me more about him. He had to scrounge a cigarette. By the time he came back on the table, I had my head's in the news paper. "Interesting chap. Sub-Editor. Been around the world," said Mark. I decided to order the newspaper more interesting and, finally, Mark, and the smoking stopped. "On the question, your name," he said. "He what?" "Yeah." "What'd you say?" "Leanna, of course." I folded the newspaper."I have a lot of work this afternoon." "Said you trust," said Mark. "As someone he knew." "Someone he knew?" "Yes. Könnte strategy. Maybe he fancies you." "Fancies me? But he is old." "Only old enough to be your father." I grabbed my tray and left the table. I do not have much on this afternoon. I wish Mark had not said what he had said. Old enough to be your father. In the following week I attended a book to read during the lunch break. When I was in the elevator on my floor, he was already inside. He welcomed me so I had to answer, but I did not smile. We were alone and worried that I am. I wondered whether I should be in the next floor and go up the stairs to the canteen. Do not panic, I thought. Just because he stared at you for ages does not mean that he is going to do something. "Well, I suppose one of us should press the button or we'll be here all day, will not we?" I was so busy wondering what to do and expect him to do something that I completely forgot to do something myself. I felt like an idiot and this made me smile and I had not wanted to. He smiled back, his blue eyes crinkling right up to the gray hair at his ears and making him look ... nice. Then there was a shock. My book on the floor. I bent down and so did he, and we bashed heads. At this moment, the elevator shuddered to an end and the doors seemed to throw wide open. I was so embarrassed, I walked from the elevator, go straight towards the queue at the bar. I have not on the menu and gave me a tray to a table where there is only one open seat. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to eat. But the lettuce stuck in my throat when I noticed that everyone else in the table already finished lunch and they were always up to go. I looked over at the bar. He was charged in a second, his eyes would scan the room to find me. I crouched my head. Waited. Every minute now he deals with his subject. Short Stories from Australia. My book appeared before my eyes. His fingers were the longest I saw and his nails were well kept. I did not think he bothers. "They have it in the elevator," he said. "May I sit?" His voice was soft. Cultivated. What could I say? The tables were all pretty full and I nodded. He said, bon app閠it and began to eat. I thought he would always back on his food. But when I saw, I noticed that he had small pieces selected, speared it and moved it gently on the mouth. "Have you been there?" "Been where?" I was completely stunned. Drop by my book and banging my head and everything. "Australia, New Zealand." I stared at him and thought again of what Mark had said about me remind him of someone. An Australian? Perhaps an ex-girlfriend or wife? "Not like a strange question," he said. "You're old enough to have traveled there. And Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, are best in the book." His smile crinkled his eyes. "No, I did not, and yes, they are," I said. That's how it started. He asked me a question, nodded and said, when I then asked another. I wasout,talk about reading, books and all things that I love. Malcolm days later at our table with his tray, and I spontaneously said a place has been free. Mark stared at me and I felt a rush of warmth on my cheeks. After that, Malcolm often sat with us and he and I discussed a lot of things. We talked a little about us. I told him how Mama had me up on her own at the beginning of the hippie era. He said he had married during this time divorced, but a few Years later. Mark asked me how come Malcolm, and I always had so much to talk. "It is easy to speak. And he reads a lot." "You have two so much to say, I do not have the opportunity to open my mouth all the lunch-time." "You do. You shove food in." A lunch Malcolm asked me if I want to move to a reading with him. "Uh. I do not know." "Amelia Turner. Shortlists for the Booker Prize last year." I wanted very much to do. But even if I no longer thought Malcolm quite as funny, I was not surewhether I wanted to work in his company. "Then I will cook us curry. Do you like it?""Love it." "Me too. Niederlassungsbewilligung then?" he asked and smiled his soft smile. I was not surprised that I nodded. After the reading and the curry dinner, I went in Malcolm's living room, where there are more books than I have ever seen any shelf. I began to read the title. "Help yourself," said Malcolm. "Thank you. But when I read a book, I have it in my collection." "Strange, same here." He waved his arms on the shelves. "But look where it has given me." "I hate books without it. ... They are friends." "That sounds like lonely," said Malcolm. I turned and pulled out a book.My voice came from afar, as I tried to answer him. "I'm picky about my friends. You do not have very many." "I hear," said Malcolm, and sat down on the chair opposite him. "My childhood was ... I mean, my mother loved to move. They had no problems placing the roots of the whole place. I hated it! Books were the things constantly, so I buried myself in it." "Hell, sounds familiar." I sat in the chair. "I was very academic parents," said Malcolm. "Was a straggler, maybe a mistake. She loved me vague in their intellectual, but me alone to grow up with. Hence the books." "It's lonely, too," I said. When I left, I took part in a series of Malcolm's Books. My friendship with Malcolm grew up but my curiosity remained. Who did I remind him? My mother? If so, could he my father? Although the mother had never been with books, our physical similarities, apart from my tallness, were undeniable. She had never told me much about the man who had fathered me. Answers, it was usually said. If, however, when I was sick with chicken pox, and hot and scratchy, she had relented. "What was he like?" "Skinniest man you ever saw." "Where'd you him?" "In a park I was a sun cream and catching these papers started Blowin 'in my face. I was a bit cheesed off at them Blowin' all about me and then this man Runnin '. He grabbed and attacked but not catch them all . And he jus' stood still, a helpless look on his face. It was so funny, I laughin '. " "And then?" "I helped hunted, and we are all over the place, after papers. If we were to get our breath back, he told me he was a student. He was always so clever. Can not Re-member, what the hell he was study was. "Somethin 'I never heard of or so since." "Why did not you marry him?" "Marriage proposal? Good Lord, Leanna, I was not ready to marry and he was not the guy I have wanted to marry by a long shot." "What did he look, Mama?" "Lord, stop the questions, child. Get some sleep." She saw my disappointment, however, and said she would write anything for me. Put it in an envelope to open when they dead and gone. I was satisfied. On a wet, slippery highway, traveling to France for a weekend, she was involved in an accident and died instantly. I was twenty-three and then on my own feet but as I sorted through and packed up the flat belonging to her, I felt like a child again. I looked at the envelope, but can not find. For a long time after the death of my mother and do not know who my father was, made me feel as if I were floating on a sea with no horizon. One lunchtime, I decided to ask boldly and Malcolm, who I remembered him. "Met her while I was a student," he said. "Was it to study?" "Oh God, no. That was what struck me about her. ... She was so different." "What have you been?" I asked. "How? Just as I do now. Noses in books, not a loner. Not very interesting. Not for a live wire, as it was." "Next," I said. "She was pregnant. I was very happy until she told me she did not want my help. Roofed she would change her mind, though, as the pregnancy progressed, but when I tried to see her, she said me, they will leave. I was very hurt, but accepted their refusal to me. A few months later, I have a job I was in New York. salary was terrible, but I thought it would be for the best. " "Was it?" I asked. "No. When I look back, they moved. Left no forwarding address." "So you never knew whether there was a boy or ...?" "A girl?" asked Malcolm. I nodded. "A boy," he said. "Had the approximate date and went to the register of births to look it up." I sat there, and try to order in what Malcolm had said. I felt as if I have been flattened by a truck. "Somewhere out there I have a child I know nothing about," Malcolm continued. "I was stupid. Crashesinstead of relying on a share in my son's life." "I thought maybe it was a daughter." "Excuse me?" "A daughter. Me." "They thought I was your father ...?" "Books, curry, I'm big. ... We we want the same things." "We have things in common, but I'm not your father." He looked at me. "I'm so sorry to disappoint you, Leanna." I tried to smile. "We are not, but we can do something else." "It is staring you in the face for weeks." Malcolm's use of that phrase made me burst out laughing. "Let me at the joke at some point," he said. "Okay," I said. "Let's see, we're friends." Then I smiled. And my smile was so wide and warm as he smiled back.