Dinner

The restaurant was suspended in mid-air. If you were to walk outside, you would find that the stars and the moon hung in much the same manner—as if anticipating matters of heavy importance down below. Fortunately for the first two presentiments, the couple sitting inside the restaurant, just to the left of the wildly swinging red green pink yellow disco lights were anticipating grave things too—you needed only to look at them to be convinced of this truth.
The girl exuded a strained calm as she leaned back in her seat and crossed one leg over the other; her eyes flitted gracelessly all across the room: noting and forgetting the black and white tiles; dismissing the waitress who smacked her lips and talked loudly on the phone. The boy crushed his fingers under the table but never once did he let his eyes leave the girl’s as if he had said to his wavering steel determination: you must still the eyes!
When the girl’s eyes returned reluctantly to the boy’s, there was a pregnant pause which she hurried to fill with a fake rusty cough. And the boy, taking up the mantle of a man, hastened to add: “So how have you been?”
“I’ve been fine. Fine, just a little busy.”
A hazy image now inserted itself between them: a cell-phone with a certain telling text message. I cannot see it of course, but it probably said something dim and hurtful which would necessitate the current tensile situation. They both seemed to glance quickly at it and then away, hoping it would take the hint and dissipate at once. It did.
He began to talk earnestly about the weather and school and nothing. He relaxed slightly and placed his hands on the table. She gave the impression of listening but could feel instead a soft disturbing heat weaving its way up up from the toes of her feet. He had such lovely pointy ears and a lop-sided smile, and those damn blasted long tapering fingers which had and could…
“…What do you think?” The question jolted her.
“Yes, yes, I quite agree,” was her frazzled response.
He laughed.
“What are you thinking, Rose?”
“I am wondering when the silly food will arrive.”
“Of course, you are.”
It is quite alright for me to nonchalantly charge the atmosphere with electrical sparks at this point, because the boy is now shifting around in his chair—discreetly, of course. How hard it must be for him.
“I…we…” she begins.
“Yes, Rose?”
“We should leave. I mean…they have such poor service here.”
“Do you want to eat some place else? I could whip something up at my apartment…”
“Your…apartment? Yes, yes, I think so.”
…
We shall leave the couple kissing urgently by the side of the road.