CANCER

AN EXCERPT FROM ANCHORED, A NOVELLA-IN-PROGRESS

They sat outside a café talking. It was windy and Emma was wearing a teal patterned scarf that she continually had to rewrap around her neck. The movement had become so habitual that it looked to him like a nervous tick. She took the long spoon from her saucer and slowly sipped on the froth. Rich watched her.

‘I wish you could’ve been at that gig,’ he said. ‘The amount of geeks per square metre was incredible. “Life did not favour me” was definitely the over-riding theme of the evening.’

Emma followed his lips as she dug around inside the vintage handbag on her lap. She pulled out a pouch of tobacco, rolling papers and a lighter. He watched her as she rolled a cigarette before drinking the rest of his espresso. She lit, then inhaled, then exhaled. They did not talk. He tried to make a joke: I hear those things give you cancer, he said in a strained voice.

‘What is that accent?’ she said. ‘Is that from something?’

‘I don’t know,’ he laughed nervously.

Emma looked to see if he had finished his espresso and pulled his cup over the table to use as an ashtray. Rich slouched in his aluminium seat and wobbled the uneven legs caused by the paving tiles, from one to the other. It started to rain.

‘It’s spitting,’ he said. ‘Did you want to go inside?’

She looked at her half finished cigarette, then he looked at her half finished cigarette. Then Emma flicked her scarf over her shoulder.

‘I guess we’ve got the awning.’

He looked down at the uncovered pavement where the rain was falling, dotting a small pattern in various sizes. Across the street an old Chinese man with a full head of white hair and a flaccid cigarette hanging out of his mouth walked past. His back was craned at a seventy-degree angle. Rich dipped his right pinkie in the froth of her cappuccino then sucked his finger. She watched him, her mouth slightly parted. She stubbed out her cigarette and took her phone from her vintage handbag. Rich looked over her scarved shoulder, down the street where people were going in and out of shops, opening and closing umbrellas, shaking off the rain. 

(Giles Ruffer is a unremarkable man. Feel disappointment at http://libraryofdust.blogspot.com.)