Lunch

Monday spring foreboding heavens forbidding any dalliance at this juncture, the line dangling, footsteps wandering, winter dream layers dislodging certain connections - making notes, coffee, the waitress watching.
Your friend hasn’t shown?
Tied up I suppose, (hopefully not inextricably).
Another coffee?
No thanks.

Lucy finally arrived, apologised then ordered battered fish. My mind flashed to seal clubbing, then to the Greek salad, then to pondering if we’ll make it through lunch without offending each other’s sensibilities. There was an air of unreality about this meeting and all these proposals to exhibit my work that seemed to meet with unforeseeable difficulties, then each proposal becoming more ambitious than the last. The waitress kept hovering around or glancing my way from behind the servery with a look of complicity. No doubt wondering about my relationship with my young luncheon companion. But mind kept slewing sideways, sliding on the slippery incline of these ever changing realities. Lucy was playing games. I held steady, if for no other reason I suppose that to finish lunch in peace. As a way of staying focused I let my attention wander over the architectural anomalies of the room. A room bearing the scars of many renovations. Lunch was soon over, we shared the bill, we shook hands, she said she’d give me a call. I figured there’d be no exhibition and I was fine with that. I was happy with just being in the car, a cool breeze, Coltrane jazz, heading out of town.

Hans Pocket is a celebrated ventriloquist and raconteur. He divides his time between Hydja, Iceland and Krate City, AU where he works as a trolly collector.