stargayzedotcom

K had gone to see if the line for ordering food had quieted down. We were catching up after not having seen each other in like fifteen years… no, more. I actually can’t remember the last time we saw each other. We’d walked from her cute apartment to the busy cafe. You’re supposed to order food first and then take the number to your table and wait for them to bring you the food. This tactic feels cheap, and more of a hassle for everyone, but it persists I guess. The line was too long so K’d had the idea of just sitting and waiting for it to die down. We took over a corner table that these two women were leaving. It felt renegade, we were doing things out of order! and I wondered if the busboys were going to bust us or what. I’m always nervous about the rules. The women had left a bowl of cold, uneaten fries and a half drunk Bloody Mary, all sleazy looking cuz the ice had melted. We joked about eating the fries but then of course I actually ate one. I can’t help myself. I told K – remember when we were young poor dancers going to school in New York and AR’s mother would come into town and take us all out to a fancy restaurant and we’d stuff ourselves silly? -Like camels eating for the whole week! K exclaimed, and laughed. I laughed, too, like it was all in the past but truth be told I’m always looking for the next free meal.

Anyway I was sitting there by myself for the moment and I looked through the trellis and there he was, looking intently at his friend, whose back was to me. He was with this group of guys and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen him as I’d walked in. I mean, it would have been the back of him but I’m really attracted to guys’ backs, jealous of them in fact. Especially of long, v-shaped, broad backs, which he has. Ok maybe not so broad. Anyway his friends were just a bunch of regular looking guys and now that I think about it they’d all turned and looked at me as I was walking in, maybe to protect him? Or see who would recognize them with him? Who knows. He was wearing a slate blue cotton t shirt and jeans. He was very tan, which concerned me of course because I thought well you’re really making it hard for the make up people aren’t you, having to make you look like the undead. I’ve heard he’s nice — he seems it. I’ve watched videos of him online where he’s pulling pranks and stuff. He came across as nice in Melancholia, even though I couldn’t really buy it that he’d go to all that trouble to marry that woman, in like, a fucking castle. She was such a mess, oh excuse me, an advertising “genius.”

His face was slightly wet, like he’d just done a misting spray. The whole thing was so unreal — I was peeking through the trellis for god’s sake — and it was almost as if he was looking right at me and he was so tan and moist, it felt like the right thing to do was just to lean in and lick his face. I realized he was speaking swedish to the guy and then that they all were. K came back and I pointed him out and she pretended to stretch and twist so she could see him. One other really good looking swedish guy arrived and they hugged and he joined them, sitting next to A and I thought wow what’s it like to be two ridiculously good looking people sitting next to each other. And then after a while the whole pack of them got up to leave – he put on a generic black cap – and I said to K, look it’s a whole entourage, that really happens. -It’s his Swedish Posse, K said and I said, that’s good, I’m going to write that down later.

And then that night, as I was lying, confused but satisfied, next to _______, I imagined I was looking right up into a nighttime snowfall. The small, white flakes raced out of the blackness as if out of an invisible shower head and fell around me in a perfect circle. I was just a face, no body, no ground, no clouds or stars either.