Fall 2011 - The University of Scranton

which is a mutual confession in both sets of eyes, which connect at that
repeated word. Occasionally Elena glances at her friend, who looks back
and smiles, always with a slight mischief in her eye. Elena speaks to George
again, lowering her voice. Then he asks her a question that makes her
sit still within a momentary silence. When she answers, it is with a hard
and saddened stare at his face, a stare of frightened honesty, and he nods
without surprise.
They shake off the heaviness slightly and discuss life situations,
but in a haze, maintaining a nervous connection even as they speak of the
mundane. She says she is a student at the nearby university, and he says he
went there seven years ago. He never finished. He did a lot of drugs and
alcohol back then. He laughs when he tells her this, and again, his body
folds into itself, slightly. For a quarter of a second, horror flashes in his
eye, and her face opens in kindness once more, but without the patronizing
smile of before. The look that she gives to him, it is like the quiet touch
of a hand upon a tabletop’s clenched fist. He says that it is difficult to be
around here again and her look remains, but diminishes as she picks up
her book again, opens a page and points out a line, which they laugh at,
but softly. Night is so black now that the clouds are invisible, and the dark
seems to immediately fill in the modest skyline’s negative spaces.
They speak on, and smile more, and occasionally Elena looks too
kind still, when George laughs loudly and haltingly, or when her friend
glances over wickedly. Their words enter others’ ears with starts and stops.
Those in the shop, mostly alone and working, hear and barely process a
probing question that Elena answers slowly. The book again, a play she
saw last year, one of his tattoos—she sees a cross hidden under a cuff and
perhaps the word fanaticism passes through her mind—each topic leaves
their table inconsequentially. Her friend looks up regularly, sees and
calculates the flashes across Elena’s face, which a constant study would
learn mean ‘honesty’ and perhaps also, ‘terror.’ The two continue to speak
and continue to shift positions, trying new, slight contortions in their seats.
There is a slight tension for this frightening level of eye contact.
Elena’s friend has packed up her belongings and throws her
hulking bag over a shoulder, stands by Elena’s table, smiles and says she
is leaving. They exchange “see you later.” One of them returns to George
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