Sometimes a Glance

Sometimes the words are not enough. Sometimes the words are unnecessary. Silence is often more eloquent than mere language ever can be. Sometimes a glance is enough.

We saw each other across a room: a room too large, too noisy for either of us to speak to each other. She looked around, obviously bored by the man who was failing to impress her. I was over by the bookcase, not interested in talking any more; not that I had nothing to say, just that there didn’t seem to be anyone there worth talking to. My sojourn over by the bookcase had proved to me why, for what I’d first taken for books turned out to be DVDs in fake leather plastic cases meant – for some reason – to look like books.

We caught each other’s eye and each gave one of those despairing half-smiles and the slight movement of the head that indicates we felt the same, even though most of the room separated us.

I looked over towards a door and raised an eyebrow. She nodded and just left her interlocutor in mid-anecdote, his arms outstretched wide as though trying to encircle his ego.

The door led nowhere, another room, this one in darkness as though forgotten. She came over to me.

‘No. Don’t talk,’ she said, even though I had no intention of speaking. ‘Just kiss me.’

I kissed her. She seemed to think it was good. She kissed me back.

‘Do you have a name?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Do I need to know it?’

‘No.’ Names are much like other words. They only get in the way, create barriers between people.

She was wearing a long black dress, cut very low at the back. I put my hand on her bare skin in the small of her back. She felt cold. She shivered at my touch, but I didn’t move my hand.

I kissed her again and this time she wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed herself against me.

‘Is it time to leave?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ I replied.