‘I thought you’d at least stay in the green room.’
‘You said she hadn’t eaten,’ the man says. ‘I knew there was good pizza here.’ He can’t maintain eye contact any longer. ‘I couldn’t be there,’ he says, quietly. ‘I thought I wanted to be, but I didn’t.’
The woman’s handstap-tap-taptheir rings against the tabletop. The man lets out a long, unsteady breath. He’s avoiding her gaze, like he doesn’t trust himself to look right into her eyes.
‘You wanted to talk,’ the woman says. ‘You wouldn’t have come if you didn’t.’ Does she look hopeful? ‘I think we should. Talk.’
‘No,’ says the man, decisively. ‘Let’s just forget it.’
Scratch, scratch, scratchof crayon on crumpling placemat. The girl is too engrossed to notice the shift in tone, the fact that her mother has tensed up, has lowered her voice.
‘Because of her?’ the mother says.
The man doesn’t respond.
‘Don’t do that,’ she says.
‘Do what?’
‘Say nothing.’
‘Don’t say nothing?’
‘We used to talk until you decided a conversation was over,’she says. ‘If it took a turn you didn’t like, you’d just shut down. Take the easy route out.’
His eyes burn now. ‘None of it was easy.’
‘Then don’t pretend we have nothing to say to each other,’ she says. ‘Let’s have it out.’
‘I was never pretending,’ he says. ‘It was all real to me.’
‘Your version of events.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ His voice is rough. ‘We both know what you did. The proof is sitting right here.’
The scratching stops. They stop with it. They seem to have remembered where they are, who they’re with. The mother’s cheeks are burning red. Her partner shakes his head. The girl resumes her colouring as if nothing has happened.
‘I’m not here to reprimand you,’ the man says. ‘I don’t care any more.’
‘If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I wanted to see you,’ the man says, matter-of-factly. ‘Just once.’
And yet, it’s like he still can’t look directly at her. The woman swallows, breathes carefully. It doesn’t seem easy for them to be sitting on either side of this table. The chef is cleaning down the surfaces, wondering how long this will go on. He can’t work out if this couple would rather get this over with, or if there’s nowhere else they’d rather be.
‘Just once?’ the woman says. Her voice is timid. She pitches it like a question she doesn’t really want an answer to.
The man rubs one heavy hand across the back of his shaven head. ‘I have a—’ The words don’t come. A kind of growl replaces them. ‘I’m not staying.’
‘You only just got here.’
‘Not really,’ he says. ‘And I was never going to be back for long.’ He chews over his phrasing. ‘I’m moving away. For good, this time.’
The woman looks like she’s hurt, and she’s trying not to show it. Like she doesn’t want to believe him. Her eyes seem to say: it was for good last time, too.
‘Where?’ she asks.
‘New York.’
