(Photo from internet)
Last Sunday marked the first working day after the Mid-autumn Festival holidays. Many went to work, while I didn’t. I have always hated working on weekend, and I am also really against the arrangements to grant holidays and then ask people to work extra days later to compensate. It feels more like punishment than relaxation.
Anyway, I decided to find a cafe and have a good read alone. The nearest one was about a little beyond one kilometer away, so I took a walk there after lunch with three books and my headphone. Not many people were in the cafe, to my delight. I ordered one latte and a piece of chocolate cake, then comforted myself at a corner desk and began my indulgence in books. I was reading a writer's recollections of his time in Paris as an insouciant young man, who then often wrote in cafes and tried his luck in what would later became his lifetime career.
The afternoon was meant to be perfect...until the woman came in. I wasn't aware of her presence at first. However, when it smelled like fried chicken, I came to realize something's going on. She was basically devouring chicken wings in a relentless way as if in both great anger and hunger, occasionally sipping her coffee as well. Come on! Only soft drink and pastry here! But, on a second thought, "I think this could be an interesting match", I texted my friend.
Her snack time ended quickly, only followed by a passionate conversation with someone on the phone. In the beginning, she only sent voice messages, but her energy level had beaten my noise-cancelling headphone already. You won, thought I. Later on, messaging turned into a call. She seemed to have a domestic issue. Apparently the poor woman was not on good term with her husband, but she was determinate and resolute to fight back. She talked louder and louder, making the atmosphere around uneasy. I couldn't help but picturing Beyoncé singing Listen right before me...Finally, the man next to her left quietly.
I tried to concentrate on my read, only to find I was on the page where the author of the book also once faced an annoying and unbidden companion while he was working on his prose in a cafe. The intruder kept accosting him, throwing dreary questions one after another. The author didn't befriend him at all, so he replied to everything in a vicious and sarcastic tone. Nevertheless, this unpleasant guest didn't seem to get the point, so he went on and on...
Then I looked up. The loud-talking woman was gone, and everything was back to serenity and harmony again. I happily turned to another book to finish a short story with an implicit hint of connection with the notorious Manson Family, after that I even read the Wikipedia entries with both curiosity and thrill to dig more about the cult.
As I finished, the sun was slowly going down. I left, quietly.
