He was alone at a table staring into a coffee cup, leaning heavily on his elbows and looking very forlorn. The reading must have gone badly and I regretted not being there for support. A folder with his work inside lay on the table along with a crumpled napkin. When I sat down across from him he raised his blue and hopeless eyes.
“How’s it going?” I asked ironically.
His gaze remained on me for a moment, then descended slowly back to the coffee cup.
“Terrible,” he muttered.
I couldn’t imagine anything he wrote could be that bad. He had published some fine poetry, a few even anthologized, and his readings always brought many people to the café. But tonight he had read new work whose value he couldn’t judge so soon. Evidently no one liked it, and a writer feels he’s only as good as his latest work.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
“Nothing I can do,” he replied.
“You can always rewrite.”
At first he didn’t seem to hear or else it hadn’t registered, but then the hopelessness vanished instantly and his features twisted with confusion.
“What are you talking about?” he wondered.
“The reading.”
“Ah, the reading,” he sneered, waving his hand at the folder as if pushing it away. “The reading went fine.”
“They liked it?”
“Yes,” he said annoyed.
“Then what’s the problem?”
The question baffled him. His mouth struggled for words, his gaze moved wildly along the table, then he looked up as if startled to find me there and said, “I met the most beautiful girl tonight. She came up to me after the reading and said how much she liked my poems.”
His eyes were distant and dreamy, the thought of her still dazzling him.
“She had soft brown eyes,” he went on, “and all these long, pretty curls down her head,” as his fingers fluttered near his ear, “and asks where can she get a copy of my book.”
The lovelorn glimmer remained another moment, then gradually dimmed as he focused on me, scooped up the crumpled napkin in his fist, and leaned closer. I too leaned closer.
“I tell her I’ll get her one,” he said, hushed and serious, “but I figured every guy hits on her so I’ll be the one that doesn’t. I tell her take my number, call if you want. She hands me a napkin. I write my name and number and return it. She takes the pen as well, leans over on the table and writes her name and number.”
That dreamy look returned to his eyes and he said, “I can see down her blouse, the pink lace of her bra, and I realize if this happens she’ll be the most beautiful girl I ever bedded.”
For a moment he seemed unable to get beyond that idea, smiling with peculiar contentment.
“Then she tears the napkin in half,” he at last continued, “gave part to me, waved her dainty fingers and disappeared.”
He looked at the door as if all the beauty and romance in the world lay just on the other side of it.
“Then what’s the problem?” I asked again.
Entranced, his gaze remaining transfixed on the door, he opened his hand for the scrap of napkin to roll down his fingers to the table. I picked it up, unraveled it, and at first didn’t understand, for his own name and number were written there.