It was a lovely evening in Hangout Cafe, the final rays of daylight were on the brink of being engulfed by the youthful dusk, and the cafe was packed to its brim with the roaring kids and ornate adults cluttered around the place.
Claudia Shepard was seated at a table across the counter, dunking the biscuits in the coffee that was a cube behind from turning into sugar syrup. She was tired, overworked from her day job, and overwhelmed by what was ahead. Young with a dormant boisterous soul, she would rather be in a bar than a cafe, but her dominant responsible self kept the respite urges down since she could neither afford the price nor the time for such leisurely pursuits.
She was using her free hand to stroke out the supposed mistakes in her manuscript when one of the coffee-dunked biscuits prematurely melted off on one of the pages.
'Fuck! I should have never been here,' she cursed between her lips and started picking up the books she had cluttered all over the table.
'Are my eyes deceiving, or is that the "Blood Gospel"?' a deep husky voice inquired.
Claudia looks up from her table to see a rather tall man in a three-piece looking down at her. He carried a subtle accent and deep pockets, and, like all affluent, he seemed to know something that people like her didn't.
'Yes, it is.' Claudia replied. She tried to pump out a smile but was too tired for that.
'It's not every day I see someone with that in their hand. People find it too rancid for their taste,' the man commented. He seemed genuinely surprised by seeing that book.
'Well, I like how it blends the reflection of our lives amidst the world of mysticism,' Claudia entertained the man's curiosity while preparing to leave.
He smiled at her. There was still a look of intrigue on his face but a different subject in mind.
'Certainly, the girl who reads Blood Gospel wouldn't author fairy tales,' said he, looking at the Manuscript she was holding, 'But I certainly hope she doesn't brew another tale of unimaginable morbid.' He broadened his smile.
Claudia stopped and had another look at the man. She felt the immense pleasure and pain of being seen by someone, of knowing that they know you even if they are just yet another stranger.
'Certainly,' she asserted, this time with a smile. It was then she noticed that face, which was too boyish for her taste but still drippingly handsome, and the smile that man carried was just the cherry on the cake. But he was insurmountably expensive, whose shirt cost more than her entire wardrobe and the watch more than her apartment.
Breaking the budding silence, he spoke, 'I see you are a writer. Do I happen to read anything of yours?'
Claudia stays silent for a moment, then she follows it with an awkward nod, 'No, I don't think so. I haven't published much. I am working on my novel, you see.'
He stared at her for a while. The words were in a war to gallop out of his mouth. Although he wanted to keep this girl engaged in conversation, instead of conjuring the proper cue, his defiant mind was noticeably more focused on her rather tired but appealing smile imbued with the honest beauty of her simplistic presence.
As wondersome as his mind was, he retained his composure, and after summing up all the possible iterations, he said, 'Uhh...Umm. So how is your novel going?'
Claudia released an unaddressed chuckle and answered, 'Well enough, I guess. Publishers say it's unrefined, and many refuse to read it.'
'Why is that?'
Claudia looked down at his shoes, and with a sly smile, she quoted him, 'People find it too rancid for their taste.'
//'Oh. Interesting,' said he, 'This might be the most bubbly thing to come out of Blood Gospel. Not only did I stumble upon a writer, a beautiful woman as well.'
She twitched her eye and blurted out an unintentional smile, 'Hmm, uhmm. Thanks.' There was a tint of blush on her face. It seemed she was almost rediscovering the innocent pleasure of being called beautiful. It's been quite some time since she received such a remark. Perhaps it was because she never gave herself time to be stuck around for such leisurely compliments. //
And as that line of conversation ended, he started ransacking his mind to pop out another. He was just indefinitely stalling that was unintentional and yet the truth. So when he inadvertently realized that, he bowed his head and sighed.
Whatever, Fuck it, he thought. Deciding to place the whole deck on the table, he moves a step closer to Claudia.
'Would you care to have a coffee with me? We can talk about your stories, or perhaps just talk.'
Claudia clenches her jaws together and looks down, she wants to, and for a moment, she seems to consider it, but then she turns her eyes over his and slightly nods.
'I am sorry. I have to be somewhere now.' She holds her books against her chest and moves past him, preparing to leave the cafe.
He looks dejected but not utterly hopeless. He just smiles, and it is when he realizes he missed something very fundamental.
'By the way,' he says, and she turns her head towards him, 'I am Garry-'
'I know who you are, Mr. Becham.' she cuts him short as she points her finger towards a business magazine lying on the table that featured him as their "Man of the Year.",
'The whole world knows you.'
'Ohh!' He seemed genuinely surprised, 'Guess I am famous. Anyways, call me just Garry.'
Claudia chuckles at the man in front of her, 'Okay, "Just Garry." I am Claudia, by the way.'
'Claudia...hmm... I will remember that.'
'I will make sure that you do,' Claudia remarks with a naive laugh but then quickly pauses to introspect what she had just said. She didn't know why she said that. She just did.
'I have to leave now,' she says to which Garry nods in agreement, 'I have two kids to babysit tonight. They must be waiting.'
'Always working, aren't you?' Garry asked with a rhetorical curiosity.
'Well, money is the end and aim of my grasping existence,' she says and starts moving.
But Garry denies her words, 'Certainly, no one works so hard just by the desire for money.'
'Certainly,' she asserts.
'Bye, now,' she says and waves him goodbye.
'Bye,' he states, 'We will meet again.'
'We certainly will,' she replies and bids him farewell with her beautiful smile as she moves pasts the cafe door.
Garry watches her go, replaying her exit over and over again...he grins to himself, 'We certainly will.'