At 3:21 PM · 29 November 2002
Table 1: a young couple are negotiating the terms of an end to their relationship. Two years next month. They, along with their friends, agree it is time, and this is to be an amicable split. Today, though, both are on the defensive. She is agitated, intractable; his calm seems forced and cold.
Table 2: two men face a third. All wear three-button suits of no remarkable silhouette and matching facial hair. They have been drinking. What started two hours ago as a stiff, jokeless job interview has progressed to a potlatch bonding ritual of sorts, with reciprocated admiration and much bluster and agreement that one system is better than its alternative; it is ridiculous that all the world can’t admit this plain truth.
Table 3: a college student (you can tell) seems, by the movement of her hand, to be crossing out passages in the pages of a textbook. A cup of cold coffee rests on a saucer at her elbow.
Talks at Table 1 are at a standstill: she has said words intended to wound. He flinched the moment they hit the air. The couple is frozen, holding eye contact. An object on the table glows at the outskirts of periphery; they both know his lighter is the one thing he would not fail to grab when he decides to storm out. She covers it with her palm.
The moat around Table 2 is fully dug, and the drawbridge is up. Enemies approach – to pour scalding coffee, steal plates, lob in the bill – but nothing penetrates. In tears, one of the partners tells of a childhood memory. He has unbuttoned his trousers. The others talk above him: something about the potential power of instant publishing.
The student at Table 3, it turns out, is using a pink hiliter to highlight entire pages of text. Each word, each line, each paragraph.
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