An ordinary woman, ordinary by International Standards, with nut-brown hair and small nervous eyes, green, and plain because of the short lashes. A nose not large, tiny ears with holes in the lobes but no earrings swinging from them.
All emptiness, this young lady, more because she felt it so than for any other reason. Unmarried. Unlucky. Uncertain, though not so uncertain that she does not pull on her coat late in the evening when she wants to go out. Certain enough that she forgets her scarf, that she drops a glove on the walkway before stepping into the cab.
The driver makes her laugh, freely, because no one else is with them. The driver tells a story about his baby daughter, the same story he told several weeks ago, though he does not remember, does not remember her, this ordinary woman. She would like to pay him to keep driving and keep talking and keep forgetting her because it is nice to be alone with him, because out of the dark sky it is beginning to snow.
When they arrive at the place she has paid him to take her, a small bar, an ordinary bar, a pale pearl strung among a series of bright ones, it is the door that seems less open, the one with snow drifting up toward it, that she chooses to force open. She is still thinking about the driver, about the baby daughter he will continue to share, even with those more ordinary. And she thinks about breaking a glass once she is finished drinking from it.
But the waiter does not bring her anything to drink; the waiter does not bring her any glass to break. In fact, he does not see her sitting at a table with three empty chairs around her. The room with its blue light and burning candles holds her like the quiet centre of a flame. With her hands folded on the red table she waits, smiling at the couples and old men, nodding at a woman wearing black corduroy who rubs against everyone like a large, sad cat to the washroom and back, to the washroom and back.
Yes, the corduroy cat-woman seemed to be the only one to acknowledge the ordinary woman sitting alone with three chairs. Her waiting lasted four minutes, though she felt it like it were forty-four. The waiter saw her only when she rose to leave. And the cat-woman, coming out of the washroom. She saw her push the door open and slip through without letting in any snow or wind to upset the candles. Slip away because there was nothing else she could properly do.