The Salt Shakers Were Very Clean After That

May fourth. Simone asked me on Thursday if I was seeing anyone. Not in a pointed way, we'd been doing side-work between the lunch and dinner rush, the restaurant empty in that specific mid-afternoon way where everything echoes a little, and the question came out of nowhere the way those questions do when a conversation runs out of its more obvious material.

I answered by refilling the salt shakers. All of them. In order. With a level of focus I have never once applied to an actual task I care about. Simone watched me do this for a while and then she slid into the nearest booth and propped her chin in her hand and waited, which is either the most patient thing a person can do or the funniest, and with Simone it is always both at the same time.

The moment she realized she'd been caught avoiding the question.

Here is what I eventually said, when I ran out of shakers: not really, and not for any particular reason, it just hasn't been the thing I've been thinking about lately. Which is true. The workshop took up March. The note card from Carol has been sitting on my counter. Gerald has a new vine going somewhere south of the windowsill that I keep meaning to redirect. There is a lot happening that is not a person.

Simone said 'okay' the way she says okay when she means 'I have noted this and I will not make it weird.' Then she got up and went to restock the lemons. I finished the shakers. The dinner rush came and we didn't talk about it again, and by the end of the night it had turned into the kind of thing that is so unremarkable it's almost its own answer.

Two people and one unanswered question, just hanging in the room.