she sat across the table. it was one of these brass tray tables that you can bargain for at any souk in north africa, or without a comment or gratitude pickup at the local imported goods store. they had never sat there; he had lived there for over forty years. he had been waiting for her unexplained and uncorrected. many years ago she had began to read his stories and the words crawled under her skin and aroused every single meme of her conscience. it was a taste that once encountered, it would be hard to forget. instead time passed and that taste intensified.
now, he was there across her, his stories had not changed, charm he had none. his stories had lived him and each utterance of their fragments seemed like a magic spell. she knew that magic, that magic had been in her possession, but that was a magic without potion and it rendered her spellbound and afraid of the next breath. arousal, catharsis. each new breath unlike the previous one. time disintegrated in their conversation.
what was that thing that they called love? she asked herself. there in front of her sat a man. there was a time when dreams had possessed her, now she waited for the proof of those dreams. she blinked, the proof stood there bare and naked, asexual and brazen.
from "Manuel's Child" (draft)
