The girl

She was sitting at the far end table, the one I usually liked to take. If she hadn't been in my seat, in my place, she would go passed unnoticed, just a girl sitting in the Café, playing with her hair while reading, but once I looked at her I couldn't look away.

The novel was "The Unconsoled", and I seemed to remember that it was the saddest book I had ever read, but I couldn't be sure. I remembered it being about a pianist who didn't know who he was, somewhere, a sort of dream; but then, I couldn't remember when or where or if I had read it. She was completely mesmerised, entirely ignorant of anything except the book. She held it with her left hand, her right in her hair, twisting it unconsciously. She had folded her legs underneath herself and her scarf had fallen, so that the edge was trailing on the ground, a bright orange on the dark brown wood.

She could not be described as beautiful. Her eyes were small for her face, her mouth too big, her hair too thin. But there was something in her face, in her intent on reading the book, in her posture. I knew without a doubt that she was the only person alive in the Café. I wondered for a few seconds if I should go talk to her, maybe mention that I might have read the same novel once upon a time, that we might be kindred souls. Then I remembered that she was reading, that you should never wake someone from a book. That she was a stranger, that she would be startled, confused, maybe even angry.

I looked back down at my papers, trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing. I was reading papers about the differentiation of neural stem cells in mouse due to Wnt signalling. I sighed. I could imagine a single neuron, its axon extending farther and farther away from its centre, trying to find a connection. It made me smile. I looked back at the girl, and thought about her neurons. Would they be firing right now? What was she thinking exactly? What do we think when we read? The paper I was reading was good. The experiments were well designed, the data had been well analysed, everything seemed to be in order. It was lacking a good story, a gift for writing, but that was a problem with most of the papers we received those days. I gave a cursory look at the references, making sure they weren't bullshit, then sent an e-mail to the other editors with the article as an attachment. I checked  my watch. It wasn't 1PM yet. I could afford another hour. I looked back at the girl and wondered if I had been like her at some point. I seemed to remember so. I knew that three years before the extra-hour would have been spent writing, trying to construct the story in my head, the one that even now I have not written and I have not forgotten. I sighed. I wondered whether growing up was the same for everyone.

I stood up and headed towards the bookshop. Maybe I'd find something new, something radically different from the sort of sad fiction I'd been reading, something joyful. As I was about to cross the door I looked back at the girl. She was looking at me, her eyes wide open, as though she had suddenly realised something important. She smiled and raised her hand, almost waving, and then slowly turned back to her book, and continued reading. I looked at her for a few more seconds, trying to remember something I hadn't quite forgotten, before turning into the bookshop and remembering who I was now.