close enough

The hotel room was nothing special. A medium seized bed, a small three seat couch, two chairs and a desk-like thing attached to the wall. She patently sat on the couch looking out the window while I pretended to go to the bathroom. When I got out she was far beyond the roofs and over the small part of the Olympus mountain visible from this angle. I went over to my bag, picked up a pack of smokes and my phone. Sitting in the chair next to the desk, randomly pressing the screen of my phone I observed her. No detectable reaction, as if she was totally oblivious of my existence. So I got up and sat down beside her. She was janked back to the room and her figure stiffened. She turned towards me with a nervous smile her eyes wandered across my legs to the table where I had put the smokes, to her hands and there they stayed. She kept smiling. I offered her a cigarette and I could see her hands were shaking. Looking at her face she seemed to be calm enough, the shaking was small and barely noticeable. She did a good job hiding it, even if she wasn’t trying very hard. I bet if she really wanted to make an effort she could pull off that breezy edit piaf look of hers without breaking a sweat. She had these characters she could easily slip into if she felt like it. But now it was like looking at her undressing behind a ricepaper screen. She was so woundable. At the same time there was no way to reach her. This was her, no character, no mask, just her. I couldn’t for my life figure out why she was so nervous. To me it made no sense. It wasn’t because she was scared. She wasn’t the type to be scared. It was something else. We had a cigarette and I tried to lighten up the mood with silly conversation. I knew exactly the right words to say, and the right way to say them. Actually the words didn’t matter. It was the tone and the timing. She would let the words pass as they were, always trying to find some hidden treasure behind it. She paid concentrated attention to my hands, my lips and my eyes without looking straight at any of them. Then she would let a vague smile pass and gift me a quick smart reply if she felt like talking.