Entering the café I catch sight of a guy I know from another café. I catch sight of him just in time to pretend that I haven’t seen him. As inconspicuously as I can, I slither my way to my usual spot at the counter and seat myself, my back to his profile.
Someone foisted him on me once on the grounds that he was Jewish and a writer and ever since then, whenever I was there and he arrived, he would seat himself at my table without asking if he could. But I found conversation with him so painful that eventually I stopped going there. He was one side or the other of forty but as far as I could tell, he had no job. As far as I could tell because, about his private life it was if he were the last, loyal member of a long disbanded Maoist party.
He did refer once to the fact that he had done his MA in literature at McGill University. “What was your thesis topic?” I asked.
“Do you know anything about Henry Roth?”
Yes, I said and recited the main things I knew about him.
“It wasn’t about him,” he answered. “How about Daniel Fuchs?”
I’d heard the name but confessed that I knew nothing beyond that.
“Oh,” he said, with a pleased smile.
I’m uncomfortable sitting there, ignoring him, wondering if he’s caught sight of me after all. Eventually I become aware that he’s getting ready to leave and I watch to see in which direction he will go. He looks east, takes a step west, then alters direction and heads north. I feel as if, poor orphan of fate, he’s at the whim of the faintest of intentions.
