Melissa.
She sat in the small Chinese restaurant and looked at the menu. The chair was small and rickety. So was the table. The wallpaper was floral, and combined with the thin partitioning, made the place seem small and dingy; as was common with these types of cheap restaurants and take-away joints downtown. She felt cramped and uncomfortable, while she waited for her date to arrive. He was a Canadian from somewhere near Montreal, whom she had met recently at the Country Club. They were going out to the movies tonight, but would first have a bite to eat.
While she waited impatiently for him to arrive from a meeting he was attending. She looked at the menu once more; ‘…Pork sweet and sour, pork chop suey, pork curry…’ What would she have she wondered, it all looked appetising and she was famished, what would she choose…?
The guy was nice, but she preferred her old flame James, with whom she had broken up recently. The new man in her life seemed nice, but he didn’t have quite the same style or sense of humour that James had had. Would they get along; and for how long? She hated moving on and starting out in new relationships. She wished she could just meet ‘Mr. Right’, get settled and have children. Her sister Mary and her husband seemed happy. Would it be her fate to remain single and childless? An old spinster like their aunt May? A horrible thought.
Her work at the newspaper was the same as always; boring. She should think of taking a holiday and perhaps going to visit her family down at the coast. She thought of this a while and smiled. It was a good idea, but not practical, considering the current state of her financial affairs. Her credit card account was badly in arrears, as it had been for a long time. She had no cash. “There goes the thought of a holiday,” she mumbled to herself.
The date had not arrived yet, but he would any time soon. She had better make up her mind as to what she would have to eat. She looked at the menu again; ‘…chicken sweet and sour, chicken chop suey, chicken curry…”
A stray bee flew through the restaurant and seated itself on the window. A waiter came passed to go and remove it from the shop. She kept pondering her choice of a meal in silence and privacy…
End.
JP Brown.
