She was stealing looks. I was too. In one of those awkward moments, we locked eyes. I was writing in my notebook, as I often am. She was sitting there, drinking coffee, with nothing going on.
I was writing about her, but she had no way of knowing that. Everyone you see has a story, if you don’t know it, you make it up. They call that creativity… of a kind.
She had those kind of light-green eyes that knock you twisted. Piercing. In a sexy kind of way. Not in the kind of hidden way that dark eyes have, where they draw you in. No, her eyes left it all on the surface. You can tell a lot about a person from their eyes.
Some people’s eyes don’t seem to say anything or lead anywhere. But even that says enough. Her eyes said something though, she was a curious kind of woman. Religious, but only in the popular sense. Nothing deep, no “connection to god” or whatever they call it. Just a vague belief, probably based more on how she was raised than anything. Then again, this is the American South.
Coffee… she was a latte woman, probably flavored. You can tell a lot about a person from the kind of coffee they drink too.
She was stealing looks. I was too. We locked eyes again. She seemed to be putting it together. She was sizing me up, just like I was sizing her up. She was a curious kind of woman.
I flipped the page of my notebook and pretended to be too deep in thought to notice that we’d been playing cat and mouse with our looks. She saw through it.
She came right up to me, but she didn’t say anything. I looked up at her. She, down at me. We locked eyes. She was a curious kind of woman.
“You want to know what I’m writing?” I said.
She said “yeah… is it about me?”
“Presumptuous isn’t it?” I said.
She just said “well, you’re looking at me a lot.”
I said “I would’ve thought a woman that looks like you would be used to that by now.”
She chuckled “yeah, but normally there’s no notebook involved.”
I said “do you like poetry?”
She said “I don’t really know any, but I feel like I should.”
I said “yeah, well, whatever, I’m not writing poetry anyways. You’re making me nervous. Did you want to sit?”
She said “that depends. What are you writing?”
I said “I’m writing about your eyes.”
She said “you mean the windows to the soul?”
I said “yeah, you know, those two things where our secrets lie.”
She said “not everyone has two.”
I said “you’re a curious kind of woman. Did you want to read it?”
She said “why don’t you read it to me.”
I said “only if you sit.”
She sat. With a big plop. This is the American South. A certain attitude of character comes with that. She had it. Clearly she was born and raised, even though there wasn’t much accent to speak of.
I warned her I wasn’t finished. But she didn’t care. She was just a curious kind of woman. I looked up occasionally as I read her what I’d been writing. Stealing looks. Continuing our game of cat and mouse. She didn’t seem to get it. What I was writing I mean.
She said “what do you mean my eyes don’t draw you in, you’re writing about them aren’t you? And what do you mean they leave it on the surface? Leave what on the surface?”
Like I said, this is the American South. A certain attitude of character comes with that. She had it.
I just tried to dance around the question. A technique easily learned from watching political debates. But she saw through it. Come to think of it, people see through it when the politicians do it too.
I said “look, I’m just writing. I don’t even know your name. It’s not really about you, because I don’t know you.”
She said “well you sure seem to write like you know me.”
I said “well tell me how close I get.” Then I stared deep in her eyes, pretending to be some kind of oracle figure. “You’re religious, but mainly just in a popular sense. You haven’t read the Bible much. Certainly not recently. But you still vaguely believe it. You read your horoscope, but also maintain that you don’t really believe it all…” after a while I just started saying random barnum statements and doing cold reading. Things I learned from when I was studying mentalism and James Randi’s work.
She was incredulous. But she couldn’t understand how I could know so much about someone from their eyes. I just told her everyone is in the middle, nothing is black and white. I’m just playing both sides against the middle.
We’re all unique and very different from each other. But we’re also much more similar to one another than we admit. Which, ironically, in and of itself is a bit of a barnum statement. But nonetheless true.
People often use a label to discredit something or to credit it. Again, playing both sides against the middle. But in reality, a label doesn’t really mean anything. It’s just a tag we use to talk about something. The best things in life, no words can transmit. That’s what art is for.
She talked, this is the American South, so I won’t tell you her life story. You can guess what she had to say. I listened, as I often do. Stealing looks. Her eyes, they were starting to draw me in, slowly. They were hiding something. They were hiding secrets. Secrets I’d never know. Aren’t everyone’s?
After a while our conversation became nothing more than just a game of cat and mouse. Thinking back on it now… I lost… She was a curious kind of woman. From the American South. A very curious kind of woman indeed.
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