(Beautiful women)
When they entered the place, the man repeated, to no avail, a good and only
slightly stinging joke, which the eyes of the two women had told him not to repeat.
They bought the drinks and as they sat down around a table in a fashionable quaint
gastro-pub (the place was so cute that it simply made one angry: no place has
the right, knowing what we do about the world, to be that cute), the guy
decided to put a different spin on the same joke and resell it, as it was the
type of joke that improves with dogged repetition; but it didn't improve enough for the women. The
older one*, still quite fit, made a sarcastic
comment (bitch!), and put on that cold, spirit-killing face for which the guy
had so often been ready to strangle her, and even tried to once or twice. The younger one, still
a kid really, used to be sensitive enough to suffer in situations like that,
but now, sadly, her skin had grown thicker and she just rolled up her eyes, sighed
maturely and used childish irony either as a half-hearted defence or just to blend in. They exchanged looks and a semi-veiled remark that made him realise they had discussed the prospect of that meeting and hadn't expected much of it. The
man could see where they were coming from (during a therapeutic alcohol-supported period
of getting used to living without the loved ones, he forgot a lot, but not all),
but at that moment he hated them all the more for that. Then, sipping on their drinks, in a momentary burst of silence, they
all watched what could have been a tolerably indifferent broken family reunion collapsing into a nest of sorts and the sin coming home to roost.
*who not only was beautiful once, but was beautiful to me.
P.S. The joke WAS funny. Forget the family, I love the truth more.
