The seven minute story

The seven minute story
(or: How much time I have until I leave here tonight)

5:23 pm
He drinks a little bit of coffee with each meal, never more than a whole cup. It’s just enough to get everything that he’s eating down and give him a little bit of a pick-me-up to counteract the sleepy lull that feeding time usually brings.

5:24 pm
It’s not often, however, that he dines alone. Most of the time he has his coworkers or his friends or his wife (or some combination of the three) with him. But not tonight. Tonight he is on his own, in this tiny restaurant.

5:25 pm
A little too crowded for his liking, but the food is good and the lights are low enough so that people may not see that he is eating alone. At least not right away, that is.

5:26 pm
He doesn’t mind the waiter or the busboy coming over and asking if he would like to order or does he want to wait for the other guest to arrive. It is only right that they would assume he wouldn’t be there alone.

5:27 pm
It’s the other people in the room, those that don’t ask his preference but only judge. They look at him and think “How lonely he must be.” or “What could be wrong with him?” They don’t know.

5:28 pm
They don’t know that he’s here alone on purpose. That this is one of the few times when he can sit by himself and think about where his life is leading. That the quiet of this crowded restaurant is what he needs. They don’t know that at all.

5:29 pm
So he sits and he holds his menu a little higher than usual, and concentrates on the words in front of him a little harder than usual, hoping that they’ll stop glancing in his direction and let him eat his dinner in peace. Hoping that they’ll go back to their steak tartar or orange roughy and let him be.

5:30 pm
Otherwise he might have to stand up and leave, food uneaten and bill unpaid. And there’s nothing more embarrassing than that.