The Goodbye Girl

There was so much unhappiness coming from her eyes. You could tell all of this and more just by staring at her. She raised a handkerchief up to her weeping eyes; she uttered a low sniffle as the handkerchief ran across her teary face. There were several other faces turning to glance at her besides me, but that was only what they did. They simply looked but seeing no importance to the young girl, quickly turned their heads back to their business. To them she was nothing more than just another face in a hundred that probably stop at the caf�© every now and then during this early afternoon hour to grab a snack. As blind as they are, it is all the more good that I was the only one in there that truly felt her pain. I was suddenly her secret confidant as I inclined my seat a little away from the bar counter to get a more affordable view of her.

Her seat was the last one on the row closest to the windows. She had been sitting there for quite some time now, even before I arrived and yet all she had was just a cup of tea and a half-eaten croissant on the table. My curiosity got the better of me as I made my way over with two glasses in hand, to her table. I push one of the glasses towards her as she looks up at me with eyes that to me seemed rather nonchalant nor perturbed by my coming over. Was I expecting her to say something? Probably yes. But she didn’t; not even an attempt to scare my company away. I sat across from her and together we shared our drinks. And then we talked.

She told me her name, but I soon forgot it. She was trailer thrash; she knew it and handled it well around herself. Her whole life as she told me was stepped in misery and pain. So much ups and downs and detoured lines the likes just about any sucker in the city was liable to pass through if not given the proper orientation of survival. Hers was no different: she’d jumped off a bus a year and a half ago, hopping either way to score big in the city and become a singer but had spent much of her days hooked up with the wrong set of crowds. Rugged boys and nightclubs, drugged out party nights and cold mornings waking up to find herself lying beside a gutter. I sympathised with her but with the way she waved her hand in front of her face, I figured my sympathies were the last thing she needed. She said she was done with life in the city and everything else about it. She was done with men, life, and whatever else she couldn’t think of. She was heading back home. Back home to do what? She said she didn’t know. And where is ‘back home’ at? She said she couldn’t tell me that.

Should I have tried some means of side-talking her from her diatribe? Perhaps had I not been in the sombre mood I was I would have. But then again, I’m thankful I didn’t. She didn’t wish for me to sit there and be the thorn in her views. She only wanted a listening ear and that was the only help she needed.

Then she turned on me: what do I do for a living aside form buying stranded ladies a drink? I work in a small office in a big company where I go through a lot of papers that need my sorting through. Sounds like a very dull work; do you enjoy it? Only when it’s Friday, then I know I have the rest of the week for myself.

She laughed. The conversation was getting interesting, I almost didn’t wish for it to end. We sat there talking for what seemed like an hour before she finally got up and said she had a bus to catch in the next thirty minutes and didn’t wish to miss it. I got up as well and offered to walk her outside the door. I asked if there was any chance of seeing her again. I doubt it, was what she said. Her words were more like a heavy blow to me but being the man that I am, I tried to stifle my face from showing my disappointment âÂ?¦ or from feeling anything at all towards her. But deep inside I knew I wasn’t.

She gave me a light kiss on the cheek, saying she was happy about our short time together and could only wish she wasn’t going on a long journey for us to continue where we stopped. I wished the same thing, too, and quickly wrote out my phone number for her if in any case she could give me a call whenever she felt like. She said she would and gave me another kiss before walking away from me. I stood there and watched her disappear round the corner before knowing fully well that I had just lost something that would never return my way again.