Magic - Anne Wright

I’ve been depressed, she said.

He looked at her. He didn’t want to see her eyes start watering, and he didn’t want to see her nose turn red they way it did right before she started to cry. He was relieved when she kept talking and didn’t start crying.
I’ve had a hard life.

Well, he said, that’s true, I have too. But I don’t look at it that way. It’s a matter of attitude. He wanted to buoy her up. He really didn’t want her to start crying, for god’s sake. They were in a public place, a nice restaurant with lots of bottles of imported wine lining the wall, and an interior designed by a decorator who didn’t believe in darkness and privacy.

Anybody walking by on the street could look into the big open windows and see them. What has he done to her, to make her cry like that? And he is sitting there stiff, and white linen napkin in his lap, while she’s using hers for a handkerchief. It’s so sad that people are like that, uncaring and all. I used to know a man who was so cruel that he made me cry just so he could comfort me. I used to stiffen when he touched me. I don’t know why I just didn’t leave him but there was a magic in his hands that I needed. Her companion, a little fluffy white dog, pulled on his leash, leaning against her with his tiny will. She let the leash out a bit so he could sniff the weeds around the tree which was growing out of the sidewalk. White dog pulled at the leash again, and she walked away.