Ruth Orson

You ordered a glass of milk and a pastry with white icing dusted on top, and took them to a table by the window. The centrepiece was a white flower in a china jug, made of plastic so it didn’t need watering. You looked at the flower the way most people who come in here do, trying to figure out whether it was real or not. You tugged at the rubbery leaves, and decided it must be fake.

You ate the pastry with your hands, tearing off shreds and strips and buttery flakes. You drank by lifting the glass slightly, then bringing your mouth close to it. I watched you and your hands, and you and your arms, and you and your feet shuffling beneath the table. I watched as you sipped from the glass, I watched as you tore piece after buttery piece. I did not love you, not yet, not then. I was drying saucers. There was a large pile of them that I had just taken out of the dishwasher.

I thought about you as I did the saucers, I always had to be thinking of something, otherwise I might as well have been an automaton. A plate drying, pastry tonging, latte pouring robot.