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up on his outspread palm as if he was weighing it to see if
by any chance it was made of gold. She didn’t snatch it back
the way she did with the other men.
“Where on earth do braids like this grow?” he said.
Which of us would have known to say something like that,
where do braids like that grow. But she didn’t blush. She
looked at him as if it was all the same to her what he did
with her braid, as if she’d let him do anything he wanted
with it.
He could have wrapped it around his neck, he could have
cut himself a length of it, he could have unbraided it, she
wouldn’t have pulled it away. She only said:
“Please eat, sir. Your food’ll get cold.”
He said:
“I like cold food.”
That was another way he was different from the rest of us,
none of us would have said we liked cold food. With us, if
something wasn’t hot enough we’d make a fuss about it on
the spot:
“Why is this soup cold? These potatoes look like leftovers!