TE16 Turkish Delight

Needlefish Koma didn’t answer. Ein was a small well-known bar. An ordinary bar that had tilt machines and a couple of old prostitutes perched on its high stools. They took four more strides.

- No. I have to go home.

It seemed beyond possibility to walk faster than the gray-eyed man, but Koma managed. Without giving him a chance to reply, he advanced as fast as his legs would let him. Glancing at the cars passing by, he crossed the street. Once on the opposite pavement his glance involuntarily slid in the direction he had come from. An elderly woman was waiting for her small white dog to finish befouling the carefully laid pavement stones. The gray eyes were gone. They had vanished. He had lost the man who had come to him, asked him for a cigarette and then invited him to a bar. It made himangry. He knew he looked older than his peers and that he was extraordinarily good looking. This wasn’t the first time that a woman or man he didn’t know had come up to him to try to solicit him. There wasn’t a single spot on his face or on his body. Koma was beautiful. He drew nearby insects to him like a pot of honey. The man’s strange solicitation wasn’t the reason he was angry. It was that he couldn’t make out the reason behind it. He hadn’t been able to smell anything out in his gestures or read his lips. It had seemed to him like there was a voice box in the man’s chest and he had only beenmoving his lips. His speech had felt as plastic as his lighter. He felt a sting between his index and middle fingers. The neglected cigarette had melted and burned the place his two fingers met. He drew out a brief curse and tossed it onto

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