TE22 Potpourri

Manuel Baixauli

UNKNOWN

least small room in the apartment. He’d cleared the table of junk and papers. The number of notes pinned to the wall had grown.

“No reason.”

I pulled the drawings out of the portfolio.

“A tea?” he said.

“You already know I like them. Do I have to repeat it every single time?” he said without annoyance. “Ever since I saw an exhibition of yours I thought that what you do fits with my texts. From now on, you don’t need to bring them. Scan them and send them to me.”

“I’m fine.”

“Come on! I bought it just for you. Black tea. I’ll have one too.”

Outside the strong, damp north wind was blowing, through the windowpanes the sea was rough and we could hear the frenzied waves in the distance.

“You pay my travel expenses.”

“What do you mean? They pay them.”

“It’s good, this tea,” I said when I tasted it and felt its warmth.

“Who?”

“It’s from a bag,” he said. “The only kind they had in the shop.”

“Scriptor, the people I write for. I suggested adding illustrations to the articles, they were fine with it. If you send me one I don’t like, I’ll let you know.”

TalkingwithCrisòstomrequiredcalmand skillful management of long, opaque silences. I broke one of those silences by explaining why I’d arrived ten minutes late to our meeting. I don’t remember what I said, trivialities, infinitesimal setbacks that make us tardy: a traffic jam, forgetting something, an interference that took longer than expected. I was explaining it and Crisòstom was staring at me with those raised eyebrows that made me feel ridiculous, to the point that I stopped in the middle of a sentence and just stared back at him.

Five minutes later, we’d finished all our work.

Crisòstom, however, still felt like talking.

“Why are you telling me that?” he said. 100

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