Short Extract from What I’m Working On
Inside the café was dimly lit, but not in an uninviting run-down way, more of a dusty, characterful way, which was accentuated by the smell of the air: a faint lavender mixed with the woody aroma of espresso. Against one wall was a large blackboard with the day’s specials written in Norwegian in thick white letters. In smaller letters underneath the dishes all had translations into English. For several of the dishes, such as ‘hamburger’ or the Italian pastas and pizzas, the translations were exactly the same as the original. Whoever wrote the menu might have been accused of redundancy, but with the general atmosphere of the place it came across more as a gentle sarcasm, particularly with this café being atypically situated on the dockside amongst the touristy restaurants and of the kind Aria seemed to have a knack for finding.
After studying briefly the menu, fortunately with more decisiveness than she had shown initially in the clothes store, Aria ordered a Caesar salad. I ordered a cheeseburger. We received an odd look from the woman behind the desk when we told her we would sit outside, but she said nothing and went away to get our food ready. We exited the café and took a seat at one of the elegantly welded metal chairs, Aria making sure she could see the ship she had indicated before. With her elbow on the table and the backs of her fingers curled against her lips, she stared out and seemed to become lost deep in thought.
“Are you nervous?” I asked, breaking the local silence that extended as far as some people walking by on the cobbled street, some fishermen shouting to each other from their rusty boats and the wind whistling gently through signs, through loose bits of wire, through the clothes people wore, and across the calm surface of the ocean.
Tags: cafe, Fiction, food, Norway, ocean, work in progress
