Two of them at a small round table, holding still on purpose, which is the strangest thing they do. I come in under the door and lift the corner of the paper napkin and they both grab for it at the same moment, laughing, and their hands almost touch and then don't, and I am already past, carrying off the smell of him: soap, and nerves, which is a sharp green smell, sweat trying not to be sweat.
I go around behind her and lift the loose piece of hair at the back of her neck, just to feel it move, and she reaches up and tucks it away, and I am sorry, I did not mean to fix anything, I only wanted to touch what was loose.
They keep leaning in. First one, then the other, closing the little gap of air between their faces that I keep sliding into, the only free thing at the table. I bring her the candle-smell of the place next door, bread and something burning, and set it down between them, and neither notices, and that is fine, nobody keeps what I bring.
He says a thing and she goes still in a new way, a good stillness, and something changes in the warm air off their skin, and I would stay for it, I would, but a door opens somewhere and I am pulled out into the street already, the way I am always already leaving.
They will stay. That is the trick they know that I never will: how to stop, how to sit across from one warm face and let the whole restless world blow past outside. I took a little of him with me anyway. Soap. Green nerves.
I'll set it down on someone far away who never knew him, and forget I ever held it.