The storyteller
At some point he stopped living his life. But when was that? There is no single event that he can point to. It was a gradual decline. He can't even remember when he first noticed things being different. All he knows is that his life is no longer about him. Now he lives only for the telling of other people’s stories.
The woman at the table across from him at the restaurant. A stranger to him. Yet he knows all about her. Her life distilled from little clues. The way she fingers her napkin. Her frequent glances toward the flaring pans being tamed by the chef in the open kitchen. The feigned smile when her companion pauses in his lengthy narrative awaiting a genuine smile. This is an important night for her. A milestone. The horror she has known is behind her. This is a new beginning. Her companion is merely a cog of this fresh start. He is neither her past nor her future. She is already thinking beyond him. It is the evening itself that matters now; the outcome seemingly determined. A waiter brushes by her carrying a pepper mill the size of a lathed chair leg. The friction of his jacket against the cloth of her loose skirt is so very subtle. But she notices. And this brings a genuine smile to her face. One that does not synchronize well with the new story her date is telling. But her companion doesn't notice and she doesn't care.
His world has become a marketplace of people and stories. He is less a participant in life than a shopper of other people's lives. The woman at the restaurant and her story - produce to be picked up and examined. He imagines what he can make with the ingredients then shoves off down the aisle in search of something else.
There are times, like now, when he catches himself doing this. Fabricating lives that are not his own. It feels as though he is watching himself from above. He realizes just how little of himself remains, how little he recognizes. When did all this happen? he wonders again. Who holds the story of my life? He keenly watches every gesture, every movement that he himself is making. He thinks, this is the one story I can't write.
8:21:34 AM  Stories
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