nästan totalt fiction (V)

The apartment was small by his standards as a suburban house-dweller, but would have been more than sufficient for Manhattan… luxurious even. They made some more small talk as they sat on the sofa. He searched in vain for any signal that this was… well, whatever it was, but he didn’t really receive any. At one point he thought she might offer him a drink but then she didn’t. That is going to make things more difficult, he thought.

They watched some TV. Some Swedish TV shows with English subtitles. Some American movies with Swedish subtitles. “The Tourist”, with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie was on, and this amused him. Because that was what he was doing. He was a tourist pretending to be someone more daring than he actually was. So he could forget about “signals”. Just make a move. But then, a few moments later, when they were talking about their childhoods, she got up from the sofa to retrieve a photo album, and when she returned to the sofa she sat close to him and leaned back against his shoulder. “Ok, then…” he thought, “That’s as much of a signal as I think I’m going to get from this one.”

They alternated between chatting and watching TV until the clock showed 11:00.

“Ok…” he said… “It’s 11:00, so… either I’m going to go take the subway back to my hotel, or I’m going to kiss you.”

She seemed surprised and laughed nervously. “Oh? I didn’t think that you wanted to kiss me.”

“I do.”