Table Talk

[howeird]

I'm sitting at a table in the Chinese fast food place, vacuuming up the tangerine boneless ribs and house chicken when a couple in their late 20's takes the table kitty corner to mine, in the corner nearest the front windows, maybe 3 feet away. He is Asian, she is Caucasian, and he is talking quietly and quickly in a language I do not recognize. It isn't anything Asian, though. She answers, also in a quiet voice, a mile a minute. She faces the window, so her back is mostly toward me but since she is closer to me than he is, I can hear her a little better. It's an Eastern European language, not Russian but related.

After a few minutes of this quiet back and forth, she starts sobbing and crying while she is talking. His side of the conversation is not angry at all, his tone of voice is reasonable. It might be him breaking up with her, or he may be her shoulder to cry on. I don't understand the words, and here are no real cues.

The conversation ends, they take their (soft) drinks with them as they leave. They walk close together through the parking lot, past my car. She notices my license plate. She looks back and sees me looking at them, then they move on. I think she was wondering how much of her conversation I understood.