In the Marketplace of Ideas
(a sample)
My companion and I had taken our places in the Café Vienés at the Hotel Casa Fuster in the afternoon. I’m certain that when we arrived neither of us intended to stay for longer than an hour. We had much to say to each other, but not more than an hour’s worth, not just then. However, we began to take notice of — and then to attend to — the conversation of a couple invisible to us. We became involved in their discussion, at a distance, as listeners only, not as participants. We lingered longer in the café than we otherwise would have done so that we could continue to hear — to overhear — their conversation. We ordered more cava. We continued to listen. The afternoon went on.
“Well, then,” the invisible man asked, slowly, cautiously, “what about Paris?”
There was a pause. I imagined that the man was waiting for a response from his companion. None came.
“I don’t mean tourist Paris,” he said.
There was another pause.
I imagined that the man’s companion had given him a look that said, first, that she had known without his saying so that he hadn’t meant “tourist Paris,” and, second, that she was disappointed, and a bit offended, that he would think that she understood him so poorly that she would think that he had meant “tourist Paris.”
That was the look that I saw on my companion’s face, but of course she meant it for the unseen man, not me.
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40 pages
7.5 x 7.5 x .15 inches
Full Color Throughout
First published by the Babbington Press in 2008 in an edition limited to fewer than one hundred printed copies.
