I watched him as he blew out the candle and then left quietly.
He was there when we arrived, alone at a table for two.
"This used to be our table" he told the waiter, who stared at him and then left. I knew what he meant, he was just too tired to make any sense. I could see it in his eyes. anyone could. He sat alone for two hours, and left his salad and whiskey untouched.
His face hid fresh pain. An unconscious assumption though I couldnt put my finger on why. It was mostly his eyes, which were never in the light. The rings around them were just that bit too big, the black holes he peared from a little too wide with pain. He had died a little today.
I felt consumed by this. I needed to know what his story was. My malaise mirrored in his, and I felt like a fraud. He had a reason for his pain. He had a person to hate, or a love lost to greive, he had something. I sat, eating my steak, with an acute sense of desperate misery, and to it, I could attach no reason, or recognition of a problem, misery, without a point, misdirected, useless. He had a reason, and i hated him for it.