Swan Restaurant

East Indian woman, late 20s, with long brown hair, and large silver hoops, wearing white tank top under open blue striped shirt under open blue cardigan.

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (Vintage)

Page 116:

Caravaggio sits there in silence, thoughts lost among the floating motes. War has unbalanced him and he can return to no other world as he is, wearing these false limbs that morphine promises. He is a man in middle age who has never become accustomed to families. All his life he has avoided permanent intimacy. Till this war he has been a better lover than husband. He has been a man who slips away, in the way lovers leave chaos, the way thieves leave reduced houses.

The man beside her ordered the club house with salad, but hasn’t touched the salad. He pivots away to take an awkward bite of sandwich. She offers a compensatory smile to the back of his head, recognizing him from the grocery store earlier that day. He filled his cart with sugary cereal and sale tuna, waiting ’til she rounded the corner before sliding a skid of ramen noodles onto the bottom carriage.

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