The Café with Five Faces by Chaelli Cattlin

Author:Chaelli Cattlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Published: 2020-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

A political analogy for 2019 – attempts at dragging some common sense out of the morass of British government? Either way, I love this picture of a farmer steering his buffalo – at least, I think it was that way around! – through a rice field in Hoi An, Vietnam.

2019: 42: Beirut: The Hypocrisy of the Ostrich

If you’ve read the 2018 reports on my eavesdropping – and if not, why not? – you will know that my Beirut room is so named out of affection for the said Lebanese capital, even though the inspiration for the furnishings came from a royal palace in Dubai and an unlikely teashop in the centre of Katowice, Poland. I see it as my intimate, romantic room. The customers who mostly frequent it have deemed otherwise.

On this particular afternoon, Micky was propped up against the deep Arabic cushions looking melancholy. This was nothing to be surprised about in itself as the said individual was a one-man walking romantic disaster zone. There may even have been a touch of perverse pride in his admission that, in former times, four of his girlfriends had left him in favour of one of their exes. Neither I nor his regular companion, Jo (female and tactless in approximately equal measure), actually believed this claim, as Micky was as shy as Jo was blunt.

However, we can’t always be right.

“I’ve done a recount,” announced the unexpected ‘Casanova’. At this point we hadn’t been oriented to the topic of the conversation and his miserable expression did not provide enough contextual clues.

“I don’t think there’s a daily limit on the safe consumption of Yunnan Green,” Jo hypothesised incorrectly.

“I think it was six.” We were none the wiser.

“Women.”

“I know what you mean.” My contribution was pointless and uninformed.

“Six women I went out with went back to their husbands or exes.”

Jo spluttered in response; whether this was in disbelief or astonishment was rendered inconsequential by the fact her mouth was full of Algerian mint tea at the time and those of us in the line of fire got unexpectedly damp.

Had I been Micky, I would have kept this confession quiet, unless he was considering setting up a business with the mission of reconciling broken relationships by going out with the female half to make them realise how lucky they had hitherto been.

Jo found a packet of tissues and tried to alleviate the effects of her liquid outburst. At that moment, the curtains covering the entrance to the room billowed suddenly and Misha stumbled in, failing, as always, to see Jo’s clumsily placed footwear and consequently getting tangled up in the loose fabric (note to self: check health and safety about that). In his frantic efforts to remain upright, he dislodged his sunglasses with one hand and then, in trying to push them back on mid-stumble, only succeeded in knocking them to the far side of the room. The whole, brief spectacle was mildly amusing.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he mumbled in a somewhat disoriented manner, vainly hoping no one had witnessed his arrival.

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