Etiquette

We hadn’t really noticed the couple sitting at that table. The girl was, perhaps, prettier than average. Her hair was tied back in a chignon or perhaps a short pony-tail. She hadn’t come straight from the office but there was nothing noteworthy about her, not for Le Caprice, not on a Friday night. The room was motoring along happily, the waiters chugged back and forth like tenders. I couldn’t have picked out the man she was with from an identity parade of two. Thirty-ish, I suppose, black hair? Brown? Tie? No tie? In retrospect, I assume there wasn’t that air of nervous expectation of a first date. He got up to go to the loo, perhaps his getting up was a little emphatic. Did he throw his napkin? I wasn’t watching. I was part of my own couple, part of the communal room but not of it, that perfect party that is a full restaurant where you can be in the gang but blissfully only have to talk to the person you came with and the waiter.