A snippet from some work-in-progress on my autobiographical-novel This is it
***
‘It. Is. Art.’
‘No. It’s. Not.’
‘Hah!’ Samantha stood up. ‘Gotta go,’ she said, leaning down and puckering her heavily-lipsticked lips.
Benedict tilted his head upwards and reciprocated with the puckered lips.
Their puckered lips met.
‘Mwah,’ they said in unison.
Samantha strode out of the café and into a too warm afternoon. Benedict looked down at his iPad. Where was he? Ah yes.
‘Excuse me.’
Benedict looked up from his iPad. A teenage girl looked down at him. He smiled and waited.
‘I’m looking for my father,’ she said.
‘Oh yes,’ Benedict said. ‘What’s he look like?’
‘My father.’
‘Yes, OK. When did you see him last?’
‘It was ages ago.’
‘Have you asked at the box office? They should be able to help.’
She shook her head.
‘It’s over there,’ he said, pointing at the box office which was about twenty metres from where he was sitting in the café-bar.
She looked at the box office with an empty expression.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
Just then a middle-aged couple swept through the café from the back of the room, walking quickly and purposefully towards the automatic swing doors at the front. They passed through the crowd about ten metres away from Benedict’s table. The man had the appearance of a large Elf.
The girl’s features lit up with life and she smiled. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Sorry to bother you.’
Benedict shrugged, bemused.
The girl trotted after the couple.
Benedict returned to the Sudoku he’d been working on before Samantha had interrupted him, but she was right, the posters on the wall opposite the bar did have a valid claim to be considered as art, not least because the person who put them there was an artist and they were in an arts centre.
What the hell did he know!
***