Goldrush Girl - Jeanette Winterson
When you meet someone for the first time, you forget it fast, or you remember it forever.
We went to lunch.
It was an expensive restaurant with small tables angled to give the illusion of space. At small tables shamming space it is necessary to judge distances carefully – between wine glass and plate, food and fork, especially when you do not know your host/your guest, and especially when you have ordered food, not out of politeness, but because you are hungry.
I felt that the distance between us was immense and tiny. We didn’t know each other, and your life was quite separate to mine. We were polite, formal, we had our feet tucked back under our own chairs, and we made sure that each of us had enough room.
But seeing the way you cut into your sausages, I understood that you were someone who got hungry too. We talked – what did we talk about? I forget. Whatever we said was lost under the pressure of everything not said. You cannot say to someone you have just met I want to kiss you. Sometimes it is as simple as that.
Not for long. But sometimes.
I wanted to kiss you in the way that I want to eat cherries from the greengrocer’s stall. I don’t want them in plastic boxes half dead from cold, I want them warm, slightly sweating, stalky, random. I want to eat them while I walk round fingerand- thumbing the limes and throwing handfuls of rocket into brown paper bags. I want the smell, the taste, the surprise, the disagreeable stone.
I smiled at you. I remember that, and that you blushed.
We drank pink wine; I remember that.
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