Rohan Quine, “The Platinum Raven”, 4 Chocolate hair on white silk

Standing at the far left end of a swanky hotel bar after lunch, looking at the tableau of people on view in the impeccable mirror on the wall behind the bottles, the Chocolate Raven contrives to snatch another discreet look at the figure at the far end of the bar. Dressed in a black suit, white shirt and charcoal-grey tie, he is slim, pretty, watchful, with dark brown hair and big brown eyes, set within a pale face. There’s nothing overtly strange in his appearance, yet he strikes her as being somehow larger than life.

Within a few moments he becomes aware of her. Or was he already aware of her before she noticed him, and is he now returning his gaze to her? Usually she would have a sense of the answer to such a question, but this time she doesn’t. Either way, the same thing is true: within the instant when their gazes meet, his eyes see too much into her.

She imagines this man’s viewpoint on this same wide mirror tableau: standing again at the left side of the tableau (but in only half-profile this time) will be a glamorous young woman facing right, her long chocolate hair falling dead-straight and splashing softly off her shoulder, burning dark against the smooth white silk of her top. This is the Chocolate Raven herself, of course, though he won’t know her name yet. She half-turns her head in his direction, through real space along the bar; and for him, her hair in the tableau in the mirror must therefore be splashing a little differently now upon the white silk of her shoulder, though of course she herself can no longer verify this directly in the mirror.

[…]

Presenting the vaguest and politest awareness of the Chocolate Raven, through the mildest of occasional quarter-smiles across the room in her direction, the figure at the bar bends his senses into focus and sets about gauging the line of least resistance he’s likely to uncover in her.

He senses that almost as long ago as she can remember, she started to find that if she was just natural and direct in expressing herself, then people often reacted as if she was somehow being too much of something. That’s interesting, he reflects. There was often a construal of her as too vivid, for example, or too bright, or too intense, or too who-knew-what kind of quality, by her companions back in childhood days. She came to realise, he observes, that this familiar reaction by people was unhelpful, because it distracted from what she was saying to them and subtly devalued her words and tended to alienate her in ways that were less than interesting. So ever since then, for nearly as long as she can now remember, whenever there has been stuff for her to convey to other people, she has muted herself and muted the expression of her thoughts and feelings downwards a tad, into tastefulness and reassurance, just far enough not to frighten those people. And being socially skilled and a good learner, and having done this for a while, she may now be relied upon to mute herself to a well-judged level—except on a few occasions when she forgets to do so, or underestimates the amount of necessary muting through being inebriated or distracted or both.

[…]

He smiles to himself with the mildest of smiles, and gets up from the bar.

The Chocolate Raven, until this point, hasn’t been thinking about him, since her brief initial sight of him. As soon as he gets up, however, she feels his presence again. She doesn’t look in his direction but is aware of him setting off towards her, approaching her at a measured pace, his face in the corner of her gaze growing brighter like a thousand-watt light-bulb.

Now they’re within speaking distance of each other, she can sense him pulsing like a cat through the stretch of space between them. She stands up, to ready herself, and looks up to face him.

“Hi, my name’s Jaymi Peek,” he says. “I have a card-key to return to you, from one of the corporate suites. It was handed to me, because the guy who booked it was called away on urgent business and had to leave Dubai this morning. Apparently the booking originated with you.”

“Oh. Thanks,” she says, pocketing the key.

“I have to head out now, but maybe I’ll bump into you here again.”

“OK, yes, good—see you soon,” she says, somewhat on autopilot and nagged by a subtle disappointment.

And with a decorous smile he is gone.

For more about "The Platinum Raven" by Rohan Quine, see

https://www.rohanquine.com/the-platinum-raven/

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