Two Acquaintances

"It makes one wonder why. Are you being charged by the table? Is that why you've buddied up? Why are you nominally facing one another? Have you had an argument? Please tell me, I'm seriously curious."

I was looking at her (my female acquaintance, who was sitting with me at one table), and at them (two utter strangers, who were sitting together at a nearby table), as she spoke these words. I felt like laughing at the blank expressions of the couple as they looked over their smartphones at her. The male of the couple said: "This is how we do things nowadays."

She tossed up her hands. "Are you siblings?"

"No."

"Is it then like a date?"

"Yes."

"So why aren't you getting acquainted or making googly eyes and innuendoes and stuff? It's horrible to watch. At least play some footsy under the table."

The female of the pair at the other table said: "We do things differently. You don't know enough about us at all."

"Well then I give up."

She returns her gaze to me. Since it's now the present, she says: "I consider that to be my good deed of the day."

I venture: "A bit harsh, though, don't you think?"

She shakes her head. "You have to strike against the virus of rudeness and ignorance wherever you can. My parents told me that, taught me that, and it's true. You're bleeding."

She's pointing to me hand. I look down and, yes, I seem to have absentmindedly pulled off two of my fingernails. "It's nothing," I say. Then: "Maybe they have different lifestyles."

"I didn't hear accents. Did you hear accents?"

Someone is standing beside the table now. Oh, it's the male acquaintance. He says: "Hi guys."

My female acquaintance says: "Hey! Sit down, sit down!" and he does so. "Look over there, at those people on their phones. Isn't it disgusting?"

He shrugs. "To each his own, that's what I say. That's my reaction."

Looking around in an obvious way I comment: "It's strange the mix of people in this place tonight."

She says, to him: "Do you talk on your phone when you're with someone?" There's some kind of scuffling going on under the table. Someone's leg must've fallen asleep.

"No, certainly not. But‑I'm not everyone."

"No, you're not. And don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

She laughs.

He laughs.

I accidentally poke out my left eye. It hangs limply by its optical nerve upon my cheek for a moment like a watch on a fob before I quickly shove it back into its socket hoping no-one has noticed.

She says to him: "Did you hear the news? A rap music artist who goes by the pseudonym Pop Smoke got shot in Los Angeles this morning."

He puts his face in his hands. "When will it ever stop?"

I ask: "What?"

He explains. "We suspect there's an organization of fanatical critics who hate the genius of hip hop such that they indiscriminately murder all those who aspire to the art form."

She says: "It's terrible what critics can do to one's career."

I say: "Maybe there's another explanation."

"No, no. It's an epidemic of extremist firearm criticism. Every few months: Bang!"

They are smiling at one another again. My female acquaintance is supposed to be smiling at me instead, but that's not happening. She spasms suddenly. There are more drinks on the table now. I take a drink and the beer turns red what with the seven teeth that have fallen out of my mouth.

"You're losing your teeth," she helpfully supplies.

"Yes," I say. "It's the price one sometimes has to pay."

She turns back to my male acquaintance to say: "Those two with their phones. You know what? It's true you can't tell a goddam thing about someone just by looking at her."

He takes a big drink. "Yeah. Maybe she's a brain surgeon."

"Do you think we can safely say she's alive?"

"Not with any 100% certainty."

"She could be the property of her phone, you know."

"Stranger things have happened."

They really seem to be amusing themselves greatly. I drink some more iron-infused beer‑don't want it to go to waste merely because it's 2% my blood‑and look at her with an unrequited love. I say to her during an appropriate lull: "What's he got that I haven't got?"

She replies: "I don't know what to call it. Can I call it ... colour? He's got colour."

Choose the final paragraph from the following list: 1) "Resignedly I say: 'How does it matter? We're all 98% cyborgs these days anyway.'"; 2) "The girl with the phone speaks up. She clearly has a British accent."; 3) "My heart comes out of my chest to lay down on the table. Or should that have been lie down?"