Show, don't tell

He's having friends over tonight, I didn't know he had them in plural. He says he met them at Sorbonne, that their parents had known his mother before the accident. "By the way, you need to wear something blue."

He watches me with the critical eyes of an examiner as I model a set of silk dresses worn by my mother sometime between 1978 and 1982. The way they made me feel when I used to try them on as a child, in another life back in Los Angeles, I feel it now too. Maybe that's why I brought them with me when I came here.

Later, just now: he cuts up lime fruits for the welcome drinks, tells me how he learned to use knives one hot, drunken summer in Cuba. "Can I lick the blade" I ask and he lets me. The sensation is arousing, almost sensual. All it would take is one slip.