CuppaGemma

How hot is it? Perhaps this is a four? Maybe a seven? I don’t know, never cared for electric heat.

We get used to gas flames on stoves, and candlelight. Whistling kettles.

Of course the children come in and do interesting projects with the wax and make four pillars into one with several stumps of taper candles around.

But he remembers that she made eggs in the kitchen- which he never particularly liked- a kitchen with no table, and she remembers thinking how can you cook without a real flame in a kitchen with no table?

They compared notes on kitchens like commuters who had obscure stations with too many steps and grey buildings staring them down.

So posts he, this snap from 47th street in midtown.

To which she replies, “You would make Jane Austen proud…A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

But of course it is only the lights that we should notice.

Not that it is evening and promises are whispered urgently, with laughter before the street crossing blares its hand back and forth back and forth, “Be patient you two. Be patient.”

How many times can you do the same thing over and over, but it still feels brand new and exciting each time?

“I stand out in the front.”

“Well where else would anyone want to stand?”

“Depends who you ask. There are those insistent on a seat or a drink.”

“But, when you stand in the front, you get the wind first.”

“Also makes an easier hustle for the 1 train, but you have 20 someodd minutes not to think of that.”

“You stand in the front to make the subway then?”

“Nope, that’s a feature, you stand in the front because whether is more interesting then commuters.”

“All commuters?”

“Well, perhaps some other commuter standing outside might be a midge more interesting then the weather. Depends though.”

“And what might make some other commuter more interesting?”

“What he points out to you, what he does next.”