Shudder by Harry F. Kane Page B

exciting and intimidating manner.
    He tried to put all sensual thoughts out of his mind. What was in the past was in the past.
    A shadow fell on the table. Ivy had arrived with the drinks.
    He quickly set to work on his cappuccino with the spoon, making the thin brown streaks mix with the milky whiteness and produced a light brown liquid. He then added two packs of sugar, went through the motions a second time. It was ready, but still too hot.
    He took a sip from his orange juice. Not bad, there was some nice squishy pulp floating inside.
    He looked at Natalie’s silhouette beyond the glass walls of the cafe. Perhaps she also felt this strange mix of joy at the unexpected meeting, and the woody artificiality, which made spontaneous behavior and conversation rather strenuous.
    Why the artificiality? Just because they were former lovers?
Did the veiled guilt, to which no one would admit, arise from them running into each other at a place for casual sex with strangers?
    He looked at his orange juice, the pulp slowly swirling in the yellow liquid, descending towards the bottom of the glass. Perhaps all they needed was some time to pass, for both of them to get used to the idea that they had met again.
    He saw the entrance door open out of the corner of his eye and looked up. It wasn’t Natalie. It was a group of boys and girl, whose manic banter mixed with what Dave realized was a revamped ZZ Top hit.
    Ivy came over again and put a flat plate with shredded cabbage mixed with some brown beans in front of Natalie’s vacant chair. Dave took one bean from the salad and chewed it slowly.
    Then Natalie herself returned, the smell of tobacco intermingling in a not unpleasant fashion with her perfume.
    She gave him another “Hi,” and delicately cut a shred of cabbage into even more miniscule pieces.
    Dave felt a nearing smell of something tasty and in a second, his Biker Grease with fries was in front of him. He took a fry and popped it into his mouth. “So, what are you doing these days, Natalie? Finished university? Married? Divorced?”
    Natalie smiled and put her fork and knife aside. “I’m still single, as should be obvious...”
    â€œNot necessarily...”
    â€œWell, I’m not that kind of girl.” She took her fork again and chewed on a puny piece of a bean.
    Dave bit into his burger. The flavor of fried meat, combined with the sting of onion, triggered an immediate response of pleasure from his whole organism.
    Natalie swallowed and continued with her status update. “Yes, I finished university. I have a BA in Marketing and Public Relations and an MA in Sociology.”
    Dave’s tongue pushed the mashed burger ingredients into his right cheek to free up space for speaking, and having accomplished that he said, “Sociology? Deep stuff.”
    â€œIndeed,” agreed Natalie earnestly, “and it’s not just asking people who they will vote for and what type of customers will buy a washing powder, you know.”
    â€œWhat else? Counting the population?”
    â€œIt’s figuring out how life works. What makes people do the things that they do.”
    Ha
, Dave thought,
another contender for the throne of the headshrinkers.
“Doesn’t psychology deal with that?”
    Natalie gave him a smile of appreciation for his interest. “Well, they deal with how the mind and emotions work, and then there’s mass psychology, which is sort of in the middle, and then there’s sociology, which is about how society works.”
    â€œHmmm.”
    â€œFor instance suicide. More than a hundred years ago, Emile Durkheim analyzed then existing statistical data concerning suicide. He saw that suicide rates were not at a constant level, but curved upwards or downwards.”
    â€œHmmm.”
    â€œYes, and when he superimposed the data on historical records, it turned out, that in times of war for instance...”
    â€œThere were much more