I wish I could forget

It's a Wednesday evening, the perfect day for everything and nothing. I like Wednesdays, how unassuming they are. Unexpected things happen because so very little is expected.

This Wednesday finds me, around ten o'clock, in a small French wine bar, a rouged basement off one of the smaller streets. There are perhaps eight tables, and a bar counter. Large mirrors and paintings crowd the walls, and smaller paintings fill the spaces in between. It's tiny and wonderful.

My friend frowns into one of the scrolled mirrors. I hate looking at myself while I talk, he says.

Why? I tease. You look good in that shirt. Blue suits you sir - it's your colour.

I guess, he says with a grin. Blue's your colour too.

I pretend to consider this deeply.

Maybe, I say. Green too, and black. Goes with the hair.

We both pause to solemnly admire my hair for a moment. Then start to giggle. I pour more wine, watch the bubbles fizzle briefly.

Blue, he says then. Light blue. There's a blue-grey top you wear, with a high neck, you wore it to the meeting the other day and it's kind of soft and woollen and just the right colour for your eyes.

He stops. Looks away.

Not that I noticed, he says.

I'm not even sure it did happen that way. If I asked him, maybe it would turn out that it was another Wednesday, somewhere else, in an airport terminal or at a fast food counter, and my hair was up not down and there might actually have been no wine because it was weeks and weeks ago on an unassuming day and all I do remember clearly is that last part.