I am in line waiting to collect my tickets from the box office. Ahead of me two blondes in their twenties with pony tails and jeans in boots are talking. I hear a piece of one half of their conversation —
“No, don’t get me wrong — I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. I just wanted him to say it.”
“…”
“No he was a scuba diving instructor.”
“…”
“Yeah, at the place where we were staying.”
The girl reshoulders her bag and switches hips, and I miss the next thing. Then the queue advances and she is at the head. Standing behind her, repeating the words over to myself, I realise that with those three brief lines she has conjured up an entire imaginative universe, and the narrative that passes through it: No, don’t get me wrong – I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it. I just wanted him to say it … No he was a scuba diving instructor … Yeah, at the place where we were staying.
