Interaction

There you were again, standing right in front of me. I smiled modestly, but you didn’t notice. You didn’t even look. You were too busy today.

It is not possible that you would not remember me after so many years that we had been seeing each other, but now it had been maybe, I don’t know… nine months, one year? I was different after my trip to Canada. My hair was longer, I looked skinnier. I also changed some habits, and I had been going to places where I would not see you.

I know you have been seeing other people, you always have been. Still, despite the emotional distance, we always used to exchange a smile and a few words.

Now you were not even looking at me. What happened?

The distance felt very long. Our gaze was apart. A few bottles of (low alcoholic) wine, cigarettes, and some vegetables apart. Yes, I am vegetarian now. I don’t know if you noticed, but all the signs were there. You used to know so much about my eating habits, but now I wonder if you ever really paid attention to that?

Suddenly, you changed your expression. Did you finally notice me? I had been standing there just a few meters from you for about twenty minutes!

You looked at me briefly, but as if we had never known each other, and you didn’t even look at my face. I felt like I knew you by now, but how much can you know about someone just in an exchange of empty words? I know some things about your life. I know about your work, about your origin. You have been in Sweden for a long time after growing up in Russia. Your Swedish is very good; you had been showing improvements every time I saw you.

You like cigarettes as I do, I also know that. We briefly chatted about having quit smoking a few times, but even from a distance, your leather jacket exhaled a mix of pungent, chemical smell with a lingering smokiness. That smell revealed everything though. The plasticky smell from a fake leather jacket that had been exposed to way too much smoke to ever let that note go, an everlasting base note to your composition, that told who you were are, because smell never lies.

Despite my new habits, there I was again with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, another characteristic for you to recognize that this was still the same me, despite the changes. The cigarettes were our connection, and it used to bring us closer.

The distance was shorter now.

What would it be today? Did you finally recognize me?

You were not so curious; your eyes were somewhere else. Maybe they got lost in the crowded corridor behind me.

But we were closer, I know that, I felt it, and I saw it.

Now finally you were at least looking at me. I didn’t see a smile, but it seems you noticed that it is me, that after around one year I was back. You widen your eyes towards me. Did you notice how different I was?

You said hi!

I see in your eyes that you wanted to tell me something, and I was ready.

They were so blue, deeper than I remember. I wonder how many people they have seen, because this is what you do; you are always seeing someone new. Still, you used to, and I think you still do, repeat sometimes. And it used to be me, which was now in the past, a long time ago… but not anymore.

Here I was again, after so long, I was right in front of you. The time was now.

And suddenly there was nothing between us anymore!

People were waiting. They also have lives, they are impatient, they want your attention too. I am sure you have already seen some of them, but we never talked about it.

My eyes drifted to your name tag, which I could now see more clearly as we were so close. It was slightly askew on your shirt as if it had been hastily attached or long forgotten. I couldn’t help but wonder— did you ever know my name?

Then you finally directed me the words. “653 crowns,” you said, giving me the crooked smile I remembered from the old days. Yet your teeth were more yellow than I remembered, and your breath smelled like ashtray and nostalgia, the nostalgia of the times when we exchanged more words. I stayed in that memory for a while, until I was interrupted by a man clearing his throat behind me.

Things didn’t used to be like that. I always got more for less. Things had really changed here, and I would have to start over. We would. And I would have to get used to it.

I opened my bag, took my card, and paid.

You asked if I wanted a receipt. I said no, another new habit since we last met. Guess we after all would have to learn to know each other again, from a new perspective. We would have to start over.

I finally clearly read your name from your name tag; Nikola Dmitri Ivanovisch Svensson. I wondered if I ever payed full attention to it, despite having been a regular customer to this Hemköp.“Bye Nikola, until next time,” I thought in my head. I picked up my shopping bags and a cigarette from the box and put it behind my ear. I touched my chin briefly; it seemed like it was already time to shave again.

By Rebecca Barth Håkansson (Adaptation of a story first written in Sept 2022, rewritten in November 2024)

Next
Next

Yesterday and the day after