COFFEE SPOONS/Howard L. Murphy The two of them sat at a table on the terrace in the afternoon sun. He was sipping his coffee and she had before her an untouched vermouth. The table was a round one with a marble top mottled with hues of umber and jasper and supported by an iron leg shaped by full-blown acanthus leaves. "You haven't tried your drink," he said. The mild afternoon sun shone on his black hair and good-natured face. "Why do you ask?" she replied with a touch of haughtiness. "Would you like to try it yourself?" She looked toward the greenery below the terrace. She was well dressed. Encircling her white plump wrist was a bracelet from a fashionable shop in the Via Babuino. Both were young and far from home, and if the occupant of a neighboring table had taken the trouble of looking their way it would have been almost immediately perceived, or rather intuited, by him that both were, at the moment, also ill-humored. There had been strained lapses in their conversation, periods of silence when the atmosphere lay as if under a mild sort of malediction, and which could have been easily felt by others nearby but which would have been almost summarily dismissed as a lovers' quarrel. But the tables near them were empty and they were unobserved. "Think of all the lovely bitter herbs gathered from the hillsides just to give you pleasure." The young lady continued to gaze out over the scene below the terrace as if to say that she didn't intend to have pleasure today, but was perfectly content to be in her present mood. She felt as if his remark had been intended to be trenchant, which it had not been, but she kept silent. He looked at her profile, and just then her lips assumed a petulant expression. "How like her," he mused recollecting the times he had seen her take on such a look. They were the sulking lips of a baby. It was a day in the middle of March when the sun was beginning to warm the damp Roman earth. Mimosa, forsythia, and plum festooned the hills and bunches of Parama violets lay in the vendor's stall. In the distance the dome of the basilica lay against a Corot-like sky. At a corner of the terrace a waiter in a white coat stood at a counter under a pistachio canopy squeezing lemons while two little children a boy and a girl were gamboling about the tables clutching blue balloons. The marble top table was cold to the touch. The March sun was still not strong enough to warm its surface, and the young lady withdraw from it as if repelled and ensconced herself into the yellow plastic-backed chair as if it were her last place of refuge, but soon settled herself into a sort of languid ease. "She is a spoiled brat," he thought. "Her family has indulged her and she expects such treatment from everyone else." As this enlightening bit of revelation entered his brain, he lit a cigarette with his long fingers and suavely blew the smoke skyward. The young lady looked at him as he ordered another coffee from the waiter and then as he sat stirring it. She recalled a line from a T. S. Elliot poem, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." "How important he acts, but this is all new to him. He has never really had it so good." It had occurred to both of them that no doubt they were wasting their time and why, if asked, they didn't at once take leave of each 6 other, the coffee, and the vermouth, they would have been hard put to answer. They had once been in love, but now their love was in a moribund state. It was expiring like an embittered old man taking his last look with morose eyes. While sitting there they may have clung to a desire to revive it, or it may have been a primeval instinct to wallow in misery and hurt each other as the Wrathful in the Inferno. "He is egotism personified," she ruminated. "Never shall I forget that night at Nina's, the way he treated me, looking at me with disdain, pure disdain!" She took a sip of the vermouth and remembered the expression in his dark eyes. "He dotes on attention. The poor fool is happiest when surrounded by others listening to his boasting." She sat her glass down. He seemed to be reading her mind. She wouldn't have been surprised at the moment if he had possessed some sort of diabolical power. "He's enjoying every minute of this because he knows my attention is on him." The vermouth left its wormwoodish taste in her mouth. She really didn't like the drink, but not knowing what else to order had asked for it. "Nina was such a fool that night reclining on the sofa like an odalisque and uttering absolutely nothing with her Russian accent. Yes, she is quite pretty I must admit." She saw Nina's large violet eyes, her blonde hair arranged in fascinating convolutions, and the pearls in her ears. She was surrounded by a group of five or six men drinking in her words. Oh, yes and he (Philip) was with them. Like a kaleidoscope the scene of the party came to her. The strident colors, the cacophony of jangled sounds and voices assailed her ears and eyes. "He is a good engineer I suppose," Her thoughts continued, "but good God how I'd hate to have to listen to him talk about about whatever engineers talk about year after year at the breakfast table and at dinner time, too." She conjured up visions of measuring out her life with coffee spoons opposite him. A gentleman came on the terrace and sat at a table in a corner. The two children were now at a table near the counter under the pistachio awning sorting pebbles. Their blue balloons were tied to the backs of their chairs. Along the road separated from the terrace by a box, oleander people were chattering on their way to the Pincian Gardens. The young lady opened her bag, a large pinkish one with black poodles, kiosks, and an Eiffel Tower staggered over them, and took out a mother-of-pearl compact and looked at herself in a glass. "I'm rather striking myself," she thought, "not quite Nina's type, though." Her eyes were large and had a Near-Eastern look about them. She looked at her mouth in preparation of putting on some lipstick. It was drawn in a rather hard line and quite unlike herself she thought. It gave her a start and she returned the compact to her bag. "I must control myself," she thought, "appear appear 'insouciant.'" She straightened herself up slightly and gave him a kind of smile. "What is she up to?" he thought. "Would you care for another vermouth?" he said to her, and then glancing down at her glass continued, "Oh, you still have most of it left." Her attention now became diverted to the man sitting in the far corner. While she was so engaged her companion inwardly thought, "I suppose she's trying to psychoanalyze that guy sitting by himself over there by that tub. It's her latest phase. No doubt she's got him all sized up as having an Oedipus complex. She thinks she has infallible insight into the behavior of anybody she meets or even scrutinizes half way little Miss Know-it-all!" "You didn't have to come here, my dear," he said to her leaning on the table and putting his left hand up to his forehead. "When I phoned you this morning why didn't you say that you had something else on and could not make it? Another lie at this stage of the game" "Oh!" he suddenly interjected. The table shook with a sudden spasm. The young woman's glass almost toppled over and nearly spilling the drink, but she reached out in time to steady it. She remained silent, but her thoughts took on a sardonic cast. "He is such a fool, forever knocking his knees against the legs of these small tables. (continued on next page) 7