Once I was sitting on a bench in a park near the arena in Verona, waiting for a friend.
It was late in the afternoon, almost dinner time. The sun was setting in an undetectable manner, and the sky was dyed in a mixed color of red, blue, grey and gold. Crowds of people were scattered here and there, eased by the early-autumn breeze. I studied the surroundings, and felt a stroke of insecurity. You know how it is, you can't know anything for sure until it's already happened. A promised certainty is no certainty at all. It's getting dark. A few steps away, there was an array of restaurants. Delicately decorated and romantically lighted, they were obviously the places to which tastaful people flock. Someone approached me, "hello?" I looked up. It was a man about forty years old. He seemed nice, but I was not exactly in the friends-making mood. "Waiting for someone?" he asked. I nodded. I gave him a smile, for one, to show my courtesy, for two, there wasn't a reason for me not to smile. "Waiting for a friend." Next thing I knew, he sat down next to me. I couldn't pretend I was mute, and the bench was big enough for three. So I smiled at him again, awkwardly though this time. Is everybody just as idle as I am? Then he started to talk with me. He's a piano teacher at a school, and he's from the south. I don't remember much of what he said, as I might have failed to understand a good fifty percent of it. He was almost excessively happy, and he talked in an incessant way as if the words just rushed out from his mouth without going through his brain. "What if he doesn't come?" he asked. "Of course he will." I said, while the real answer in my head was "I hope not because otherwise I'm gonna be stuck in this strange city without the slightest knowledge as to what to do". He took out a business card and handed it to me, "you can call me if he doesn't show up." I peeped at it, it wrote "musician". I laughed, without any remark. I didn't know why he sat down in the first place. There were groups of villainous looking young boys hanging around nearby. In the dim remaining daylight, they somehow had a scarier aura. I was secretly relieved that I was not alone. "When is your friend coming?" he asked. "At 19.00." I answered. "So there's still half an hour to go." "What are you doing anyway? Are you waiting for someone too?" surprisingly, I was not irritated, but merely curious. "Yes, I'm having dinner with a friend. Also at 19.00." "Oh, I see." There's another blank of memory in which I believe he was either commenting on the difference between the north and the south, or rambling about the upside and downside of living in this city. Honestly, I tried to listen. My phone rang. My friend said, hey I've arrived, in front of restaurant A. Okay, coming in a minute. I stood up and smiled once again at him, "so guess I should go now." He rose to his feet and put on his coat, "it's a pleasure to meet you." As I left, he added, "don't forget to call me if you have any problem." I walked away from the utter darkness in the park to the neon-lit brightness on the main street. My friend was standing in a rather conspicuous spot. Seeing me emerge, he came up and asked, how are you? I threw a glimpse back to the path from which I came, only to see no sign of that mysterious man. I answered, I just met a strange man. Then we left, leaving all the darkness and brightness behind. The night was turning a bit chilly, and the stars were taking charge of the sky. I looked around, feeling both reassured and dazzled. Where you are and who you are with are only relative after all. They're small fractions of life. When you try to put them together in the end, you will do it neither chronologically, nor truthfully. The other day I was sorting my business card collection. I saw an unfamiliar name with an unrecognized address. It wrote "musician". I couldn't help bursting into laughter: what does a musician need a card for?
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