Coffee
"You've exaggerated me."
His eyebrows curved inward towards each other and then down at the corners like square brackets bent slightly in the middle. They were furrowed deeply and conveyed over-emphasized thoughts. He seemed to be struggling with his pencil, and disappointed that it wasn't producing the greatness he had hoped it would. I empathized.
He looked up, and from my vague peripheral perception it looked as though his bracketed eyes fixed themselves firmly on my face, annoyed, and his thin, wry lips were distorting into an ever shorter horizontal pink line. He looked down again, scribbling furiously for a few seconds, now stopping, now looking once again annoyed, now delicately sipping his coffee and blowing on it through yellowed teeth in a nonchalance that smacked of habitual neglect.
His hair swirled in dark shocks around his head, tight in spots and wild in others. It appeared as though he were occasionally involved in maintaining his appearance, but often lost interest mid-way through the process. His legs were crossed and the large, leather-bound book in his lap held what were undoubtedly hundreds of pages of thoughts and scribblings. I admired his commitment, in spite of his apparent contempt toward me. All at once he spoke.
"Excuse me," he set down his pencil and book and uncrossed his legs, leaning forward as he fixed his full attention on me.
"Yes?"
"What are you writing about?"
I regarded him a bit more closely now, trying to determine whether I should lie, and whether he would be able to tell if I did. I reminded myself again that my memory for such things is horrible, and that truth is often less difficult to recall than falsities. Although that too has proven difficult much of the time. I hadn't quite decided when I surprised myself and spoke.
"You. I'm practicing character sketches."
He paused for a second, and seemed to consider whether he was offended, pleased, or even interested in what I had written. He leaned forward, breathing inward audibly and sharply, and paused again, this time with a hint of curiosity stitched into his brow. He held out his hand.
"May I?"
"Certainly." I handed him my tattered notebook and he took it gently, still regarding me with hesitance. He flipped through the pages I had written, pausing at each, opening his mouth as if to say something and closing it again after a few seconds, until finally he spoke.
"You've exaggerated me. And you've got the dialogue quite wrong. I don't speak like this; my hair is decently well-kempt; I have average eyebrows. I'm not as exotic as you've made me."
"That may be so, but you are my base. I'm writing based on my idea of you, not you per se. I don't know you, so I fabricate what I don't know and emphasize what I can to make you compelling. My success or failure is irrelevant. This is an exercise."
"Exercise or no, at least give me normal teeth."
With that he handed me back my notebook and resumed his own writing. I wondered what he was writing but didn't ask. After I'd finished writing he stood up and left without a word. I couldn't tell if I'd offended him.