Seating Plan

Free drink in hand, he walked over to the seating plan mounted on an easel. Relieved he was alone. The pinkie of his left hand made two rapid downward strokes at the corner of his mouth. He spread his legs apart in order to fully possess the space in front of the plan. He took two fingers and rubbed them across his brow twice. It was bound to be hot in the hall under the lights, but out here in the atrium it was pleasant enough.

That last seating plan in London had been so baroque, so ornate, with bunting and glitter and everything. At least this one's calligraphy was easy to read, unlike London's curlicues and other ridiculous flourishes, which had meant he couldn't even recognise his own name. It had taken him three (count 'em) trawls through the list. The names there had been arranged table by table, so there was no way to short cut straight to himself. He was so het up by the time he'd located his table, that the day was an absolute write off. He kissed a brace of knuckles on his hand and pressed them against the table plan in front of him. It could almost be taken for a gesture of gratitude.

For here at least it all seemed far more orderly. Surnames first, followed by Christian names rather than an initial. No 'Mr', "Mrs' or 'Ms'. Table six. Not his lucky number. But there again neither was it particularly a jinx. He tapped his ribcage twice in quick succession.

Then his eye naturally scans for other number 6s to the right of names. The first was about two-thirds of the way down the first column. Leslie Conway. Damn, one of those names that could be either male or female. Twofold he clicked thumb against finger. No telling if he was sat next to him/her or opposite. North, east, south, west. That was one flaw with this plan. He took a sip from the drink, smacked his lips, then wiped them with the back of his hand. He examined the fine hairs standing up. Such self-anointing had become a bit of a ritual with him at such events.

Returning his gaze to the board, he tracked down a second name prefiguring a 6. Steven Taplow. The name was vaguely familiar, but he knew it wasn't held in the little black book contained in his head. He'd never had the pleasure, until tonight seemingly. He made a pair of circuits of the rim of his glass with his index finger. The glass didn't sing.

Now the third name, the one that always held a sense of doom for him by dint of being third and last. He crossed himself twice, even though he wasn't particularly a believer. Gemma Cartwright. No mistaking her gender. Luck be a lady tonight flashed through his mind. He pulled at his earlobe a couple of times. It would be a delight to make your acquaintance Gemma, since again she was new blood as far as he was concerned. A completely fresh slate for him at this event. That was good. All the enmities, grudges and bad blood that could knock him off his game must be sat at other tables. He drained the rest of his glass, smacked his lips and then wiped them with the back of his hand. This time however, he felt no compunction to inspect the hairs.

He had stayed here long enough, now that others had assembled and were getting fidgety behind him. Besides he had what information he needed. He stepped into the hall and headed straight for table 6. None of his partners for the evening were yet sat in place. He double-circled the table anticlockwise, before pulling his chair back to sit down. Immediately the chipsman was on him and laying them out in their denominations on the table to his right. He pushed his sunglasses tight against the bridge of his nose twice. As soon as the man had withdrawn, he moved them over to his left and built them into twin stacks. He brushed his hand through his hair twice, patted his left cheek twice and cleared his throat twice. He was ready to play poker. Let's see what the seating plan had in store for his chances tonight.

Compulsion - #fridayflash

Just get them dealt for goodness sakes she silently implored him. The man had been shuffling a deck of cards for an eternity. No one else was proximate to him, so seemingly there was no game it was directed towards. The lack of a flat surface in front of him legislated against laying them out in some version of solitaire. Or Patience she mused ruefully. It was a regular two-handed shuffle, where each card slips between the sheets of its loosely stacked bedfellows. None of that showy one handed stuff, where the deck is cut in half and passed over with just the pads of the fingers. But there again the man was too shabby to evoke the impression of being a stage magician. Even a resting one.

She turned her gaze to a woman sat glassy eyed and straight-backed on an easy chair. Staring into space as she contorted her lips to blow upwards, ushering a bang away from draping her eye. Repeatedly, for of course the tress reclaimed its station with each unassisted descent. She puffed it away again. This was idiotic. She wanted to shake the woman. What did she expect would happen? What could she hope to achieve? She felt like marching over to her and snipping the recalcitrant curl right off, but of course she had no scissors with which to do so. She averted her scrutiny in order to choke off her own irritation.

Her eyes alighted on a youngish man beating out a syncopation on his trousered thigh. As with the other two, he wasn't looking at his own motions, marooned in some inner thought. She tried to place his beat, for if she could recognise the tune she might draw a bead on to the man's psyche. But she drew a blank and fancied it might be of his own composition. If it was a code to his nature, she didn't posses the cipher to unlock it.

She continued scanning the room. A young boy was pivoting the seat of his fold up chair and sinking and rising with each tilt. Boys can never sit still, but this was behaviour beyond mere fidgeting. He was no less rhythmic than the drummer man, but each was plugged into their own private pulse. Completely unaware of each other, yet both were fraying her nerves.

For respite she turned to a dapper man exuding no sound at all. He was engaged in cleaning his spectacles with the tails of his shirt. The bridge of the glasses was delicately pinched between finger and thumb, yet the other hand was flaying the glass lens with the vigorous nature of his rubbing. She tried to catch his eye, but whether through myopic foreshortening, or that he was simply not focusing by choice, no acknowledgment of her existence was forthcoming.

She stood back to compose her thoughts. She was witness to an array of self-involved locomotions. An antechamber chock full of small convulsions. An assemblage of nervous tics. A cluster of compulsive disorders. Were they in a treatment centre, or its waiting room at least? If not, what were they all doing here? Just killing time. Whiling it away with displacement activity. Though displacement of what exactly?

Then it struck her, she too had found herself here hadn't she? What was her particular spasm? She looked down at herself to determine her tic. She could see no treasonous part of her obeying its own local bidding. No untoward movements. Without a mirror in the place, she raised her hand to her face to check its loyalty and began charting the topography with the tips of her fingers. Maybe that in itself was her tic? But no, she felt secure in the knowledge that this was the first gesture of its kind since she had first enrolled here. Whenever that had been.

And then it struck her. Her own, individual throb of self. Her defining trait. How 24-7 she liked to observe other people. To make mental notes. To cast judgement. Her curse was that of the writer. Only one stripped of paper and pen in this place of disarticulation.