The Art of Spying

As taken from my journal, on August 8th 2006 [with a few slight alterations/corrections]:

I didn't mean to over-hear them. I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I wasn't trying to nose into their petty gossip. But when sitting and waiting for a flight where the sits are filling up like coke bottles at a factory, there are very few places to hide. The apologies and condolences of acquaintances are an awkward view. Especially over an all to recent death of one of the stranger's brother--cause of death, that ubiquitous swear word: CANCER. The man had gray hair and a blue button up shirt, khakis and brown-casual dress shoes with white athletic socks (a sure sign he was going on vacation). There were two couples, and even as I look at them now they seem to morph and ebb into the same prototype. In fact the two men were nearly indistinguishable except that one had a blue polo shirt and wore glasses. The women were the same, both were wearing khakis and one wore a green shirt and the other blue--both of which looked like they were from Dillard’s or some other indistinguishable department store.
I was expecting a dignified and quick awkward movement from troubling subjects and apologies back into the fray of hotels and summer-love vacations as each couple had finally realized that they were too old for divorce and they might just love each other after all, so they might as well enjoy their money while they could. But to my surprise, without so much as a pause of breath the woman in the green shirt began a confession without tears or emotions or feeling at all--the words driveled out off her tongue like it was an easy and careless thing to say:
"You know, my daughter died of cancer?"
There was no moment of reflection. No moment of pondering their own mortality--nothing. This just served as an easy lead in to a list of friends, family and other acquaintances that were or are being ravaged by cancer. They talked like Mayan emperors and empresses who gleefully watch at the temple the human sacrifices and who never foresaw that within months their life, their empires and their souls would be taken and all that would be left was ruins and mysteries for archeologist and 6th grade text books.
From there they moved onto the topic of their favorite doctors, explaining how this one "Just put my mind so much at ease". Or how reassuring that other was: "Explaining that 'there was no need to worry, you will still be able to go on your next trip to Cancun" (or some other exotic destination).
All the while, the man, whose brother had so recently reached his tragic demise, was standing there, hand in pocket and taking glances around the room as if to say, "Am I the only one who feels a little bit sick? Am I the only who is hearing this?"
Finally, he sits down after the conversation had moved on to another area or topic of morbidity.


And he reached down for his phone, to make a quick business call.


"Our grandpa died in a hospital gown.
She didn't seem to care.
She smoked in her room and colored her hair.
I was ashamed,
I was ashamed of her"

~Romulus, SS~