091313 #trout Except, then--something happened. My girlfriend took one last look at me, pushed her coffee cup halfway across the linoleum, and stood up with sex and fear in her great brown eyes. The clink and shuffle of the cafe shifted almost imperceptibly into a lower gear as she wended past the booths and tables, and stopped in front of the counter. Her insanely feminine face was just about level with his massive shins and calf muscles. The sweat and sinew of him made her skin look so soft and so pale by comparison. It's like his presence was brutally fucking her presence in the space between their mutual strangenesses, silently, while we all sat or stood there, everyone else still mostly doing what they were doing but me holding my breath. And she was sucking on his brutality like a calf on a merciful teat.