I swear, I couldn’t even catch sight of her air inhalation to utter everything that she had in her heart. At the same time, she had a sonorous voice, a voce piena that wasn’t grating on our ears, but enjoyable. We derived a pleasure in studying Luke: he looked scared, confused, and was carefully hiding his young girlfriend behind him, who was frightened and out of her wits, and timidly cooing something in her gentle voice. Meanwhile, the look of a Fury obviously deserved more attention. She was elderly, but a very beautiful woman with a shock of blonde hair and clear brown eyes, sending bright lightings, and with quite a sporty figure.
Compared to her, Luke looked like a bear cub. But nobody had any doubts that they were a single whole. It is astonishing that people who’ve lived together for more than thirty years, in spite of their different features, have a certain similarity that is so obvious that you can guess at once that they are a couple, a real family.
Meanwhile, Luke’s spouse went on the offensive. Luke said a few words to Ellen in his mellow baritone (Ellen was the girl’s name; surprisingly, nobody even thought of asking for her name). The girl quickly ran away and jumped into the first taxi that appeared. Having put some money in her hands, he murmured “Merci,” quickly kissed her cheek (in front of his furious wife!) and, closing her by his back, let her go.
As soon as Luke didn’t have to keep his wife at outstretched arms’ distance anymore, he obediently threw them down. A hail of reproaches, shouts, slaps in the face and so on fell upon him with a double rage. We felt ill at ease, being at the epicenter of events but not being able to do anything.
We could only watch as Luke, our cheerful, good-natured and surprisingly softhearted person, grew darker by the second. He then said in a quiet and harsh voice that he didn’t wish to see his wife anymore. He took his coat, which was hanging on a back of the armchair next to the exit, and went forth into the night.
The doorbell softly tinkled. Against it, the bang of a door sounded like a shot into the heart of a family, which was breaking up in front of our eyes.
For a few seconds, there was a stark silence in the hall by the fireplace. Then “a spiteful Fury” fell into the nearest chair. Her shoulders drooped, and an aggressive break of eyebrows absolutely got another outline. Here before us was a simple woman: beautiful with a very exquisite appearance. She was sitting and hid her face in her palms. It appeared that she didn’t care about the others who became witnesses to this scene, her emotional state and the rest.
She did not even cry. She was just wearily hiding from it all. Such a childish eccentricity when a kid closes his eyes with his palms, and he is sure that nobody will see him. I, and all who were nearby, had a desire to console and help her somehow, taking into account that we had been discussing only love stories for the last few days. Couldn’t we find a solution to this problem together?
The bar glass slightly tinkled. I turned and saw Annette, a red-haired bar girl who had a day off today. As a bartender, she knew what was important for such moments; she filled one-third of a glass with Scotch whisky and gave it to Luke’s wife.
The latter didn’t realize at first that the bar girl came up to her. She stared at the glass with surprise, carefully took a sip, and suddenly had a coughing fit… Yes, of course, all of us understood that those tears were only because of that burning drink.
