The Skating Rink - pg. 28

All I can recall, but these two things I do recall with the utmost clarity, are the old woman's laughter and the young woman's flat eyes. Flat: as if she was looking inwards? Maybe. As if she was giving her eyes a rest? Maybe. Maybe. And meanwhile the old woman kept talking and smiling, speaking enigmatically, as if in code, as if everything there, the trees, the irregular surface of the terrace, the vacant tables, the shifting reflections on the bar's glass canopy, were being progressively erased, unbeknownst to everyone but them.