Awkward Greetings

5:49 pm.
25/09/2014

I left the computer logged in with the page of my now-editing work on sleep mode, then search frantically in my black backpack for pound coins. I have had this black leather backpack for 11 months and 14 days now. On the gold plate by the flap is the word 'Faith' engraved in.

I am going down to the restaurant downstairs to grab a cup of Costa .I had not eaten since the early hours of the morning.

Tea in hand and back on the fifth floor, outside the Library, I am seating at the open balcony, overlooking the revolving door to the Robert Gordon University main building, watching the people come and go.

A girl, not more than 25, is walking out of the library now, pushing a baby in a pram. The child is sleeping. She stops just outside the library door, engulfed with what signals her phone is giving her. She irks a brow, peeps at the sleeping kid, then frowns slightly.

Doors. A young African man just walked in. He slows down after the revolving doors ejects him onto the the reception just right of the entrance. He is talking excitedly to the receptionist(s). I cant see past the counter. There may be more than one person there. He is simulating a gun-shot-to-the-brain on himself now, then turns the revolver across the counter and does the same to the receptionist(s) as well. He is laughing now, then walks towards the elevator. He is coming up to the 5th floor, to me. The young woman is still buried in her phone. My Costa burns my mouth.

Ding!

Mr bullet-to-the-head is coming out of the elevator now. He stops, pushes out slightly at me and greets;

'Sister'

I nod. He smiles at the crib and heads into the library.

Sister?

I am thinking. How should I have responded? There are several such greetings in my local dialect as well, a few for just about everything.

When you are not really sure what to say to someone that has just arrived from some destination, one just greets;
'Have you come?'
or,
'You have come!.'

When I hear this form of greeting I wander, why so bland? Is the greeter unhappy for the visit or just the unevenfulness of the greetee's referenced trip? Is there bad blood somewhere? Is he or she just not in the mood for qualifying words?

I am going back into the Library now.
I am thinking of angels as well.
I imagine walking back to my desk and finding my dissertation all finished and referenced and all ready to be printed for tomorrow.

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2014