...of pause

"So it's for real, then," Helene said, folding the newspaper. She ordered a cognac and drank it almost in one gulp. Celia had lowered her head over the Viandox again, and Curro, who was bringing Helene a second cognac, made a questioning gesture which touched her absurdly. They remained like that for a long while, not looking at each other or speaking; Celia sucked on the wet croissant from time to time, her cheek resting on a fist and her elbow on a corner of the table. Almost without being aware of her movement, Helene ran her hand lightly over the fallen hair and only then, when she drew her hand away, did the caress become superimposed on the memory of the useless and stupid gesture (it hadn't been a caress, it hadn't been a caress in any way, but why the same gesture now, then?) and she saw her hand stroking the hair of the naked boy for an instant, the rapidity with which she had withdrawn it as if the others, that absurd ballet in white which was bustling around a stretcher which was already the morgue and all the rest, might censure a movement that had not obeyed functional reasons like theirs, one which had nothing to do with cardiac massage, digitalis, or artificial respiration.
The second cognac was slower and warmer. Helene let it burn her lips; it ignited the back of her tongue. Celia was dunking another croissant in the Viandox and she sighed before she swallowed it almost whole along with the last remains of a sob. She didn't seem to have noticed Helene's caress and without saying anything she accepted the cigarette and let it be lighted. In the underpopulated cafe, where Curros had his back to the door like a protective bulldog, they let themselves go along in silence, protected by the smoke that drove away centipedes and good-bys...

[62: A Model Kit, Cortazar, J.]