He is very good at salad-dressing, this waiter. We eat with him and his wife next day. There he is, with his fat back and thick neck, mixing the dressing. He uses sugar in the German way. His wife watches him, looking spiteful and frightened.She is thin and ugly and not young. The waiter mixes the dressing for the salad very slowly at the sideboard. I can see myself in the mirror. I look thin - too thin - and dirty and haggard, with that expression that you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.
I hadn't bargained for this. I didn't think it would be like this - shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, circles under your eyes, your hair getting straight and lanky, the way people look at you... I didn't think it would be like this.
Jean Rhys, extract from Good Morning, Midnight
Jean Rhys Wikipedia page
Jean Rhys day on Dennis Cooper's blog
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