emre: tour guide to the turkish psychiatrists

he has an unusual smell about him: a confusing mix of spicy cologne and foreign tobacco. he is slightly shorter than me with an insistent posture. he has closely cropped dark hair doing its best to disguise baldness, an unlucky victim at thirty-one. his goatee (i hate that word) is carefully groomed and he is never without his side bag. he often speaks in cliches, stumbling over his clumsy english offering "for instance..." as an unsuccessful distraction. his stomach hangs gently over his leather belt. sharon and i both agree that he is too quick to chime in, to pontificate -- he smacks his lips as he explains that he is a free lance tour guide and that the details (smack), for instance...are of no great concern to him but for the future references, more flexibleness would be good. sharon, with her legs sternly crossed, makes the leather banquette creak as she leans over and whispers to me that his travel agency didn't pay for flexibiLITY and if it had, flexibility would have been on offer. her pony tail is slicked back with hairspray. her tight smile divulges that she is terribly high strung due in no small part, i suspect, to emre and his unsollicited advice. she points out tensely that he doesn't have signing authority on the account and that his company credit card was rejected yesterday. i am not to sign for his portion of the bill.