Nobody saw it coming.

Except for the two or three tables around him, maybe, nobody would’ve suspected the foreboding theater.

With the back of his hand, from his knuckles to his wrist, palm open towards the ceiling, he was striking the tabletop with a slow, steady rhythm. Forceful but quiet. He stared straight into his coffee cup the whole time. He seemed preoccupied, forehead furrowed, but at peace, like he knew something that nobody else knew, and had accepted it. He didn’t look up. He didn’t look around. His rhythm with his striking hand was metronomic. And mesmerizing, if you cared.

But nobody in this restaurant cared. Everyone was overly indulgent in her own chatter. Dresses and suits. Suits and dresses. Clinking of cheers. Silverware busy against china. NeoGeo – the name of the restaurant, after its namesake, the art movement – is the place you’d go to to be seen. The moment you walk in, you’re on display as a high-society mannequin, dressed and primped onto an elaborately designed set made up of geometric angles and shapes, accented with a splash of recursive crimson and indigo, never mind if Neo-geo, the art, which criticizes industrialization and consumerism, appears as strange bedfellows with the very bourgeoisie itself in NeoGeo, the restaurant. At any rate, you’d never go to NeoGeo alone.

Which brings us back to him. Seated alone. In the front near the door. Still metronomic with his backhand against the tabletop.

Outside, it was getting dark, not from the sun setting because at this time of the year, sunset was not for a few more hours. It brooded from dark to forebodingly dark. Except for him, nobody inside knew this was happening outside.

His striking hand stopped. He slid his chair back and stood up, taking a step back from his table, all silently and smoothly.

Right then, the brightest white light flashed across the heavy dark sky outside, so bright it illuminated the inside of the restaurant. Suits and dresses looked up and around, somewhat bewildered.

One. Two. Boom.

Deafening. The ground shook. Nothing did not shake.

Screams in the restaurant, from women to men, in a risen shock of madness. Some dove under their table. All the car alarms were set off on the street.

– Was that a bomb?

– Was that a bomb?

Frantic voices. Everyone was thinking the same thing.

– That was not a bomb, he said out loud. But this is Babylon.

Then he walked out.

While all the windows remained intact, none of them blown out, where he had repeatedly backhanded his table earlier before, it had cracked clean through, its two pieces folding into the industrial-chic floor.