Fake smiling and smirking

I met my old lover on the street last night,
She seemed so glad to see me I just smiled
- Paul Simon -

I went shopping today.
Sponging off my family and friends is okay as far as I'm concerned, but I thought: "Hey! I'll have a go at cookin' again..."

The first thing I noticed as I stepped outside was that a T-shirt was not gonna do the trick. Neither was my jumper. So, I had to add a leather coat to the assembly of clothing clinging to my back.
The second thing I noticed was the wind. It was cold and wet. And so was the bike saddle.
I've quickly come to the conclusion that life in Europe is going to be unpleasantly like a cold shower in Darjeeling.

There are bicycle stands near the shopping centre in downtown Hellevoetsluis. Well, I say downtown, but that's just to make it sound interesting. But the bike stands are made for bikes with big fat tyres and my sister's bike has small thin tyres. So, I reckoned it would be safer to park the bike beside the bike stands, instead of in them.
This old woman rolled up in one of those automatic wheelchair things and said: "You shouldn't do that. The bike stand's aren't there for nothing."
"Neither are geriatric homes." I replied and strolled off, leather coat and all.

In the shopping centre, which has as a logo a dolphin (although what dolphins actually have to do with anything in Hellevoetsluis, Holland or Northern Europe infact, is beyond me) and bumped into an old lover.
"Hi Mark," she said smiling, "You're looking brown. But you've lost a lot of hair."
I immediately had a suspicion that this conversation was going to be either short or unpleasant.
"Nice to see you too Femke," I replied "are you pregnant?"
"Yes! 5 months." she answered.

You know, sometimes sarcasm just doesn't work out.

"So, what are you up to nowadays?" she asked pouting her lips in the manner which years before had irritated me to the extent to fleeing off to Israel.
"You know. The usual. I act in Bollywood films, write novels. That sort of thing."
She smiled. Not a genuine "That's nice!" sort of a smile, it was more of a "Stop bull-shitting me." sort of a smile.

Actually, I don't think smile is the proper word for it at all. Let me grasp my trusted thesaurus (so greatly missed these previous months) and see what it has to say...
This is too weird to be true, but the word "Smile" doesn't appear to be in my thesaurus. Sure, it's in the dictionary part, but seemingly there is no other word for smile.
So she did smile at me after all.
Smirk?
I don't know, and anyways, it has nothing to do with the tale of shopping at hand...

"No, seriously. I'm a Bollywood star. Of sorts. And I'm a writer of sorts."
And then she asked the question which so pisses me off: "Have you been published yet?"
Not: "Oh really! What do you write?"
No. Straight to the point: "Are you making a living out of it."

"Yes, I've been published in various magazines." I said. Not lying. After all, when I worked for the refugee organisation quite a few of my articles were used in internal papers.
Well, okay, I lied. But who cares?

"What do you do now?" I asked with the air of someone who has more pressing engagements to go to (like the grocery store).
"Oh. I stay at home and make sure things run smoothly."
I nodded. She obviously did more than me.
"Well, gotta run. Got a deadline to meet." I prevaricated (the word 'lie' can obviously be found in my thesaurus).
We wished each other well and went on our seperate ways. She to buy pre-baby clothing and me to buy chicken, mushrooms, salad and wine. Lovely wine.