The meal ended with the particular, unhurried quality of two people who had decided that Mark's existence was a matter to be addressed after the food was finished and not before.
Mark had been standing the entire time.
The specific, rigid quality of someone who has not yet received confirmation of their survival status — every passing minute of their silence carrying the particular, accumulating weight of unresolved tension that the body converts into cold sweat and the particular, dry-throat quality of someone who has been swallowing nervously with decreasing amounts of available saliva. He had been watching them eat with the specific, helpless attention of someone who cannot look away from the thing that is going to determine what happens to them next.
When the two gazes finally turned toward him, the knees went down almost before the decision to kneel had been made.
