in the middle of a day like this looking the way you do has
got to expect to get stared at a little."

The thing is, I wasn't used to the language; not used _enough_. I
could communicate all right, and even understand some jokes, and I
knew the spoken language, not some formal unusable version, because I
learned it mostly watching those shows on the television screen. But I
got confused this time, because "looking" means two different things,
active and passive, and I was thinking about how I'd been _looking at_
him, and....

That was my lucky day. I didn't want him to be angry at me, and the
way I saw it, he was perfectly justified in scolding me, which is what
I thought he was doing. But I _knew_ he wasn't really angry; I'd have
felt it if he was. So I said, "You're right. It was very rude of me,
and I don't blame you for being annoyed. I won't do it any more."

He started laughing, and this time I knew it was friendly. Like I
said, that was my lucky day; _he_ thought I was being witty. And, from
what he's told me since, I guess he realized then that _I_ felt
friendly too, because before that he'd just been bluffing it out, not
knowing how to get to know me, and afraid _I_'d be sore at _him_, just
for talking to me!

Which goes to show that sometimes you're better off not being _too_
familiar with the local customs.

* * * * *

The trouble was there were too many things I didn't know, too many
small ways to trip myself up. Things they couldn't have foreseen, or
if they did, couldn't have done much about. All it took was a little
caution and a lot of alertness, plus one big important item: staying
in the background--not getting to know any one person too well--not
giving any single individual a chance to observe too much about me.

But Larry didn't mean to let me do that. And ... I didn't want him to.

He asked questions; I tried to answer them. I did know enough at least
of the conventions to realize that I didn't have to give detailed
answers, or could, at any point, act offended at being questioned so
much. I _didn't_ know enough to realize that reluctance or irritation
on my part wouldn't have made him go away. We sat on those stools at
the diner for most of an hour, talking, and after a little while I
found I could keep the conversation on safer ground by asking _him_
about himself, and about the country thereabouts. He seemed to enjoy
talking.

Eventually, he had to go ba