No News Is Good News?

I fix my coffee, grab a couple sections of the morning's Herald that I haven't read as yet, and head out to the "smoking section". Some mornings I get to read the paper. Some mornings somebody will join me and we'll get into some good conversation. More and more, though, it seems that a cell phone will ring and I end up staring at another person chatting away with someone else.

It really puts me in quite a quandry. On the one hand I don't want to appear like I'm eavesdroping on the conversation. Contrarywise, would it be impolite to just pick up the paper, ignore the other person and start catching up on the news? I guess the ideal thing would be for the guy on the phone to cup his hand over the mouth piece while telling me something like "Go ahead and read your paper while I'm on the phone."
Unfortunately it never happens.

In this case he got off the phone, ran inside and got his coffee, then told me that something had come up unexpectedly and he was sorry but he had to get going. I lit a cigarette and read my paper.