The house was still when I got home. It was late, but I didn’t know how late. There was a note on the kitchen table that read: I’m sleeping with Jenny tonight. So this is it, I thought, the new dispensation. I went to open her bedroom door and enjoy for a moment the spectacle of them both curled up together, but I stopped my hand by the door handle and thought better of it. There was a quiet, deathly peace in the house that didn’t seem to want disturbing. So I crawled into the empty bed and then began to worry about sleeping. There was a box of pills by the cabinet on her side that read Stilnoct. I took one of them, swallowed some water, and when sleep didn’t arrive, I took another. And some small death must have taken me over, because when I awoke the sun was pouring through the French windows and they both were gone.
I was already late, I knew, so I drove without breakfast and bought a takeaway coffee from one of those stalls by the river. And I crossed the metal bridge again and saw the barges below draw streams of dirty yellow in their wakes, like urine. As I approached the other side, I could see Gertrude standing by the window on the second floor, something white in her arms, which I assumed to be the Pomeranian. She was looking towards me and I wondered, could she see me from that distance, a tiny figure on this cathedral of rusting steel?
How is he, I asked, after she had buzzed me in, and how is his luxurious patella?
Luxating, she said. And thank you for asking, but Phoebe is a she. And luxating has ceased, entirely.
I took the Polaroid from my pocket and saw the bright, smiling blonde-haired face. Of how many years ago? I wondered.
We have to visit city morgue. Are we to assume she is dead, Jonathan? I’m not sure I could bear such a conclusion.
We assume nothing, I said. You mentioned a small room, that she cannot leave. I visited a brothel, I was wrong. This could turn out to be—
A wild-goosey chase?
And her eyebrows lifted when she said this and I had to smile.
A dead end, I said.
I had texted Sarah to see would she pick up Jenny and she had replied simply, yes. It was monosyllabic, but a reply none the less. Could I assume from that that we were still communicating?
And your wife, Gertrude asked, how is she?
You know my wife? I asked, stupidly, because I knew she didn’t.
She was the reason we first met, she said.
Let’s forget about Sarah, I said, for the moment.
Sarah, she said. Yes, I remember the name. And she took my arm with one of hers, while the other held the dog.
Shall we?
She moved me towards the door.
The dog, I asked her, do we have to take her?
I am afraid we do, she said. You are afraid we will look stupid?
It’s just that pets may not be allowed in city morgues, I said.
In that case, she said, we leave her in the car.
She held my arm in the lift down and the Pomeranian licked my fingers. I could feel her breast beneath the smart summer dress she was wearing, with my elbow.
Time, she said. It moves so slowly, sometimes it almost stops.
Are we in a hurry? I asked her.
No, she said and the old lift creaked. She turned her face to me, and I could discern the beauty that must have been there, some years ago, beneath the make-up.
But it plays tricks on us. Tricks that we never are prepared for. Like here, she said. I lift my face to yours, look at that downy mouth and wonder, have I ever done that before?
Downy? I said. I touched my chin, and remembered that I had shaved.
Your mouth, she said. Turns downwards. You would have been my type, all of those years ago.
How many? I asked.
Ach, you disappoint me, Jonathan. Never ask a woman’s age.
I’m sorry, I said. But there was a bubble of flirtation in the lift that was not at all unpleasant. She had those Marlene Dietrich cheekbones, old Gertrude, and that Teutonic mouth, carefully delineated with a make-up pencil. And I realised that the beauty of this frisson with her was that it would never come to anything. So I allowed her to hold my elbow to her breast as the lift doors opened, and we crossed the street to where Istvan was waiting with his car. And perhaps I had a future as a consort to older women if the world I knew fell totally apart.