Jay was back at work that night, subdued but getting better, Ruth was nowhere to be found and I couldn’t wait for Monday night, by which time Dolf would be out selling cattle muti to the farmers he targeted for one reason and killers for another. When the time came, however, I wondered what the hell I was going to say. The solution, of course, was to drive past their house and make sure Dolf’s car was gone and then have a couple of drinks for Dutch courage. So I did that and rang her bell under cover of the night. If he was there anyway I could always say I was drunk and had the wrong address or something; I’d had plenty of practice in my forty-two years on how to improvise, lie-wise.
“Hi,” she said flatly, let me in and Verdi started barking.
I said I hoped she didn’t mind that I came round so late (having ascertained that Dolfie was, indeed, gone and away for the week), but I had just finished work and since I didn’t have her phone number I was wondering whether her husband had appreciated the changes she had implemented. He hadn’t even noticed them, she laughed, which was typical, but then he had other good qualities. “Oh?” I said, encouragingly.
Unlike most men he was as reliable and consistent as the sun – “Verdi! Stil!” – and there was something to be said for that. I agreed, thinking about the old man. The dog wouldn’t stop barking, knowing full well that I was here to cuckold its master and she asked me whether I would like a drink and I said I would definitely like a drink and wasn’t she going to have a drink.
“I don’t really drink,” she said, “but I think I’m going to have one.”
“What the hell: we can have a Monday-night party.”
So she gave me a beer and a shot of brandy and poured herself one of those sweet, milky liqueurs. She said she had wanted to watch such and such a film on TV now, but then she really didn’t mind missing it; she could catch up on a rebroadcast. The dog would still not stop barking and she finally lost her rag completely and banished it out the back door, making it look utterly pathetic, chastised and united in separation anxiety with Butch. Returning she said “that effing dog drives me crazy”, whereupon the first melodramatic note of the twelfth quartet was upon me, for my IMP virtually flew to attention.
I now had to manage a semblance of reason, doubly standing in her kitchen, and asked her what film she’d intended seeing. She said it was a film I’d reviewed a while ago and I wondered how she’d known my name. No, someone in the park had told her who I was and I said I was glad to finally achieve my goal of being unspeakably famous and, like that mid-movement shift in the allegro – told her to kiss me.
“But I’m married,” she said, shocked but practical.
“I know, but I want you to kiss me.”
“No. You must go.”
“Okay,” I said, taken aback by an erotic directness I never knew I had, “but only if you kiss me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll give you a peck on the cheek, just to thank you for helping me move the furniture, but then you must go.”
“Okay,” I said, and when she proceeded to execute the peck I gripped her and tried to kiss her much longer and deeper. She half responded, but then pulled away and said I must go now; what would the neighbours think.
“The neighbours are watching TV and have been doing so since five o’clock, even though the weather outside is glorious, if cold, and I would never watch TV in broad daylight [a lie: I watched sport every Saturday afternoon, good weather or lousy] when there is such beauty to be had outside.”
“Go,” she said.
“What’s your number?”
She gave it to me.
“One more kiss,” I said.
“You don’t stop, do you?”
So she gave me that slightly longer kiss and I didn’t even try to keep my pelvis away from her: I wanted her to know she had my fullest, hardest attention.