LITMIR.BIZ

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her. There was an intense smell of sugar—no, cocoa butter. The blank woman was about forty-five, but she was saying in a little girl voice: “Thank you ever so much. I do feel so much better now. It’s my anniversary.” They disappeared without looking at me.

      Now Vic was holding on to the lamppost and looking up into its light, letting the rain fall on his face.

      Ten minutes had passed.

      Soon he would go.

      Would he go?

      I watched him reach upward to the void of sky; he seemed to plead with it. And then he was going, taking long strides with his gloopy, elastic legs, splashing through puddles that reflected cars and red light. He was leaving, he was leaving.

      The music had stopped.

      I ran down the stairs and across the street. I had lost sight of him; Him. I wanted Him more now, much more, since He was already leaving me.

      I found the red hat striding over the bridge toward Primrose Hill. I got close enough to watch the rivulets of water running down Vic’s plastic-covered back. I fell into step behind him. The black heavens never answered my questions. Why not?

      I pounced.

      I got my arms and legs around him, piggy-back style. He grunted, a stuck pig. He tried to push me off, but I clung and clung and clung. Stephanie Haight had said that that is what women are wont to do.

      We fell, together.

      I whispered into his ear: “Hello Vic, it’s very nice to see you again. Sorry I’m late.” I paused. “This seems like a good moment to lay my cards on the table. You’re my first date since I got out of a really long-term relationship.”

      We were sprawled on the pavement. People were walking around us, but no one stopped to help. Vic sat up and touched his forehead. He was bleeding.

      I went on: “My ex-boyfriend Sebastian was fucking this girl from the Home Counties called Allegra behind my back. I didn’t think I’d ever get over it, but now—since I’ve seen your face, I think I might get over it.”

      The lights of the fruit machine whirred in the corner, spinning their pictures of apples and bananas as I sipped my large glass of house white wine and tried to seem engrossed in Vic’s pronouncements on operation management.

      “So you manage the operators?” I said.

      “Not exactly. I operate and I manage. I live with other operators who are lower down the pecking order than me, but I don’t let that affect things like who can use how much space in the fridge.” He shrugged.

      A large bullfighting poster was framed on the wall to his left. It showed a blindfolded horse being gored by a bull. A matador stood poised to stab the bull with the final sword. We were squeezed onto the end of a table of graphic designers who had offered to drive Vic to the hospital for stitches because the gash on his forehead continued to bleed.

      “At least you didn’t break your nose,” I said. “My friend Freddie who I live with has got a broken nose. And he’s got these eyes like a fawn about to be shot. The juxtaposition is quite poetic.”

      “Do you always use long words?” said Vic.

      “I’m not an elitist.”

      “I’m an elite,” he said. “I’m a one-man elite. That’s the way it is in the services.” There was no sign of the medal that he had worn yesterday.

      “So you were in the army?” I said. “That must have been what drew me to you. Did you, like, get discharged for gross misconduct or something?”

      His face looked pained for a moment and then it hardened. “No.” He leaned forward. “You know, you’re lucky that I’m here with you, that I’m willing to fuck you still, since you gave me a concussion.” He touched his wound.

      I pulled his hand down. “Don’t, Vic. It might get infected.”

      “I would like to infect you,” he said, heartily. “Posh girls like you want to get infected by a real man like me.”

      I sighed. “Real men are hard to find.”

      “That’s because all you castrating bitches don’t know your place anymore.”

      There was a long silence.

      “I went to Cambridge,” I said. “Yes, that’s right. The real Cambridge. Not the ex-polytechnic. So it’s a curse and a blessing in a way because when one elevates oneself above the quotidian, one starts feeling terribly lonesome, as though one will never find a soul mate again.” I paused. “I guess Freddie is my soul mate now.”

      “Do you like the way he fucks you?”

      “He’s gay.”

      I felt Vic’s hand grope my thigh under the table. We were sitting quite far apart; his arms were as long as an ape’s. I moved my thigh away and his hand thudded to the ground.

      “Fine,” he said.

      I downed my drink. “Shall we get another?”

      “Great.” He leaned back. “Thanks.”

      The song changed to Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up.” The graphic designers started dancing in their chairs.

      “But I got the last one, Vic.” I wanted to cry—maybe he didn’t love me?

      “Only joking, only joking.” He laughed. “Shall I get a bottle?”

      The next thing I knew I was riding Vic hard in the back of a taxi, muttering into his mouth: “Fuck me right here, right now. Tell me what you want.”

      “I want you to get off,” he was saying. “Get off.”

      “No, no, no.” I slapped his face. “Isn’t that the word you like to hear from women?”

      “No,” said Vic.

      I got off and slid as far away from him as possible.

      The taxi slowed with the traffic on Chalk Farm Road. A woman wearing a white wifebeater and a pair of acid-washed jeans despite the harrowing cold was crawling on all fours outside the kebab shop, picking up the remains of her fries and cheese and cramming them into her mouth. We drove on, slowly. A gang of girls were swaying together in a long, linked-arm line over the lock, singing some mournful song: “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

      I wound down the window and leaned my head out. “That was my parents’ song!” I shouted. I turned to Vic: “That can’t be a coincidence?!”

      One of the girls broke away from the chain and sprinted in six-inch, neon-green heels toward the dark window of a leather shop. She lowered her head like a bull, laughing all the way. Her friends grabbed her arms just before her head smashed into the glass. She fell back into them, laughing harder.

      “Close the window!” shouted the driver.

      I did.

      London is a depressing place to look for things.

      The doors on the first floor of Vic’s house were all white and all shut. I’d stripped off my clothes downstairs and now I was throwing my naked body against each door in turn. They stayed shut—locked? Vic was mumbling about not waking the operators. He was picking up my clothes.

      “Fuck me,” I was saying. “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”

      Finally he produced a key from his pocket and opened a door on the left. “We like our privacy,” he explained. “Security is always an issue. Even among friends.”

      He followed me into the dark room. I hit my shin on the bed. Vic turned on the light. It was a futon. A NATO aerial-bombardment map was pinned above the mirror. There was a poster of the film Taxi Driver. The room was monkish, the perfect place to ask for forgiveness.

      Vic was surprised when I rolled away from his hairy body and

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