"He leaves a message - a yellow sticky - on the dead black of his computer screen." "'Gone to lunch." "I may be some time.'" "His colleagues won't be seeing him for the rest of the afternoon." "Rare joy of truancy, of bold escape from the trap of work." "That heap of typescript can be left to dwell on its thousand offences against grammar and good sense." "His trusty blue pen can snooze with its cap on." "Nobody will notice." "He shuts the door on the sleeping dog of his own departure." "Hurries, not too fast, along the corridor, taps the lift button, and waits." "To meet even one person at this delicate juncture would sully the whole enterprise." "But he's in luck." "The lift yawns emptily." "He steps in... is enclosed... and carried downwards to sunlight and London's approximation of fresh air." "With one bound... he is free!" "It's a district of literary ghosts that walk in broad daylight." "Keep your imagination peeled and see Virginia Woolf loping off to the library with a trug full of books." "And there goes TS Eliot, bound for his first Martini of the day, with his gig-lamps and his immaculate sheen." "Bloomsbury and its blue plaques." "The squares and stucco terraces, where the little industrious publishers still like to hide their offices." "Leafy literary-land, that by some dispensation has been left to stand amid the road drills and high, swivelling cranes." "In his 50s, he favours a younger man's impatient pace, skipping round dawdling or stupidly halted pedestrians." "You're not properly living in London if you don't use the dodges, the short cuts." "Yet it's 20 minutes' walk from work to this lunchtime date with an old flame." "Gaggles of tourists straggle more provocatively than ever." "Never mind, he's making good time - note the active verb - and he expects she'll be late." "The restaurant is an old haunt, though he hasn't been there for years." "Zanzotti's - unreformed Soho Italian." "Chianti in a basket, breadsticks you snap with a sneeze of dust, red gingham cloths, overlaid on the diagonal with plain green paper ones." "Finger smears at the neck of the water carafe, and Massimo himself touring the tables with his fake bonhomie." "But Soho has changed." "The speciality food shops pushed out of business, tarts chased off the streets, and a new kind of trashiness moving in." "Cultureless, fly-by-night." "But hey presto." "Zanzotti's edges into view, exactly as memory has preserved it." "Phew." "When he suddenly recollects..." "What, precisely?" "Deja vu?" "Some artistic analogy?" "Too bad." "Let it go." "On the threshold, on the edge of a shadow-world that is yet to welcome him, he stands and waits." "Waits for a waiter." "First disappointing thing - no sign of Massimo, nor of his old staff." "Massimo's pirate crew, as he privately thought of them, some of whose names he knew whilst knowing nothing of their lives beyond the act - grave, flirtatious, resentful, brisk, droll - each brought to the table." "Instead, young men and women - roughly half and half - and not all looking especially Italian." "How long has it been?" "Five years?" "Six years?" "Ten?" "Fifteen?" "God help us all." "Though time's winged chariot with the brakes off and in full downhill hurtle must be inaudible, unheard-of, rather, to these sprightly boys and girls." "He is noticed, but not recognised, by a waiter he does not recognise, but who catches his name in his right ear, then bows clerically over the ledger that bulges from all the names, the months and years of names, written in it," "and that sits open on a slope like a church-lectern Bible." "The Book of Reservations." "As ever, that pause of anxiety and mute appeal." "But there, happily, it is." "Scriptural confirmation." "Without a smile, without a word, he is eyebrowed and nodded to follow." "Thank you." "And the wine list, please?" "On the back." "I see." "So things are different after all under new mismanagement." "Might have known it." "Did know it, perhaps." "The very table linen has lost its patriotism." "Plain white." "We surrender." "And this menu - this twanging laminated card - big as a riot policeman's shield." "Hmm." "At first glance, pizzas by the yard." "More pizzas than there should be." "And too much designer pizzazz." "Choose the right wine and have it ready breathing for when she arrives." "There's a mid-price Chianti, which won't come plump in tight straw swaddling, but will do for auld lang syne." "Old times' sake being the precarious purpose of this tete-a-tete, and possibly a great big mistake." "We said we wouldn't look back." "Why did she e-mail him suggesting...?" "No, HE did." "He commands - nice word - a clear view of the entrance, lit contre-jour so that each new arrival, new candidate for his notice, appears to step from brightness to bathos with a tacit apology." "'Sorry, I'm not...'" "But if not, what?" "What will she look like?" "Fwop!" "The cork leaves the bottle and his quick nose wants to pick up the escaping bouquet." "Will it be all right?" "The waiter pours out the statutory measure - one imperial glug - which he lifts and breathes over thinkingly." "Not corked." "That's fine, thank you." "Leave it there." "He'll do the pouring." "It's quite sharp but should broaden out." "He takes his tumbler of water, overweight bubbles mobbing up to greet him, sips that and feels the chill fizz smash against his palate." "Thirstier than he thought, he drinks till the ice rests on his upper lip." "Hello." "She's here." "How did that happen?" "Had he taken his eyes off the door for so long?" "Flustered, self-reprimanding, he is still able to start to rise from his seat..." "Well..." "I didn't see..." "And be met halfway with a soft peck, smack in the middle of his mouth." "Familiar collision of pout against pout." "Though there's something different, too." "A new... what?" "Fragrance?" "Aura?" "Hint of carefree expenditure?" "Waft of wealth?" "How lovely." "I hope I'm not late." "You're not late at all." "So, the human paradox." "The same and changed." "All that he remembers, vivid in the differences." "Is she thinner?" "Somehow there's a sharper outline which is not just smart tailoring, and her hair looks better behaved." "She hangs her bag, pampered scarlet leather, over the back of her chair and skips into the seat." "'Now,' that movement says." "Quick, eager, a touch needy, as if she were beginning a lesson in a subject she's good at." "It puts him on his mettle." "There!" "Here." "Lips, eyes, eyebrows and the new lines in her forehead fill out the harmony." "Have some wine." "I'm afraid it... hasn't really had time." "He pours into the two glasses," "He pours into the two glasses, measuring by ear identical notes." "This is a disappointment." "Remember the old flasks?" "Kitsch, I know, but didn't you have a soft spot?" "Snug in their raffia like fat cuckoos in small nests." "Still, nothing lasts." " What's the toast?" " Happy days?" ""Happy days" it is." "Rims meet and clink, swaying the cradled liquid." "Dark, sluggish ink." "And they drink." "Becoming palatable." " You haven't changed." " Oh, I have." "Witness this morning's bathroom mirror." "The grey, the flab, the stoop, the frown, and in the deliberating, disbelieving eyes, something like... terror." "Not to notice." "Was that one of the problems, he wonders, her blithe rebuffing of such facts as didn't match an optimistic outlook?" "He could argue but the waiter intervenes with a second menu, which slices into the infant conversation like a sweetly swung axe." " The menu, senora." " Thank you." "It's almost all pizzas." "I'm afraid the place has gone to the dogs." "Don't be absurd - it's fine." "In fact, at first glance, it's improved." "You know, when you suggested this, I wasn't so sure." "Almost any other venue." "All that surly waiter business was much more your kick than mine." "But when I came in the door, I thought, 'Well, OK.'" "And I'm quite glad to see a menu that doesn't make a fetish of stracciatella and pollo sorpreso." "Good." "Excellent." "If you say so." "Did he play the wrong card?" "Could things be turning nasty?" "Retreating to cover, he concentrates hard on the antipasti." "Come on." "No sulks." "Be nice." "Sois sage." "Cajoling English and caressing French." "How long has it been?" "Ten years?" "Eleven?" "Fifteen." "No, it can't be that." "Let's settle for twelve." "And we've only got lunch in which to tell each other everything, so..." "Truce?" "For a moment, he withholds, mouth full of pause... which he can either spit out or swallow." "What's the use?" "Pax." "His glass is drained, hers is barely touched." "Judiciously, he brings the levels level." "So... who's to start?" "You." "Right." "I'll tell you everything I can." "There's little to relate." "It was an aged, aged man." " Stop!" " What?" "If you can't be serious, we'll talk about something else or nothing at all." "I was about to do that." "That's my whole story." " Signora, signore." "We haven't..." " Yes, thank you." "Impeccable timing." "But I'd like some advice." "She doesn't need it, but it's her style to entrust herself in unimportant matters, pose questions that are easy to answer, and indeed it makes the waiter smile when, tapping the menu decisively, she requests the pumpkin ravioli because he has recommended it," "with sea bass to follow." "Signore?" "His turn." "Carpaccio." "And in the absence of... pollo whatsit, pizza Napoletana, extra anchovies." "No-one smiles at that, because he is not nice." "What say we start again?" "Wind back the years?" "Minutes." "You know what I mean." "Ah, my autobiography." "No change there." "Confessions Of A Copy Editor, chapter 93." "It's an ordinary day in a publishing house of ill repute." "Another moronic manuscript comes crashing down the chute to be turned into art." "This morning it was Wayne Wanker's latest dog's dinner of sex, teenage philosophy and writing-course prose." "Abracadabra, kick it up the arse and out it goes to be Book Of The Week or some other bollocks." "What a fraud." "What a farce." "And tomorrow, which of our geniuses will escape from the zoo and head straight for us with a new masterpiece lifeless in his jaws?" "That's about the size of it." "What about you?" "Business as usual, then." "Yes." "Business... as usual." "After such a rant, he finds it difficult to look her in the eye, which is bright, amused, searching, pitiless, but he has to try." "A sip may help." "When he notices for the first time the faint, faint nimbus of the lens circling the gold-shot azure of each iris." "Well, of course." "'Oracle eyes' he used to call them." "The harder you looked, the more sublime and unreadable they became." "But have they lost their old force?" "The heretical question strengthen his own stare." "Gaze meets gaze, revealing, as ever, everything and nothing there." "Flyaway thought." "Back to life." "And you?" "Oh!" "The good wife and loving mother." "That keeps me occupied." "I've no complaints." "And Paris is a fabulous city." "You really should visit." "He has, but is it the moment to mention that crazed escapade?" "Skulking at dusk in her prim grey square, address folded in his raincoat pocket, with no real intention of ringing the doorbell, yet unable to depart." "Until the horrible shock of the pigeons, an entire flock rising at some scare into the diminished light like a thousand umbrellas simultaneously opening and telling him to go." "No, he thinks." "No." "She seems not to have noticed, averted from him, twisting in her seat, chin raised, eyes reconnoitring." "He'd like to kiss her long neck." "Nibble it." "Nuzzle her jawbone with his nose." "Which one is our waiter?" "We could do with some more water." " That's..." "That's him over there." " Are you sure?" "You can't have forgotten - you were practically seducing him a minute ago." "It's nice to know you're still madly jealous." "Oh, yes, he's rotten with jealousy." "Absolutely I am not." "And now we're on the subject, how is the old pseud?" "He means her husband, the celebrated novelist." "The ubiquitous jacket photo, the wintry smirk that stole her from him." "She throws out a laugh." "Ha!" "A single syllable." "Flourishing, thank you." "How could she have been so gullible?" "There's a new book of stories out in the autumn and right now, he's hard at work on some lectures that Harvard have asked him to do, so... everything's perfect." "And how could he have been so abject as to let it happen?" "Once more she is distracted, catching the eye of the waiter with a demure flutter of restaurant semaphore and asking for more water." "And we'll need another bottle of this." "Right." "So, er, does he, does he know that we're...?" "Having lunch?" "Yes." "Of course." "I told him." "And he instructed me to pass on his warmest regards, which I've no intention of doing, as he well knows." "That's very kind!" "Of both of you, I suppose." "He watches, and his companion watches him watch, the flexing of supple back and sturdy haunches as the waitress raises and twists the head of the wooden phallus, scattering seed." " Buon appetito." " Thank you." "First mouthfuls are discussed and pronounced delicious." "Then, as of old, forks trade between dishes and swaps are analysed." "Mmm." "You chose well." "Nutmeg, I think." "Or could it be mace?" "Sweet accord of comparisons and compliments, recalling a time before the souring." "Beef's beautifully lean, and the capers are not too overpowering." "I suppose this is nothing to what you're used to." "Paris?" "You know, we never eat out." "The boys have appetites but absolutely no taste." "It's like feeding large dogs." "Smart restaurants, haute cuisine, would be a total waste." "So this, even Zanzotti's, is a rare treat." "Despite the qualification, satisfying to hear." "He has killed a bottle almost single-handed." "When he seizes the new one and nods it in her direction, her flattened hand places an interdiction on the half-full glass that would be half-empty to him." "Slender fingers, once so intimate and versatile and tender." "Whirls of wrinkles sealing the knuckles deeper now, though the lacquerless nails remain buffed and neat." "Admitting defeat, the bottle withdraws backwards." "Still bowing like a courtier, turns to his own glass and..." "'A word in your ear' blurts out its sorrows in a splashy gabble." "With the blade of her fork she presses down, punctures, gashes, saws, seesaws, slices into a plump, glistening pasta packet, then scoops and carries half to her mouth." "Chews." "Chews, he observes, with less conspicuous relish than she used to." "Have all her appetites turned less lusty?" "Mind your own business." "But isn't it his business to remember certain times?" "Old times, bedtimes, between-times, any-times, of a startling impromptu innocent lasciviousness that he'll never know again?" "Sleep-musky kisses that roused him in the small hours, peremptory custody of light, firm limbs, the polyrhythmic riding he'll never know again." "Caught a fish and let it go." "Woe, woe, woe, woe..." "Found a treasure and threw it away." "Hey, hey." "Drop it now." "Figure of folly and pathos." "Figure of folly and pathos." "Voyeur of the past, and of the present." "He steals a peep." "Every movement has elegance and economy, is swift and deft." "The jut of her wristbone, marvel of engineering, holds the secret, and as a connoisseur, he yearns to inspect it at closer quarters, by eye and by touch." "But how can he catch it?" "Like a butterfly hunter, he ponders the problem." "Sweetheart..." "Sweetheart..." "I hate to say it, but you're leering." "My God." "You're right." "I'm sorry." "It's the old male gaze." "Through alcoholic haze." "You can say that again." "I think I've fallen in love with your wrist." "I think I've become a wrist fetishist." "You're an everything fetishist, always have been." "Guilty." "You know, it's one thing to ogle a waitress's bum, but this is the wrist of a married woman." "Private property." "Look." "I'm sure you can see the mark of the manacles, so... kindly desist." "Now, where are the toilets?" "Half-empty." "But that can wait." "How's the bottle?" "Plenty." "He thinks." "Thinks about drink, about his drinking." "The taste of his last mouthful lies like rust on his tongue." "Harsh, and yet his tongue craves more." "At rest in the glass, the wine is rusted purple." "So there exists an affinity, a strong mutual pull between wine and tongue." "They are complementary." "They are in love." "The silent tongue calls out, and the wine, though inanimate, will heed the call." "Well, it's a theory." "Lent support when the glass rises and, this time, not stopping short, delivers one lover to the other." "They kiss." "There's a little death, an insufficient bliss, but repeatable later." "But he's interrupted by mention of a book he's actually written." "His own." "His only." "I read your book." "Are you working on any more?" "No." "Blow-all." "Not a squeak." "True." "The Muse of Misery, so lavish in her attentions for a year or two, has not revisited, and that modest volume of 36 wounded and weeping lyrics remains unique." "The book conceived in tears will be born drowned." "That's a great shame." "Naturally, I wasn't your most objective reader, but I thought the poems had real power." "Some of the mythic stuff was over the top, but I could see your..." "Our..." "Stop right there!" "What do you mean, "mythic stuff"?" "The mythic stuff was the whole fucking point." "Well, for a start, I'm not actually in thrall to the King of Death, or whoever he's meant to be." "Yes, you are." "Don't you see?" "And you're totally Orpheus?" " Right." " And I'm...?" "You're my wife, you're dead, and it's my business to bring you back to life, which I very nearly succeed in doing." "But you don't." "No way." "Because I like being dead." "And that's where the metaphor, the analogy, the whole preposterous contrivance falls apart." " So you loathed it." " I had my quibbles." " You loathed it." " No." "It's the little dark agile waitress, the athlete-ballerina with her deadpan demeanour, who serves them both." "Refusal to smile explains her style." "That and heavy black eyebrows." " Sea bass for the signora." " Thank you." "And for him... a wheel of gloop-smothered dough, singed at the rim." "No swaps this time." "Conversation on hold, the scuffle and clack of her cutlery send out signals not difficult to interpret." "But he's soothed by the ambient blah, the big white noise of a room that's full of anonymously feeding humans." "Even the too-near table of boisterous boys contributes to its euphony, its equilibrium." "There is peace at the heart of the din, concord in babel." "Then a kick on the shin." "This is ground control." "Can you hear me?" " Loud and clear." " I seem to have hurt your feelings." "Not at all." "I've had my feelings surgically removed." "They can't be touched by anyone now." "Oh, my dear." "He cannot not feel her middle finger lightly and with calm, rotatory strokes massage behind his knuckles, then her thumb shove into his fist and nuzzle against his palm." "Just what he doesn't want - the untimely stirring of what could become by not so slow degrees a major bonk." "Not now, please..." "It's like an old tired, foolishly friendly, mostly forgotten dog that's chosen an awkward moment to rouse and shake itself from its basket and demand a romp." "Down, boy, down." "Thank you, Robert Graves." "'Down,' I said." "And he can't be sure if it's willpower or the wine, but the dog reluctantly behaves, retreating to its lonesome, malodorous nest for another long nap." "Good chap." "Good chap." "Penny?" " Sorry?" " Your thoughts." "No." "I wasn't thinking, exactly." "More probing a mental dimension beyond time and space." "Typical." "You can't even pay attention for the few minutes we have." "I've come all this way, dropped my family at not the most convenient moment, hopped on the shuttle, taken the taxi ride from hell, convinced at every traffic light I'd be late, and here I am," "all tuned up for our little reunion, only to find your physical, guzzling, tippling self recognisably present, but your mind appears to have flitted off on holiday." "You're out to lunch at your own lunch." "That's nicely put and no doubt true as well." "The sort of thing they used to say on my school report, along with 'un-teachable' and 'half-witted'." "'Guzzling' is unfair, though." "I really can't manage the rest of this." "'Tippling', however..." ""I take it..." "Antidote to all life's ills." " Are there so many?" " Ha!" "Funny!" "I wasn't trying to be." "I suppose, in number, not many." "That's reassuring." "Just one great, big drink to me only!" "Seems to help." "I appear to have lost my appetite as well." "You'll leave a fishy." "Half a fishy." "Sad waste." "Borrow a taste?" "Better not." "This hasn't gone quite as I expected." "How did you expect it to go?" "Oh, I don't know." "More of the old... whatever we had." "Which wasn't bad, was it?" "# We did have fun.#" "Didn't we?" "We did." "# Da-da-da # And no harm done.#" "Till the King of Death arrived on the scene." "Or should I say "the King of Prose"?" "Or should you say nothing." " Have you finished?" " One minute!" "Yes, thank you, and I believe my friend has finished with his." " Any desserts?" "Coffee?" " No, thank you." "HER no to both." "Dully he concurs, till an idea glows." "Glows and grows in the murk of his brain." "Fine, fiery, feisty candle flame." "But I think I could handle a little grappa." "Una grappina." "Si, signore." "And away he zooms on waiter business, waiter among waiters, zapping and arabesquing from table to table like bees between blooms." "Business and buzziness." "Now, that busy waitress, the bee ballerina - is she sting or is she sweetness?" "Nowhere to be seen." "Where are you this time?" " God, I'm sorry." " Sorry indeed." "I hadn't expected you to have gone to seed with quite such abandon." "Or is this some sort of... cock-eyed performance you're putting on for my special benefit?" "I think I need to think about that one." "Right." "Well, while you're doing that, I'll tell you what I think." "For which we need to go back to your poems." "It strikes me you don't understand them yourself." "They're not about me." "I wasn't the kidnap victim - it was you who were snatched and carried away to some region of darkness by..." "Oh, Let's call her the Queen of the Fairies." "Don't interrupt." "I'm finding the words as I go but when I've stopped, we'll seå if the theory's up to scrutiny." "Now, according to my logic, the Eurydice that you're trying to rescue with your brave little song must be yourself, your inner self, your soul." "But you've not been in touch with that in your entire life." "Which puts you in a hole, strategically speaking." "And who was it dumped you there in the first place?" "The kidnapper I was talking about, whom I can now reveal to be the Lyric Muse, who should have left you alone to work out your problems in some healthier fashion, and not led you on, not made you confuse poetry with therapy." "And who's also to blame for your present state of emotional arrest, infantile truculence and drunken flippancy." "It's not just that you're stuck in the past." "You're stuck in your poems." "Which have their merits." "They're nicely written, they're clever and so on." "But they're misconceived, false, hollow, wrong." "You should never have gone there." "Yet you did." "That..." "That's the catastrophe." "That's the disaster." "You're going to have to repeat that." "I want to write it down, especially the bit about flippulant..." "Yes..." "What?" "I'm perfectly serious." "The Oracle Eyes appear to have tears in them." "But too proud to fall." "Ever the escape artist, ever the clown." "Nip of grappa, distillation of grape pips, sits on the tongue a moment, transmitting warmth to the outer limbs, then slips to its doom." "No, I'm sure you're right." "My little book was a great big bag of shite, when I thought I was writing hymns to your sublime beauty and our lost love." "Thank you for the elucidation." "Now, if you'll excuse me," "I need to find my way to the little girls' - sorry, not funny - little boys' room." "The big noisy boys are getting up to leave, so he chooses a round-about route, taking care from a safe, but visible, distance to throw them a killer glare." "One of them catches it, baffled." "The gents' - he doesn't need the arrow - is along the passage and down some narrow steps that tip him in... faster than calculated." "But he's made it." "Knows at once the old chemical fragrance, which only partially smothers the jabbing kidney reek that proclaims all men brothers." "And there's the familiar porcelain goblet with its ancient stains and crazed glaze." "It is while he is standing watching his yellow stream slither sluggishly away along the gully that he conceives his scheme." "To find the dark-browed waitress." "To find her and ask her to marry him." "Once out the door and up the short flight past the ladies', then left again down the doorless corridor with, at the end, a longer flight to a windowed half-landing, view of brickwork and drainpipes." "Turn about and aided by a shaky handrail up to the first floor." "Two doors, both rattled, both locked." "Then up, up, up by steeper steps and odder odours to the very top." "He sits." "An erupting pigeon briefly interrupts." "Otherwise, silence." "Non-event." "Now he can't decide whether to weep... or sleep." "He is woken up by somebody waking up inside him, abruptly and roughly." "After some seconds' ugly tussle, he identifies his assailant... as himself." "They reach an agreement - encourage each other to consciousness and become one." "What is he doing crouched on this high shelf?" "The brick view illuminates nothing, but a wheedling smell - mixture of kitchen wafts and structural mildew - helps him to recall." "Lunch!" "Oh!" "Nicely judged lurches propel him down to the ground floor." "And a more stately progress, just once cannoning off the wall, brings him back to the restaurant, now almost deserted." "That's his table over there." "Unoccupied." "Less than an hour has passed, but he might have died and be returning as a ghost." "The lady, she go." "You no come back." "No, no, no, no." "She pay." "Airy hesitation." "He tucks his wallet away." "Was..." "Was she angry?" "Big shrug." "Big shake of head." "Comical, big-mouthed grimace." "Wouldn't care to say, same as enough said." "Look!" "They've looked after his shoulder bag." "Now he is saddled and ready to depart." "But first, a last goodbye to the old place." "Nothing more empty than a room full of tables, laid... but without occupants." "No, wait." "There's someone seated by the window." "A very old man." "Parchment face, sparse white hairs combed in strict parallels, blind, staring eyes, black tie, black suit, rigid as a cadaver from some Sicilian catacomb." "Husk of life." "Without sap, without savour." "Nudge him, he'll crumble." "As he turns to go, the recognition... pierces him." "Massimo!"