You allow yourself — I miss him.
And you watch the side of his face as he laments the failures of professional carers, and dentists in particular. His own glass of apple juice is raised, but he does no more than peer at it for an instant and put it down again, being unable to either halt or drink.
Apart from your bottle of apple juice, you’ve got water and a pot of tea. You have to suppose you expected to be thirsty. And then there’s the glass of melting ice.
You’re not thirsty.
You pour out some juice and add ice, cube by cube, so slowly that it hurts your fingertips.
It may be that you miss him less and are at the edge of being bored.
You pour out some tea, add ice to that.
He forgot to bring milk and so did you. No way you’re going to mention it now and send him haring off again. You’ll have your tea iced and wish for lemon, but not ask for that either.
You’re not exactly listening any more.
His throat, his neck — you want to touch them with the chill of your fingers, find out if they’re as soft and private as they seem, as delicate. The sudden necessity of this prickles in your hands, it nags, and you’re no longer bored. It could be that you’re irritated. You don’t know.
Then his knee — dunt — politely — dunt — rests for a breath against yours — dunt — withdraws — dunt — returns and stays, grazes up and then down and then stays with a pressure which is nearly an absence and therefore aches.
He is — still talking, still focused beyond your right shoulder — with you.
You do not move.
You are — the concrete around you visibly in tiny motion, every surface changing beneath the heat — with him.
He is with you.
You are with him.
At least, this could be the case.
He is describing his mother — his mother up a set of steps and being scared to change a light bulb — that reaching up, angled head and unsteady hands, lifted eyes, the risk of a fall in return for illumination. He makes it real. He takes away his knee. Whatever he’s recalling makes him sad and his eyes, when they find yours, are fast and open and right here and have a shine of pain in them and a deeper intention you can’t grasp before it goes.
And now it’s all silent.
Miles off, years off, it could be that you can hear other voices, meaningless voices, and the stir of the city, an aircraft hanging in the distance — this doesn’t matter.
The silence continues.
You have no idea what to do.
He nods. He sips his apple juice. His eyes become ordinary and cautious before they refocus beyond you. Softly, he describes a trip to Dublin and you reach your fingers as far as his arm and you touch it, when you hadn’t anticipated that you would. To be accurate, you don’t notice that you’ve moved until the cloth of his jacket is warm against you, those one-two-three-four-and-the-thumb little areas of you. At the same time, you realise you’re not being comforting because you’re too late. Your gesture will seem like an unwilling afterthought. He sort of turned to you, tried you, was possibly upset, possibly about his mother, and you’ve demonstrated how you won’t support him, won’t help until he doesn’t need it.
You’ve made a mistake.
Not a big one.
But personal situations like this — slightly undefined, barely begun — are fragile and it seems he is quite unforgiving, because after you withdraw your hand, his shoulders drop and the Dublin excursion ends with, ‘. . anyway. Where was I. .?’ Something about him seems to have given up.
He prods the casserole with his spoon. He no longer appears to be nervous, simply dismayed by unappealing food.
While he makes himself eat, you hammer together remarks on the day and the river, let them go at intervals and rearrange areas of your lasagne.
You remove its corners.
But that only makes more.
If an observer were to glance over here again they would see — acquaintances at lunch, acquaintances in the same place, the mutually restless gestures that suggest both parties will finish shortly and go away.
Which is all right.
Really.
It is.
You don’t absolutely need another friend, but he would be fine in that capacity. You could be content with that. Probably. An occasional coffee — no more lunches — could happen. Without the anxiety over whether you’ll seem presentable, or sensible, or amusing, or lovable, or repeatable, or anyone significant, you could enjoy yourself. You could chat.
Or else you could not chat, as it turns out, because although you can feel yourself sinking into friendship, there is currently no conversation. This man is staring mutely towards the wide brightness of the water and the far bank and you aren’t inclined to interrupt him. It seems there is nothing you can offer to beat the view.
Under other circumstances you might suggest fetching desserts, or getting more drinks — the ones you have being too cold, too hot, too unintoxicating, too incorrect. But you’d basically rather not, because it’s obvious he’ll make his excuses and refuse you. Having worked this through in your mind and therefore avoided being humiliated, you somehow already are.
You suspect you may have to be angry with him soon as a matter of sheer self-defence, and meanwhile there’s no hesitancy left to prevent you from facing him, shifting your chair from its perfect location — you regret this, but he doesn’t notice — and truly seeing at him.
Whatever could have formed between you is gone and over, but nevertheless you study him, what he is. This man.
And he is completely at rest and so it’s plain, this truth you didn’t find but should have — he is beautiful.
Sometimes he can’t hide it.
And this information repositions everything — dunt — the chairs, table, concrete, city, river, sky, and makes them expressions of emptiness.
‘So. .’ He stretches, rubs his hand at the back of his neck and frowns. ‘Yes.’ Gives you a bland smile. ‘Time to go. I think. I think time to go.’ After which he stands and you stand with him.
There is a point at the embankment — it arrives with an immense rapidity — where he must head left for his car and you must head right for the Underground, or for a walk across the bridge, or else a longer journey to exhaust yourself, break up through Westminster and into Soho, further, or else aim for Chelsea, for the World’s End, and keep on going until it’s dark and you are done.
You are very tired of being disappointed.
You’ll get over it, be cheerier tomorrow, but standing in the sunlight with this man you’re not over it yet.
You haven’t taken his hand because the idea of shaking it goodbye makes you too sad.
And here are his shoes. You are evidently staring at his shoes. They are quite ugly. Like you.
‘Okay. Okay.’ This man who is not telling you a story. ‘Okay.’ But repeating one word for no particular reason. ‘Okay.’ Until he leans down and you can’t help but look, it is natural to look, and he’s here and increasingly close and then brings you a kiss.
This kiss.
He kisses with a pressure which is nearly an absence and therefore aches.
You kiss him back.
You do not kiss as if you are friends.
You do not kiss as if you are acquaintances.
You kiss, both of you, back and soft and back and soft and back.
You kiss each other back.
This kiss.
You do not know him, this man. He is practically a stranger. Only he’s not.
Acknowledgements