I Think I Love You

8

Remind me,” said Bill. He stared into his coffee cup. Something was hiding in the dregs.

“Of what, dear?” asked Zelda.

“Oh, sorry. Remind me never to go near the Skyway Hotel again, in my entire life. I mean, I’ll be going there anyway, after I’m dead, like everyone does, and spending ten million years there, being purged.” He sipped at the coffee, hoping not to swallow whatever lurked. “All the more reason not to go while I’m still alive.”

“Well, you didn’t have to stay there, did you? It was only a press conference. How long did it last?”

“Under an hour.”

“Well, there you are, then.” Zelda clapped her hands lightly, as she tended to do when a point had been settled—not scored, for that was not her game, but laid politely to rest.

Bill stood in her office behind the spider plants, from where she had spied him as he crept in, and to which she had summoned him, as she would an errant child. Word had it that Zelda had been a primary-school teacher in her younger days, but word was wrong. She had wanted to be a nurse.

“No,” said Bill.

“I beg your pardon?”

“No way.” He fished into his coffee. “Zelda, I’m very grateful for this job, and I do understand that it’s good experience and all that, but, really, I cannot be expected to drink drawing pins.” He held up the dripping pin.

“Crumbs.”

“Well, that’s what I thought it was. A bit of ginger nut. Even a pencil shaving wouldn’t have been too bad. I mean, it’s all carbon. But that thing could have killed me. Lucky I’m not a Yank, or I’d have sued you.”

“Crikey, yes.” What would it take to make this woman swear—swear properly, that is, like every other journalist on earth? Was it worth dropping a filing cabinet on her big toe, just to see? Bill toyed with the idea of leaving the drawing pin on her chair, as he left, then listening out for what followed. But she would probably just jump up and squeal “Lawks-a-mercy,” like someone out of Dickens, and save the offending pin for future use.

“Have a biscuit, William. I have Playbox or custard cream. Over there, in front of the felt tips. No? So, then. Mr. Cassidy. Was he forthcoming? Anything you can use?”

Bill sat down, without being asked. “I think he’s had enough.”

“Come again?”

“Well, you know he’s said this is his last tour. You know he’s giving up touring.”

“So he says.”

“He does say. And I believe him.”

“Well, let’s not get carried away. It’s only one side of his appeal, the live performance.” Zelda shifted in her chair. This kind of talk made her uneasy. If David Cassidy’s appeal waned, so would The Essential David Cassidy Magazine, and with it all their jobs—Bill’s and Chas’s and Pete’s and everyone’s, all the service industry that clustered round the glowing star. And where would she go then? Mott the Hoople Monthly? The Wizzard Fanzine? Imagine working to promote a band that wasn’t even spelled correctly.

“I’m glad it’s over.”

“Excuse me, it is most certainly not over. And for you to say so, William, is frank—”

“No, I’m not saying it’s over. He said that, Cassidy said it.” Bill dug into the pocket of his jacket and took out a pad. Ruth had bought him a bulk order of six from WH Smith. They had the words Reporter’s Notebook on the front, in slightly larger letters than Bill would have liked, and he had been in two minds about taking the pad out at the press conference, in front of real reporters. Then he had seen the real reporters.

“ ‘I’m glad it’s over, I’m glad I’ve almost finished doing that.’ Then someone asked him for the reason he’s not doing stage shows anymore, and he said, hang on, got it somewhere here …” Bill flipped pages. Zelda smiled and glanced at the custard creams.

“Here we are. ‘The only way that I can really grow’—this is still him—‘The only way that I can really grow, and devote enough time to making a good album, is not to be touring six months a year, being …’ Sorry, just trying to read my own writing here. Looks like ‘blow something.’ ” Zelda’s smile held steady.

“Oh yes, ‘being blown out, tired and wasted.’ Unquote. See what I mean about him having had enough? I mean, I can’t just bung that in next month’s letter to the fans, can I? ‘Hello, lovely girls, let me tell you, I am just so blown out and wasted right now, it’s a killer. Wanna come and help me blow those cares away?’ ” Bill had adopted his best American accent, which was widely held to be the worst in the office.

“No, I see your point.” Zelda tapped her nails on her desk blotter. “But that bit about growing, you could do something with that, surely? I’m sure our girls would love that.” She sounded like a headmistress, talking about a new drinking fountain in the corridor. “It’s so …” Zelda tipped her head on one side, searching for the most extravagant adjective. “So Californian.”

“Oh, of course,” Bill replied, only half conscious of the complete absurdity of two British adults calmly discussing a state—a nation, in fact—that neither of them had ever visited. They might as well talk about the moon.

“Anyway, what was he like? Do tell.” Zelda was brighter now, back on safe ground.

“Hard to say. Nice enough bloke. Couldn’t always tell what he made of the whole thing, cos whenever the photographers started flashing away, which was basically every time he looked up, he would blink a bit and then put on a pair of these mirrored shades.”

“Mr. Cool!” said Zelda, who liked to think she was tuned in to her readers’ minds.

“Mmm. Yup. Anyway. So what he said was, he talked about all these, what was it, yes, ‘these little things, things about our personalities, that we hide and keep inside ourselves.’ ”

“Perfect!” Zelda held her hands together, as if preparing to pray. “And what were they? The little things?”

“That’s just it. He said, and I quote, ‘I’m certainly not going to reveal them to eight hundred fifty thousand people.’ ”

“Ooh, the meanie. And where did he get that number from, I’d like to know? Why aren’t they all reading this magazine?” Bill couldn’t tell whether Zelda was being serious. Everything was upbeat to her, even bad news. Especially bad news. When the end of the world came, she would announce it like a jingle for Tropicana.

“Anything about England?” she went on.

“Yes, he said he was enchanting. Sorry, that it was enchanting and he was enchanted.”

“Excellent. There’s half your piece written for you, practically. The home-grown interest.”

“Except he said exactly the same thing about Australia. And Germany. And he thanked the fans for their support.”

“Lovely. I do like it when stars are polite.”

“And someone asked him about the hysteria, you know, the trail of destruction he leaves wherever he goes. Not actual destruction, nobody dies, but the stuff we deal in, broken hearts and what have you.”

“And what did David say?”

“He said he hates being blasé about it, the hysterics, but it’s just there, it’s part of his life. And, what was it, hang on a sec …” Bill flipped pages again. “Yes, this is it: ‘I think eventually it’s going to pass on, as all things do.’ ” Bill closed the pad. “Quite the philosopher, our boy Dave.”

“Quite.” Zelda was unsettled, he could see. She gazed down at the blotter. Talk of passing on made her feel as if they were discussing the deathbed of a loved one. Then she remembered something more cheering and looked up at Bill.

“And what about going to his hotel suite afterward, for a heart-to-heart? Just for our girls. Did that work out all right?”

Now it was Bill’s turn to hesitate. He swayed a touch, steadied his nerve and replied: “No dice, I’m afraid. They cocked up the timings. Couple of people had a quick shot and then they sent the rest of us away. I was livid, I can tell you. Kicked up a fuss, but by then he’d left the building, apparently. Last seen heading down Queensway in a Bentley, with a couple of convent girls hanging on to his exhaust.”

“Thank you for that, William. What a pity. Anyway”—Zelda rose from her desk—“we must use what we can. You’ve got enough to go on, haven’t you? You don’t have to make an awful lot up. The feeling of David is what we aim to convey, after all, the essence, and that should be easier now you’ve seen him close up. Am I right?”

“Completely.”

“It’s a funny thing to say, William, with your job being what it is, but …” Here she stretched out her arms, as though about to burst into song herself, and said, “Do try to tell the truth.”
“David Cassidy?” Ruth sat up in bed. “David Cassidy?”

“Well, as I say—”

“David Cassidy?” It was like someone paging his name at an airport. “You went to see David Cassidy? What are you, a twelve-year-old girl?”

She got up and walked to the basin, ran cold water into the tooth mug, and drank it down. Then she turned to face Bill. “David Cassidy?”

“That is his name, I admit.”

“Don’t get smart-arse with me, Bill. I mean, I know your job has a wide brief or whatever it’s called, you have to cover a load of stuff, but … David Cassidy?” Ruth made motions with her hands, which he could hardly see in the half-light.

They had woken up, with spring rain on the tin roof of next door’s garden shed, and, since they happened to be awake, made love. English to a fault, Bill thought as he lay there: sex not as mad urge, as a pulse of something irrepressible and strong, but as something brought on by weather—bad weather, at that—to fill the time. On the other hand, to do it at three o’clock in the morning (that most mysterious of hours, when you normally woke, if you woke at all, to fret about having no money, or dying young) gave it a strange and suspended air, and Bill wondered if, come the morning, he would find it hard to remember, like a dream. On the other hand, that meant drifting back to sleep, and thus far there had been no drift; they had lain there, twined in each other, and talked of nothings, sweet or otherwise, and Bill had somehow convinced himself that now would be as good a moment as any to broach a delicate matter. That, he now saw, had been his first big mistake of the day, and it wasn’t yet dawn. Too early for an error, surely, even by his blundering standards.

“David Cassidy?”

“Look, love, as I said, it was a one-off. Normally, someone else handles all that stuff. You know me. I really only function when I’m working on things that I know about, you know, bands I really like.” He coughed, as if his breath couldn’t bear the sheer flow of lies that were tumbling out of him, in the wake of one small truth. “I mean, I was slated to do this Led Zeppelin thing, fantastic chance to talk to them, nothing to do with a show, so no hurry involved, just me and them sitting around.” Ruth was sitting on the end of the bed now, looking at him. She wore one of his T-shirts, the one with a burn on the hem. Some unlucky encounter with a joss stick, just before his final exams.

“And, and, and then this guy Scott, in the office? He comes up and says, do us a favor, Bill. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment that my girlfriend can’t know about, and it’s got to be today. Some medical bollocks. Probably about bollocks, actually.” Ruth sighed, and Bill hurried on: “Anyway, he says, will you go and sit in at a press conference for me, maybe a one-on-one? David Cassidy, the one all the girls like. Just take a few notes, bring them back here and I’ll work ’em up into something for the mag. Please please, and all that. So, being a sucker, I say yes, and he says he’ll switch with me one of these days. You know, take my place on the Stones tour bus for three days in Sweden. Which of course I’ll be more than happy to give up.” Bill paused for a laugh, which didn’t come. Ruth was quieter than the rain.

“So I go and, you know what? It’s actually quite interesting, in that way that, you know, it’s like a wildlife documentary. See the pop star in his natural habitat. You go into the press conference, and all those total weirdos are sitting there with their lists of questions. I mean, Ruth, you should see them. These people from, I don’t know, magazines called Tune Up! and The Rock Files and Sha-La-La-Weekly. Not just NME and Melody Maker, those blokes are relatively normal, but mags you’ve never heard of. And none of them smile, and none of them wash, and you just know they all go back home in the evenings and get stoned and listen to Kraftwerk. Honestly, I was like the most normal guy there. You’d have been proud of me.”

Ruth pulled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and scratched her shoulder. And she yawned.

“And everyone asks Cassidy the same old questions, what do you want to do next, what kind of sound were you trying to achieve in the new album, rhubarb rhubarb, and the poor guy, I mean the guy, just sits there and bats back these answers, and you can see how totally not into it he is. And then this woman with Carole King hair gets up and asks what he really hates about his life, which I thought was kind of daring, none of us men would ever ask a question like that. I mean, for one thing, we think it’s a bit rude to get that personal. And second, all of us just think, great life anyway, trillions of records, get your own jet, shag-o-rama, what’s to complain about? And David gives her the eye, and he says—”

“David? He’s David now? Where is this going, Bill?” He couldn’t tell whether Ruth was thoroughly angry, all the way through, or whether she was enjoying herself, relishing his humiliation for a laugh. Would she tell her girlfriends about it, over coffee? Would she ever go to bed with him again?

“Okay, you win,” he said. “Look, Ruth, I’m sorry, okay? I know you want me to spend every minute of every day writing about Pink Floyd or Fleetwood bloody Mac or answering the phone from Lennon, asking me to join him in a bed-in, but, come on, love …”

Bill was no good at anger. He lacked the skills for it, and the stamina, especially when his cause was weak. Deceit he could manage; envy, too, in his greener days, when other boys got off with other girls; sloth he needed to work on, put in some effort there, being still too industrious by half; but wrath would never be his weapon. He wondered whether Cassidy got mad, raged at his entourage, slammed doors and smashed guitars. Not a chance. And what did he matter, anyway?

“Cup of tea?” said Bill. Thus had Englishmen, for the past two hundred years, gently sought to douse the flames of argument. When in doubt, when in a stew, when in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes: put the kettle on.

“Bit early,” said Ruth, annoyed with herself for accepting the offer of peace, but dying for a cuppa.

“Well,” said Bill, chancing it, as he got up, “thirsty work and all that. Your fault for waking me up and demanding physical exercise.”

“Excuse me,” said Ruth, and threw a pillow at him, missing by half a room. Women could do everything, and soon enough they would, and good luck to them, about time they ran the place; but still, you had to say, with the best will—they couldn’t throw. Never could, never would. That was something for his sex to cling to, Bill thought.

He filled the kettle, which shared the same plug as Ruth’s stereo and hair dryer, and made tea. The milk in the small waxy carton had seen better days; he could feel the congealed lumps as he poured, but he fished them out with a spoon and stirred. Back in bed, Ruth clutched her mug with both hands and blew on the steam: another unfakeable mark of womankind. No man would ever use both hands to hold a cup of tea, unless he was one day’s march from the South Pole, with one chum dead in the snow, dogs all eaten and six fingers about to drop off. And even then he would look around the empty tent to check, in case anyone thought it was girly.

“Bill, can I just say?”

“Yes?”

“I love you and everything, but—no, listen. You’re funny and clever, cleverer than me in some weird way, although you know bugger all about Anglo-Saxon coinage. And I think that, whatever you say, deep down you have the makings of a romantic, though someone’s going to have to dig around for ages to get there. And Lord knows what they’ll find.”

“Coins.”

“Shut up, I’m talking.” Ruth put down her tea and looked at her boyfriend. The dawn sifting through the blind made the light in the room golden and granular. It settled on the naked Bill, delineating his shoulder, his arm and the curve of his buttocks. Exposed to the air, his cock, which had been slack and sleepy, began to stir, curious to see if there was more. Bill was lovely-looking, but he would never make a ladies’ man, Ruth thought with satisfaction. To be one of those you needed a wholly unironic sense of being male. Bill was armored in irony. And he had this radar that detected any incoming seriousness and shot it down before it came too close. If he ever stopped joking, if he ever took the armor off, she wasn’t quite sure what would be left. Some small part of Ruth, private even to herself, suspected that he didn’t really love her; but she was safe because he was far too polite to walk out. Bill’s everyday uniform was a leather jacket and flares, but she knew that underneath he was such a gentleman he might as well be wearing a cravat and a coat with tails. It was hereditary. His father, who worked for an insurance company after taking early retirement from the Royal Air Force, may not have read any of the poets that Bill loved, but he had the same nobility. The knowledge that Bill would never leave her, not unless he was asked politely but firmly, made Ruth feel powerful and sad at the same time.

“Go on,” he said, yawning and pulling the sheet over them. “You told me to shut up, then you stopped.”

“I was just thinking that the music thing actually means a lot to you. It may, and I’m guessing here, I think it may actually be the coins. You know, Jimi Hendrix may turn out to be your buried treasure. Your one true love. Which is fine by me, because he’s dead. And he burned all his guitars. Or if not him, then someone else. But. God, Bill, I hate to say it, but, David Cassidy.” She gave a heavy sigh, and her shoulders slumped.

“I know, I know. But it was only a one-off, for God’s sake.” Bill listened to himself, in some confusion. Christ, he sounded as if Ruth had caught him sleeping with a pop star, not writing down his words on a pad from WH Smith. “And besides …” This was his trump card, though it could go horribly wrong. He played it anyway. “He likes Jimi Hendrix.”

“Who does?”

“David. I mean Cassidy.”

“Really?” Ruth lifted her head and stared at him, curious despite herself. The ploy had worked. “How d’you know?”

“He told me. Actually, better than that, he showed me.”

“You mean you asked a question at the press thing?”

“No, later on, in his room.”

“You went to his room? His hotel room? What, did he book it for the afternoon, just the two of you?” Ruth had the grace to laugh at this. “Did he let you use the minibar afterward? I hope he bloody well paid.”

“Well, obviously I was bitterly disappointed that that didn’t happen,” said Bill. He took a sip of sweet tea, and felt himself waking up. “So what happened was, before your filthy little mind goes any further, is that they take basically a whole floor of this horrible place, and you all sit there in the anteroom of his suite—”

“Like groupies.”

“Exactly like groupies. And wearing no bras, either, like most of them. And you wait your turn, and every fifteen mins or so this guy comes out, sort of smoothie but a heavy, too, tie-and-jacket type, and he ushers you in. And you get your allotted time, and ask Cassidy which direction his music is going in, and how he likes England, and does he have any message for his fans. And then you get up and shake hands and leave.”

“But that’s not what happened with you.”

“That’s not what happened with me. There’s a bit of a break in the routine, for some reason. And then I hear music, of all things—”

“Music? From a pop star?”

“I know. The last thing you’d expect. So out comes the jacket guy and takes me in, then gives Cassidy the nod and slips to another room. And, Ruth, I swear to you, the kid is sitting there, on a sofa, got his guitar across his knees and he’s going …”

Bill began to air-strum, in the dawn light, humming a rising note. Ruth frowned, not quite getting there, and so he sang to her, in a morning croak, about jacks in boxes and happiness staggering down the street.

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. God’s honest.”

“Let’s get this straight.” Ruth had her hands in the chopping position, inches apart, as she liked to when confirming a point of order. Not for the first time, Bill thought she should be running a company rather than digging up a hill. “You go to see this, this stupid little teenage munchkin, and he—”

“Well, he’s twenty-four now, but—”

“And he’s playing ‘The Wind Cries Mary.’ ”

“Yep.”

“Which just happens to be one of your favorite Hendrix songs.”

“One of my favorite songs, period.”

“What?”

“I mean full stop. Period. It’s American for full stop.”

Ruth narrowed her eyes at him.

“Does he do that for all the hacks?” she asked. “You know, find out their top record ever and arrange by sheer chance to be doodling around with it when they come in, to soften them up so they write something nice about him? Awful lot of work. Imagine if the chap after you liked Wagner or something.”

Bill thought about this. He took a sip of tea, which was growing cold.

“No, I think—all things considered—” He looked down his nose at Ruth, over imaginary spectacles. It was a mock-legal game that they had idly, half-consciously worked up between them, over the months, in order to defuse the threat of seeming pompous. “I think, m’lud, that the defendant has conceived a genuine and, it must be said, well-informed admiration for the collected works of the late Mr. James Hendrix.”

“The gentleman of the empurpled haze?” Ruth spoke in as low a voice as she could muster, and the growl of it made her cough. It usually did.

“The very same, m’lud.”

“And what was your reaction, pray, when the defendant first, ah, gave expression—nay, gave vent—to this most heated of, ah, devotions?”

“Well, m’lud. Not wanting to beat around the bush, you understand, and with all provisos and caveats taken into full consideration, I, um … I sang.”

“You what?” Ruth dropped the act. “You f*cking what?” She rarely swore, and Bill was mildly shocked, on her behalf, to hear the word emerge, and secretly ashamed, on his behalf, that it should turn him on. “You sang with David Cassidy?”

“Just like I did with you now. Jacks out of the boxes, clowns, the works.”

“And he did what? Called security? Set off the fire alarm? Tell me he laughed. Tell me at least he did that.”

“Not a bit of it. He said, ‘Hey.’ Not ‘Hey!’ like a Monkee, but just ‘Hey.’ Kind of a recognition scene.”

“Like in late Shakespeare.”

“Just like that.”

“And then what?” Ruth was hooked now, no question. He was already starting to worry if she would tell her flatmates about it, and whom they in turn would tell, over drinks at the end of work. By Monday, embellished up to the hilt, the entirely fictional tale of his duet with David Cassidy would be all over the capital. By Tuesday it would reach his parents. By Wednesday, obviously, he would have to kill himself, though God knows that would be a small price to pay. Could you go on being embarrassed after death?

“Well, we talked about Hendrix. And, shit, he really knows his stuff, David does. All the albums, obviously, plus endless rumors about bootlegs and lost recordings. I mean, close your eyes and I could have been talking to a thirty-five-year-old with thick specs and filing cards, you know, a specialist. Like my friend Carl from college, the one who has bits of Cream lyrics stenciled to the inside of his car. You’re driving along, and you flip down the sunshade thingy, or open the glove compartment, and it says ‘restless diesels’ or something like that, in Gothic. Total madman. And that’s another thing. He didn’t really know about Cream.”

“Who, Carl?”

“No, David. I mean he knew all the stuff that Hendrix knew, he knew about Muddy Waters and B.B. King—major B.B. King fan, as far as I could tell. But the scene Hendrix got involved in over here, where it led, that’s all new to him. Cos of course he doesn’t know the place. The kid. He comes here and stays in hotels and limos, can’t even get out and buy a pair of socks in case he gets gangbanged by half a dozen Melanies on the corner of Carnaby Street. I mean, he knows the Beatles pretty well, and he told me he’ll be doing a version of ‘Please Please Me’ on Sunday night, but … yeah, I know.”

Ruth had made a face. “Do we want to hear him ruining Beatles songs? Even if he is your new best friend?”

“We-e-e-ll …”

“Bill,” said Ruth, as sharp as his mother telling him to brush his hair. “Also,” she went on, “what’s with Sunday night? Got a date with him? Is he going to take you to the pictures?”

“Sod off. No, it’s a concert. White City. His last eh-ver.” Bill broke down into a fake sob. Ruth wasn’t fooled.

“You’re going to go, aren’t you? You actually want to go.”

“Not unless I absolutely bloody have to,” said Bill, fired for once by the fervor of telling the truth. “Besides, I wouldn’t survive. I’d be gang-raped by the Melanies, just for being the only other boy.”

“You wish.”

“I mean, I would go if I thought he might go out on a high, or some sort of total freak-out. ‘Cassidy Smashes Guitar.’ ‘Teen Idol Sets Fan on Fire.’ I’d be the only proper journalist there. His last concert, my first scoop.”

“But he won’t, will he?”

“Nah. He’s a pro and the record company would skin him alive. I think he’d like to, mind you: bring it all crashing down. Say to them, You made me sing these ludicrous songs about daydreaming and cherishing, nothing about drugs or screwing, and for years I’ve gone along with it, but now I’m gonna sing the songs I like. It’s a live appearance, my last one, so you can’t jump in and stop me, so here goes: ‘Wind Cries Mary,’ ‘Cocaine,’ ‘Killing Floor’ by Howlin’ Wolf, couple of filthy Stones tracks with my tongue hanging out like Mick. Jesus, love, can you imagine the teeny-boppers? Their poor little heads would come off.”

Bill got up and drew the curtains. London daylight, tired and unwashed, flooded one corner of the room. He lay down next to Ruth and kissed her hair.

“Like I said, he won’t do it, but I bet he dreams about it. I dream about it.”

Ruth held her arms up, locked her fingers together, and stretched. “So, how does it end?”

“How does what end?”

“Your beautiful friendship. You and Davey. Handshake? Swapping phone numbers?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but—”

“Oh God, here we go again.”

“He asks me a question. I mean, my quarter of an hour is up and I’ve yet to ask a proper question. Ace bloody reporter I am. Anyway, we’ve overshot, the heavy comes in and nods to say we’re done, and Cassidy says no, make the next guy wait. And he turns to me and asks how I know so much Jimi Hendrix and so forth. And I tell him I’m in a band. ‘What’s it called?’ he says. ‘Spirit Level,’ I say.”

“And then of course he asks,” Ruth said, “what you play, and you say bass, so he goes next door, fetches a bass and you plug it in, and then, for the next hour, while frustrated journalists beat at the door, you and David Cassidy jam away and smoke dope and hit on the laydeeze. Isn’t that what happened?”

“In your dreams.”

“In your dreams.” Ruth smiled at Bill. “And what about the thing he didn’t like about his life?”

“What?”

“That bit in the press conference, earlier on, when the woman asked him what he hated. What did he say?”

“Why d’you want to know?”

“I just do.”

“Well, first off he said he hated press conferences like this one. As a joke. Sort of a joke. Then he looks at the woman, I mean really looks at her, and she’s going all googly, and there’s this really long embarrassing pause, and he says, in his best come-to-bed voice, ‘Dishonesty.’ ”

“Honestly?”

“Yup. ‘I hate dishonesty.’ Apparently we have to live in truth or something.” Bill scratched his armpit. “Like he cares. Let’s face it, he’s a nice bloke, and pretty good on the history of the guitar, but at the end of the day, m’lud, he’s a pop star. If he wanted truth, he chose the wrong business.”

“Dishonesty,” Ruth repeated, lying back and looking at the ceiling. The tap dripped. Ruth thought of taking off her T-shirt, then decided not to. The room felt cold, after a long night. Then she turned her head and considered her lover once again. “Bill,” she said.

“Mm?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just that …” She rubbed her face, like someone emerging from a dream.

“Just what?”

“I was just going to call you … David.” Then, while he lay there laughing, she swung her legs off the bed. “More tea?”
What Sort of Girl Turns David On?
“Well, I like girls with blond hair because I find fair, golden hair appealing, especially if it’s long. And I like girls with dark hair because that can be so romantic. And I like girls with mid-brown hair, like mine is, because it can be kind of cute, specially if it’s kept glossy and in good condition—oh, and I almost forgot to say I like girls with red hair, too.

“Seems I just like girls, period!”