‘Why didn’t you stop me?’
‘I’m quirky like that. Besides’ – he captures my eyes again – ‘I enjoy listening to you.’
I shove the end of the cornet in my mouth. ‘Ha!’ I say, with my mouth full. ‘You’re a strange guy.’
‘Tell me another story.’ He puts his hands behind his head. His elbow fleetingly makes contact with my hair. ‘But this time, feel free to pick one I haven’t heard before.’
‘Oh, I think I’m done with stories for one day! Why don’t you tell me one? But a happy one. Or if not happy, then scandalous.’
He seems to think. ‘Okay. Well, this might qualify. Especially if you have a thing for the pathologically ridiculous . . . The truth is, I don’t always come here to sit in my car and eat ice cream. I came here today for a tryst in a hotel with a friend.’ He indicates toward town with a flick of his head.
‘A tryst?’ I gasp. ‘Wait a minute . . . I thought you said you didn’t have a life?’
‘Well, once in a while I get so much life that it makes up for the other 96 per cent of the time when I have none. You see, I’ve become close – I suppose you’d call it – to my best friend’s wife.’ He sees the alarm on my face. ‘I know. You’re shocked. Don’t be. It’s not that morally reprehensible. I’m a good Catholic boy, and Alex is no longer my best friend. In fact, we don’t even speak any more. We fell out a long time ago, over me judging his life.’
‘This story is definitely not what I was expecting!’
‘Given I know all about your life, I thought it only fair you know all about mine. To even things out.’ He rumples his hair, as though he’s just been doing a spot of interplanetary travel and has landed here unexpectedly while en route to Jupiter.
I laugh, despite myself. ‘Go on then . . . I think I’d better brace myself.’
‘Okay, so, Janette – Alex’s wife – found out about one of his affairs – well, not really one of his affairs, more like all of his affairs – and she left him, and, of course, it was my shoulder she cried on. So I was forced to take sides. I took the side of fair.’
‘And you slept with her.’
‘No.’ He looks surprised. ‘I kissed her. Today was supposed to be about us sleeping together. Her idea to take it further. But I didn’t want to.’ He glances at me again and does a double-take at my expression. ‘I know. You’ve absolutely never, in real life, or even on television, heard a man say he didn’t want to sleep with a woman who was offering it.’
‘You’re right. I haven’t.’
‘Well, to be honest, it is a bit different. Aside from feeling biologically messed up, you feel a bit of a cad when you turn a woman down, don’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Men are supposed to never turn down sex. And what kind of nut would say no to an afternoon of passion with a beautiful woman who’s got the hots for him?’ He looks right at me. ‘Apparently, I would.’
‘So why did you?’ He has an appealing twelve o’clock shadow. I can imagine someone sinking into a nice, long, slow kiss with him. ‘Too close to home?’
‘No. I mean, that’s not ideal. But I’m not in love with her. Even though I don’t really know why. Besides, it doesn’t help when I’m convinced she’s just looking to replace Alex with the first loyal lapdog of a man that comes along.’ He gazes into the distance, in contemplation. ‘Put it this way, when I’m old and suffering from dementia, I have a feeling it won’t be Janette dragging me to art galleries to help me remember our love story.’
‘Ah! That’s incredibly sweet!’ I tell him. In fact, I’m so disarmed by his sentiment that, for a moment or two, I am utterly smitten with him.
‘So I told her I was sorry, I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t what I wanted.’
‘Ouch! That must have stung!’
‘She told me she’s going to go back to Alex. I think the comment was designed to get at me. Apparently, women do these warped things.’
‘So what did you say to that?’ I find myself hanging on every word of his story.
‘Well, she’s an adult, it’s her choice. But it’s a messed-up choice.’ He pulls a resigned smile. ‘It’s amazing really; I don’t know how it happens, but emotional basket cases love me for some reason.’
I chortle. ‘So there are others?’
‘My rejects formed their own self-help group. I think membership is in its hundreds, and growing. I tend to stay away from women with abusive ex-husbands, women who abuse their ex-husbands, women who cut themselves, women who order salads, anyone who has had any form of plastic surgery and anyone who refers to themselves as a friend of my sisters.’
‘Sisters?’
‘I have four of them. My mother is from Newcastle and my dad’s a randy Italian.’
I gasp. ‘Oh my! So you must really understand women if you’ve four sisters!’
‘Not really. When you have to try to understand all of them every day of your life, it becomes the most confusing thing that’s ever happened to you, so you set yourself other goals.’
We walk slowly for a while, continuing to chat about all kinds of deep and then completely trivial things. He’s easy to talk to. I can’t help comparing it to that first date with Justin, where he grilled me about everything from children to my real father, and I’d been so certain I was failing all his tests.
Michael and I talk about art. About Evelyn and Eddy again. ‘You said you weren’t in love with your friend’s wife.’ I’ve been dying to come back to this. ‘Do you believe there’s such a thing as being in love, Michael? Or is it a state of mind we all want to invent? A bit like God. If he doesn’t exist, we have to create him.’
He looks at me as though I’ve just said that Hitler was a really sweet man. ‘Of course it exists! What kind of nutty question is that?’