I edged out of the sitting room and put my head around the door across the hall (your bedroom). On the four-poster bed a man and a woman were jumping, shrieking and flinging themselves backwards like five-year-olds. The room next door had two single beds in it, both of which were occupied. I watched for a while but none of the five people in the room were you. I joined a queue of women waiting for the loo; I stayed long enough to see someone who wasn’t you come out of the bathroom.
In the kitchen, two spiders (one of them the fat, pendulous-bodied kind, the other thin and quick) were waiting to see what prey might come by to tease before they gobbled it up.
“And who have we here?” The man slurred his words as he ground out a cigar in the sink. Joe Warren was still fat then, the fattest man I had ever seen, with the belt of his trousers hoisted up over a protruding stomach larger than a pregnant woman’s.
“Have you seen Gil?” I said, reversing accidentally into Denis, standing behind me. I spun around.
“Gil?” Denis said, looking over my head. “Do you know anyone called Gil, Joe?”
Joe laughed, deep and throaty. “I don’t think I do,” he said. I turned back towards him. People pressed past us, some leaving the kitchen, others coming in looking for drinks. A girl in a maxi dress fell off a chair, lay on her side on the floor, tucked her hands under her head, and closed her eyes. A baby slept in a carry-cot on the table amongst the bottles.
“I don’t know why you would want Gil when you could have me,” Denis said. I looked at him over my shoulder. The tip of his tongue came out and licked his moustache; too red, obscene. “A bird in the hand and all that.” He reached down and pawed at my bum. I took a step away from him and towards Joe. Denis closed in behind me.
“A little uptight this one, I think,” he said.
“Are you Gil’s new secretary?” Joe asked, pushing himself away from the kitchen counter and swaying like a skittle.
“No, I am not,” I said. “I’m his . . .” But I didn’t know how to finish and the chatter in the kitchen was too loud anyway.
“Your glass is empty,” Denis said, pressing himself forwards. “Find the young lady a drink, Joe.”
Joe checked through the bottles and glasses on the kitchen table. “What’ll it be?” he said.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t want another drink.”
“Cinzano Bianco?” Joe said, finding a bottle with something left in the bottom and pouring it into my glass.
“What’s that old philanderer Gil got that we haven’t?” Denis said. “Apart from looks, of course, and physique.” When Joe laughed, his stomach laughed with him.
“I think this one likes to take dictation,” Denis said.
“She can take my dictation,” Joe said.
“Bottoms up.” Denis drank from his glass and at the same time gave me another squeeze. I turned and took Denis’s balls tightly in my hand. He stopped laughing.
“Ingrid?” An Irish voice behind me. Jonathan.
“Have you seen Gil?” I let go of Denis and stood up straight. The spiders withdrew.
“He had to go out. Come on.” Jonathan took my arm, steered me from the kitchen, down the hallway, and outside. A small group was sitting at one end of the veranda, and I smelled marijuana. Some of the cars had gone from the drive, but I could still hear people indoors dancing and laughing as we sat side by side on the wooden steps. The sky in the east was deep blue above a black strip of water. Jonathan took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket; I accepted the one he offered. He fiddled with his box of matches and didn’t meet my eye as he held the flame up.
I inhaled tentatively and on the exhale said, “Where’s he gone, then?” and Jonathan flicked his eyes up at me, the fire reflected in his pupils.
“I haven’t known you for long,” he said, “and I can tell you’re a nice girl. But I’m not sure if you’re the right kind.”
“The right kind of girl for what?”
“For Gil.” He stared into the night as he spoke. “He’s not an easy man.”
“Who said I’m looking for an easy man?”
“And . . .” He trailed off.
“He’s twenty years older than me and my university lecturer,” I finished for him.
“I was going to say he’s only looking for two kinds of women, and I don’t think you fit into either category.”
“And what categories are those?”
Jonathan inhaled, blew smoke out through his nostrils. “The first sort are women he’ll sleep with for a week or two until someone else takes his fancy; women who won’t make too much of a fuss when he doesn’t return their calls.”
“And the second sort?” I took another tentative drag on the cigarette.
“A wife,” Jonathan said. I coughed out the smoke in my throat and he laughed. “See, I said you didn’t fit either category.”
But I wasn’t coughing at the shock of what he’d said; I was remembering your letter. “Maybe he’ll make someone the perfect husband.”
“I don’t think so.”
I waited for him to go on.
“We have different views of marriage, Gil and I. We were both brought up Catholic, did you know that? Although none of it’s stuck with him—he shucked it off years ago.”
“And you still believe?”
“Oh, I pick and choose. Sleep with who you like, but one at a time.” He laughed again. “And that goes for married people, too.”
“Gil doesn’t hold with that view?”
“Perhaps it’s him you should be asking.”