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(KEYBOARD CLACKING)

(MAN COUGHING)

(SHUFFLING)

(SIREN WAILING OUTSIDE)

HE: He leaves a message,
a yellow sticky,

on the dead black
of his computer screen.

(READING)

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.
-(LIFT BELL DINGS)

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 fifties, 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.

-(JACKHAMMER CLATTERING)
-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.

(DINERS
CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY)

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 email
him suggesting...?

No, he did.

(LAUGHING LOUDLY)

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?

-(CORK POPPING)
-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, please.

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.

SHE: 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,

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, signora.
-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, okay."

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 12.

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.

(WOMAN SIGHS)

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.

WAITER: 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.

(CLEARING THROAT)

Right. Uh, so, does he...

(STUTTERING) 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.

-WAITER: 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 finger,
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,
anytimes,

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...

(MEN LAUGHING LOUDLY)

Found a treasure
and threw it away.

Hey, hey.

Drop it now.

But jaws rending the raw meat

beat, beat, beat,
beat a relentless measure.

Audible,
fortunately only to himself.

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.

Oh, 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' 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.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

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.

Not that the world
cries out for more.

One shitty review in the TLS,

and its round of
common room sniggers
and put the dampers on that.

Sales scraped
through to three figures

and the once gung-ho publisher
ceased to return phone calls.

An illuminating
history of betrayals.

A 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, uh...

Stop right there.

What do you mean
"mythic stuff"?

The mythic stuff was
the whole fucking point.

(SIGHING)

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.

Those old...

I've had my feelings
surgically removed, they can't
be touched by anyone now.

Oh, my dear.

He cannot not feel her
little 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.

(SIGHING)

Penny?

Sorry?

Your thoughts.

No, uh, what was I thinking?
Not 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 "unteachable"

and "half-witted".
Guzzling's unfair, though.

I really can
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.

(DINER LAUGHING)

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.

(INHALES)

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 #

(LAUGHING)

Ahem, till the King of Death
arrived on the scene.

(SNORTING) Or should I say
the King of Prose?

Or should you say nothing?

(FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING)

Have you finished?

-One minute.
-Yes. Thank you.

And I believe my friend
has finished with his.

Any desserts? Coffee?

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.

And away he zooms
on waiter business,
waiter among waiters,

zapping and arabesquing
from table to table like bees
between blooms.

Busyness 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?

Oh, 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

cockeyed 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...

by let's call her
the Queen of the Fairies.

Don't interrupt.
I'm finding
the words as I go along

but when I've stopped,
we'll see if the theory is
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'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'd 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 roundabout 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 gulley

that he conceives his scheme

to find
the dark-browed waitress,

to find her and
ask her to marry him.

(ZIPPERING)

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...

(DOOR OPENING)

...to the very top.

He sits.

An erupting pigeon briefly
interrupts, otherwise...

silence.

Non-event.

(HEARTBEAT POUNDING)

Now he can't
decide whether to weep

or sleep.

(VEHICLES HONKING IN DISTANCE)

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 she...

Was she angry?

Big shrug,
big shake of the 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.