Thursday, November 9, 2000: 8.23 AM
With a vague sense of having left something behind, Howard Sheerness shut the front door firmly after him and clattered down the scrubbed Thursday morning steps. He adjusted the ghastly Elvis-impersonator sunglasses on his nose, winced, and hit the outside sunlight, his briefcase swinging beside him. Preparing a face to meet the faces that you meet. In his hand was the battered scribbled-over card, which he had just turned out a moment before while clearing his wallet, and which he now stuffed into an unwilling trouser pocket. Just who was this ”Jonny – 0834456734” anyway? How had Howard met him, where, and in what circumstances? He, Howard, feared the worst. But he would phone the number anyway, sometime today, just for mozzie. As they say.
In the car, which Howard grimly noted was now filthier than ever, spattered with a fine layer of assorted mire, grit and clotted birdshit (too many outdoor raves, too many country dongas), he adjusted the infernal teardrop glasses once more – why, to add insult to the injury of their existence, were they always sliding off his nose? – and attuned himself to traffic, human and otherwise. Start of a new day, the rapscallion playmates of last night floating somewhere in his mind, and that mind clearing. Slowly. For the mid-week binge – begun in fact on Tuesday, when he’d decided to play truant from copywriting commitments, and went out to get self-piteously drunk – lay fudgily recollected in consciousness; the drugs were only now clearing, making a path for thought. Through the Cape Town traffic that bucked and dribbled about him.
Stealing a look in the rearview mirror, Howard peered beyond the owlish, outlandish 1977 teardrop specs, his second-best and kindly lent by his brother-in-law one highveld winter ago, at the streaky bacon face. Skin tone still good for whatever it was, forty-one, or what was it?, jaw still jutting aggressively, hard lines between the dark eyes still held at bay if he looked – well – kind of perpetually surprised, a bit like Marike de Klerk after the eyebrow operation. Or before? Hair still dark and glossy, the recession over the domey brow indicative of braininess, he liked to think, rather than baldness, although his soon-to-be ex-wife Sandra had always said, satirically, ”Yes, Howard, well actually, you’re tall, blonde and handsome, thirty, with a full head of hair. Of course.” Well actually, he was in touch with the Reality Principle, whatever she might think. He was short, mouse-haired, balding, and … could pass for thirty-two. And sometimes did, especially in the smoky e-laden clubs, strobe-lit and bass-thumped – the fleshpots of Egypt, as he sometimes dubbed them – after respectable people had all gone to bed. Alone.
And the enticement of the clubland denizens, the cute demons or angels who might possibly bring light in the midst of trouble and vengeful wives and creditors and bank slips. If for a season. Howard sighed, rather heavily, and negotiated the shoals of cars, slipping in and out of lanes. For he was one of those South African drivers who hated pausing for anything, especially a straggling motorist tooling in the fast lane when he, Howard Sheerness, Media Practitioner (so it said on his card) was coming through.
But the clubbers from the Fleshpots of Egypt hovered, grinning, gesturing, ethereal, wicked, and refused to go.
Soon Howard was seated in a dull bleak boardroom on the other side of the city (he lived in the leafy southern suburbs, anonymous plane trees and mock-Tudor villas, and his meeting was in the spanking fashionable Atlantic seaside mock-quays of Sea Point), adjusting his A4 file and having passing erotic thoughts about Persimmon, the improbably-named young green-eyed assistant of Barry Goldstone, Executive Producer: Renaissance African Films.
Persimmon, who demurely looked down at her slight white cleavage and clipboard, stealing glances at him every now and then in that oddly knowing kind of way that the young (who are supposed to know better) can have, was twenty-one, the same blessed age as half the clubbing boykies, or boychicks, as he preferred – privately, of course – to dub them. In the room were four or five frowning film production wannabees who always attended, hopefully, Barry’s preproduction briefings; to one side, a large and silent black woman in standard servant’s livery – plain blue dress, apron, headscarf – quietly and methodically dusted shelves of files.
Howard pursed his lips, shifted, and tried to listen to what Barry Goldstone was saying. ”Now the scoop on this magazine series is as follows. No doubt in my mind, we have god incredible and tremendous interest from SABC2 for this one. A series on Racialism in the Workplace and how to deal with it. Gonna be great, if my migraine can stand it. Persimmon, can I have a pill? And an energy drink while you’re about it? That girl’s an angel. Actually an angel. Now your imput here’s gonna be so most welcome, Howard…”
Would Persimmon ever go out to lunch with him? Howard seethed inwardly to see this glorious slim-toned creature, with her wonderful, gravity-defying derriere gently swaying as she moved or sashayed across the room, fussily going about Barry Goldstone’s latest hyperchondriacal, attention-getting requirements. Barry had never been married, fought bitterly with all his ex-girlfriends at the same time, and made his employees treat him, in Howard’s grim opinion, like a sultan. A kosher sultan, but a sultan all the same. Especially when there were other people watching. No doubt it was all the money Barry had brought down with him to Cape Town, after years as a successful independent producer for Auckland Park.
As Howard mused on, Persimmon turned thin finspun cotton shoulders and ash-blonde bangs slightly away from him, and cast attentive eyes, career-fastened, on Barry Goldstone’s big and butternutty face. Yes. He, Howard, would ask her out to lunch at the conclusion of all this drear. That is, if he survived the next speaker.
Marion, or Marden, or somesuch, the serious forty-something woman with the failed left-wing hairdo, was on her feet and talking. She was – Howard struggled to recall – a Group Mediation Facilitator, an expert in Achieving Equity in the Workplace, specially consulted to advise on Barry Greenstone’s new project. Howard was, of course, to be Scriptwriter and Researcher. The black woman, sphinx-like in her impassivity, dusted on.
”…All a question of assumptions that have to be unpacked. If this chat-show proposal is to be accepted by the SABC, we’ve got to unpack all of that. We can’t pretend to examine racism in our society, to offer that as the theme of our show, if we don’t. What do you know about what blacks think of whites? Let me unpack it for you.” She was a very white-looking white woman, with sallow vegetarian skin. Too much Beta Carotene, perhaps, mused Howard. ”Blacks think whites are cold, hard, and selfish, and that they treat their elders terribly. When blacks buy into Eurocentric culture, they often buy into the worst of that culture. They think you have to be selfish to survive, and to prosper. So I think…”
But before he had time to hear what she had to think, Howard has slipped away, and was thinking about Anthony and Cleopatra, the only Shakespeare tragedy he really enjoyed, and the one that Somerset Maugham had said was so seldom performed, because the English could not really believe in a man who’d give up his kingdom for a woman, rather than (in the established Anglo practice) for a horse. Howard had just reread the play, tearful over his favourite Mesdames champagne, and – although he had precisely no lost lover to lament over, other than himself – he had felt on the second bottle of fermented trouble to be like Cleopatra with her dead Anthony, ruined and magnificent, looking something like a cross between a jowly Elizabeth Taylor and a nostril-flared Sandra Prinsloo, lost in operatic splendour on the lovesick burnished banks of the Liesbeeck, or Nile, and indeed his soldier’s pole had fallen quite and withered with the garlands of the war.
”…role-playing around the deeper racial issues that we all have and have to unpack before we can really move forward. A typical attitude is that Nelson Mandela is an exceptional black, not a typical one, because we all know that blacks are actually innately inferior to whites. Even blacks internalise this. You don’t have to be white to believe in black inferiority. I find in my corporate workshops that whites have to feel free to admit their fears of black empowerment, that blacks will do to them what they did to blacks. Blacks are adamant they will not. Nevertheless…”
And why had nobody, to his knowledge, ever made an opera of the tale? Howard had even checked in his granddad’s musty old Gustav Kobbe Complete Opera book (date: 1922). What on earth did Verdi and Puccini think they were thinking of, missing out on an opportunity like this? And why was he on about Cleopatra anyway – there was certainly nothing left remarkable beneath his visiting moon. His life was a bore: no money, a grasping soon-to be ex-wife, occasional bouts of drunken horseplay with naughty clubbing boys who thought he was a soft touch for drinks. He felt himself a tragic figure without a tragedy, a hero yearning without either worthy plot or, worse still, worthy protagonist. Was this the postmodern condition? He grinned a moment: if he were only still an academic paid – badly, it is true – to hold forth on such things, he might build a catchy argument…or none at all. But ah! Marden had finished speaking, or addressing, and as the attendants at the meeting began to stir, move about and chat amongst themselves, and the cleaning woman started clearing the polystyrene cups, Howard saw his moment. Sidling over to the demure Persimmon, studiously gathering up her notes and files, he said in an undertone, ”Persimmon, thank you for everything. Really”, and smiled warmly, hoping she hadn’t noticed the awful Elvis glasses now tucked into the open-necked collar of his shirt.
”But I didn’t do anything, Howard. Barry did everything”, she breathed with what Howard couldn’t help noticing was, well, admiration.
”Ah.” Howard smiled warmly, thinking: her skin is like full cream. Whipped. ”Well. I, er – there’s so much to be done”, he observed mysteriously. ”Persimmon, may I ask you something?” A quick glance to where Barry was holding forth intensely at Marden, or Muriel. ”Will you have lunch with me tomorrow? I’d love to take you to Belgrudo’s on the beachfront. You know where it is?” Before she could reply, he added, ”There’s so much to talk about”, as if he meant, perhaps, Equity in the Workplace.
”Oh!” she seemed startled, those dark eyes wide, but she was a girl of spirit and dare, who had often had occasion to swop teasing barbs and some repartee with this short and badly-dressed but entertaining Howard Sheerness. ”Okay, sure!” He, astonished at some good news, blurted, ”Fabulous. Great. One o’clock. You won’t regret it”, as if he’d sold her a policy, which perhaps, in a way, he had.
Revelling in the fun of it, the opportunity tomorrow might bring for amusement, flirtation (though, of course, also more debt), he was momentarily caught off guard by the huge sallow and fleshy hand of Barry Goldstone suddenly clamping on his shoulder. His long-time partner and sort-of mate chortled, ”What’s this? Fraternising with my staff? Ha, ha!” As if the notion of Howard courting the gorgeous Persimmon were beyond the bounds of the known universe. ”Listen, Howard”, he said more gravely, as with set and moistening frown he led the other off to one side, ”I godda talk to you. Godda moment?” just as Howard’s cellphone rang.
”Um …” Howard glanced at the shiny green screen of his phone and saw it was his almost-ex-spouse, Sandra, calling, and he knew what that would be about: divorce, divorce, divorce. He took a snap decision: later. Leaving his phone to ring on, he smiled at Barry, his possible provider, and replied, ”What’s on your mind, Barry?”
”Listen, I godda big scoop. Big one. If this comes off, Howe, believe me, all our bacon is well and truly out of the fire. This is the big one. You listening? This Employment Equity thing I asked you in for today is chicken wings compared to what I’m going to tell you now. You god no idea. I’ve just been up in Jo’burg with Nthalandla, and the news is great. We’re in with a main chance. We’re gonna be big. There’ll be jobs for everybody – for Liora and Persimmon and Tara and – everybody!” His eyes glistened, he dabbed his brow with an ample handkerchief. ”My angels will get their piece of paradise at last!”
Barry’s eyes moistened and his mouth pursed, as he always did when mentally assembling what he called ”my angels”, the flock of young women who ran, or indeed were, his production company. Sans family, Howard supposed, a decidedly hetero chap like Barry Goldstone made up his own from the company he kept, in this case a burst of nubile, slightly toothy, midriff-flashing, nose-ringed girls fresh out of advertising and graphic design and drama schools, looking for prospects in the Bigger Wider Media World.
Barry mopped his expansive face with the ever-present Kenneth Kaunda linen-white handkerchief. ”Hell, I’m so excited, my tongue has broken out in spots. You god no idea. No, I’m serious, Howard, listen to me. My tongue? How would I know what’s wrong? Ogay, ogay, so Gail’s given me these vegan homeopathic remedies, it’s all made out of, um, wheat or barley or hops or something, and the Dahlia Lama swears by it… I’m on a low-free sucrose-laden diet, or something. So my body’s godda adjust, see?” He blew his nose noisily into the handkerchief. ”Now, here’s the scoop. That chatshow proposal we cooked up last season? – You know, the one we thought they turned down?”
”They turn down all our ideas.”
”Howe, listen to me, ogay? I’m talking about Now – our contemporary chat-show – remember? Now – short – simple -sweet – Now – just like that, boom! – in your face!” and indeed he leaned far into the dappled features of a slightly surprised Persimmon, her hands folded politely in front of her as her boss pattered. ”Somebody died, or somebody was born, or somebody did something, I dunno, there’s a vacuum in the SABC2 scheduling, but when I saw him in his office, ogay outside his office yesterday, he said, ‘Go for it! You’re in!”’
”I don’t believe it. They actually liked our idea?”
”Howe, the scoop is this, to refresh your memory: our thing, our schtick, or angle, is that we’re fun. We’re topical. Our guests come from somewhere, they come from nowhere, they may be unknown, they may be famous, but they are here because they-are-now.” Barry, eternal media teenager, always spoke in italics when he got excited, which was about every time he discussed a proposal.
In an industry that thrived on hope, rumour and the maybe-could be-Big Time around the corner, Howard mused, Barry Goldstone kept going into his saggy forties because hope and the next big deal were his meat and drink. With the room now cleared of everybody but Persimmon, Marden or Marianne and the stoical cleaning woman, he was off now, flying a touch wheezily around the room, his high-pitched, slightly adenoidal voice hitting new strands of stridency as he whipped himself further.
”People, girls, we’ll be big because the people on our show, be they world-famous or complete unknowns, are now people. They’re making something happen, or better still, about to make something happen, and we catch them as their dreams and actuality are about to fuse. Incredible! Amazing! – And of course it’s all interactive, people out there can actually video-conference and digital-camera and e-mail into the show and put their two-cents worth in. An interactive chat-show! What a trip! What a trip for me! Even for you, Norah!” Expansively, he included into his largesse the quiet black woman who impassively cleaned the studios. ”Yes, Mr Barry”, she murmured impassively. ”Where did you put the Handy-Andy?”
”God knows. People will know, if they watch Now they’re going to get what’s happening, not what did happen, or what might happen, or what never happened. They’ll get the honest-to-goodness dinkum real McGoy fucking truth.”
”Real McGoy?”
”You know what I mean. As my Chief Writer and Researcher, you’ll be out there sourcing the people. Some old-timers, yes, but only if they’re…now. So, Pieter-Janie Uys is now, Phat Joe is now now now, Jamie Allen is not even then, Nelson Mandela is always about to arrive, Hotsucks Mabuza is right now, Chris Barnard is right not now, Des and Dawn are so not now, Brenda Fassbinder has always just left, Gary Player is not now, Gary Edwards is not even not, but Credo Mutwa is now…”
”Without the Handy-Andy I can’t do nothing, Mr Barry.”
”So improvise. I’m paying you to improvise, Norah.”
Howard interposed, ”I’m losing track of who’s now and who’s not quite so now and who’s absolutely then. Some people might be, well, next…”
”Never mind. That’s the sequel – Next. It’s god a ring to it, sure…Point is, we are going to be the most cutting-angle show on the idiot box, you mark my words.” Barry leaned forward conspiratorially. ”But there’s a catch. Isn’t there always a catch? Life is a series of catches, and then you die.” A dramatic pause: ”We’ve god to find the right presenter.”
”Well, please don’t look at me.”
”Nobody would. Not a chance in hell, are you joking? Howe, my friend, we godda find the right presenter. We need the most incredible, the most fantastic, up-to-the-art, state-of-the-minute hot-shit cool presenter yet seen in this fuggin’ country. You god no idea. – Howe, the search is on. For your bacon and mine, this is it. – We godda find a dude to beat all dudes. Five weeks, my boy – we god five weeks, and then we land a 52-week fuggin’ contract for a daily show – daily, my boy! – for next year. Prime time. 2001 will be sown up and in the can. I’ve already done all the budgets with the lovely Persimmon here. What’dy’say?”
”Sounds fabulous. Let me know when you’ve got a presenter.”
”I could use the Vim, but it is not so good as the Handy-Andy, Mr Barry.”
”Use it or you lose it. Not so fast, Howe! – You godda help me! Keep your eyes peeled in the back of your head. You know people and stuff, artsy guys, homos, that sort of thing. We’ll talk in the next few days. We godda be like the Mounties, you know those guys? You godda find your man!”
”A charming idea.” Howard thought about the card in his pocket, the one marked ”Jonny”, and smiled. ”Till then. I godda go, Barry. Thanks for everything. Especially”, he winked at the Executive Producer, ”for Marden.”
”Who the hell you talking about? Margie, my love, you were just brilliant. So relevant, that racial stuff, you god no idea. Are you ready to go to lunch?”
”Must I now try and be so clever with only this Windolene?”
As he sauntered out into the busy street, smiling a last nonchalant smile in Persimmon’s (preoccupied, po-faced) direction, Howard was cut short by the insistent shrill of his phone. Damn! One day he must really find out how to eliminate that idiotic theme-tune from the Dallas soapie of years gone by…To his alarm, he saw it was Sandra, his wife, and this time he could hardly avoid the call. So he answered, gingerly, ”Howard Sheerness, conveyancer, hello?”
”Howard?” Sandra always had exactly the same telephone voice, and opening gambit, as if Howard might conceivably be someone else – which indeed he would rather have liked to be at this moment. ”Howard, is that you?” queried a well-enunciated, slightly too loud voice in clear Anglo all-girls’-school accents.
”Were you expecting someone else at this number?”
”Sweetheart, angel darling, why are you avoiding my calls?”
Howard stepped into the shade of a shop awning, and paused, grimly looking out through Elvis’s last concert-appearance glasses at the shiny, bustling street. ”Sandra, really, you know how busy I am. I have to earn money for my divorce settlement.”
”My, now isn’t that amusing? That is precisely why I am calling.”
Oh! – And I thought perhaps you were seeking the pleasure of my company.”
”Well, I certainly do. – All of them. Remember, according to our Community of Property agreement, I am entitled to a full fifty percent of your portfolio of companies.”
Howard had to stop, and smile wanly, adjusting Elvis’s death-throes specs. ”Sandra, your wit is merciless.”
”That’s why you married me, Howard.”
”I certainly had been wondering.”
A softer note: ”Howard, please, do take this seriously. Charl would like to finalise this matter before the courts close next month, and so would I.” Charl Engelbrecht was the lawyer – a friend of Sandra’s, natch – who was dealing with the settlement on behalf of them both; Howard, in a moment of strength, or weakness – he wasn’t clear which – had agreed Charl should represent them both so as to avoid unnecessary trouble, or expense. Especially the latter. Sandra went on, in carefully matter-of-fact tones: ”Dearest heart, let’s meet to discuss the thing, amicably, okay? We don’t need to get heated all the time.”
”What if I want to get heated all the time?”
”Then take a cold shower. – Often. Howard, I’ve booked a table at Mervyn’s Bistro for Monday, one o’ clock. You used to like it.”
”I can’t afford to eat on Mondays.”
”Don’t worry, I’ll pay.”
”That does put a new spin on it.”
”Please come prepared with that statement of assets and income Charl has been after for months.”
”I’ve worked out what you owe me to the last cent, don’t you worry.”
A slight intake of breath, a beat, before Howard heard: ”Yes, yes, most amusing. Howard, sweetheart, listen to me.”
”I always do.”
”Rubbish.” A long, breathy pause. ”Howard, I want this to be as pleasant and painless as possible. No waves. That’s why we’ve agreed to Irretrievable Breakdown, rather than systematic Alienation of Affection…”
”D’we have to go over all this again?”
”But you’ll understand, I can’t walk away after six years of my life almost empty-handed – ”
”Why not? I’m walking away completely empty-handed.”
”- and I want to settle this before Christmas. Come on, Howard. We are going to be such great friends -”
”What?”
”- one day. – I’ll see you Monday. Have a lovely weekend. They say it’s going to be hot.”
”And on Monday, you’re going to make it hotter.”
”Goodbye, sweetheart. – Don’t forget those cold showers.”
Howard, feeling worsted in terms both of wit and economics – those two staples of civilised living – needed immediately to retrieve his esteem, or libido, by phoning at once the enigmatic Jonny, although Howard had not the slightest notion of the role this person might have played in the previous riotous evening. And so, fishing out of his pocket the card in question, he rang the number scrawled there, and waited. He would show Sandra: what, he wasn’t quite sure.
”’Ello, ‘ello?” A husky, lustrous, deep bass voice with clear Gallic accents answered. Somewhere in the background, moody French house music, saxophones in the mix perhaps, oozed.
Howard, thrilled by the cosmpolitan whiff in all of this, eagerly replied, ”Hello, is that Jonny?”
A just perceptible tensing of throat muscles issued, before the voice responded: ”Who ees this, please?”
”This is Howard. We met last night at The Night, I think, do you remember?” The Night was Cape Town’s most celebrated gay hub, pulsing centre of a clutch of venues down on Green Point’s jivey, thrusting Somerset Road, sexy Alexandria of sirenlike Egypt, the jewel of which the other clubs were merely the setting.
”Ahh, yes!” Howard thrilled at the other’s evidently ardent recollection. ”Oui, oui,” the mahogany voice purred on, ”How could I forget?”
Still wondering what on earth had transpired, Howard countered, ”Well, I am glad I made an impression!”
”Please? An impression? What is that?”
”I am glad you remember me so well.”
”Oh yes, yes, I remembair! – You were, what do you say, the belle of the ball! Hahaha!” and the sultry voice broke into deep, rumbling hoots of laughter.
”Haahaha!” Howard tried to laugh, as heartily, while speculating as to its possible cause. Damned if he could recall anything at all, beyond the first opening drink at the bar and that facetious barman with the biceps and the slicked-back hairdo…
”Yes, yes, you were wonderful, Howeed, c’est magnifique!”
”Ah, but you were yet more wonderful”, Howard countered. ”Shouldn’t we meet to discuss who was in fact the wonderfulest?”
”Yes, I would like that.”
”Excellent! – You sound, well, most exotic. How long have you been here?”
”Excuse me please?”
”In the country. You are not, well, from, you know, South Africa?” Howard added, rather feebly.
”I ‘ave been hair three months. But my business is going very well, very well, I am most pleased. And already I have my papairs.”
”Yes? – papairs?”
”Oui, so I can stay in the contry, yes.”
”Well, I look forward to meeting you over lunch and you can tell me all about how well your business is doing.”
”Please, thank you, I would like that very much!”
”Where are you? I mean, Jonny, where do you live?”
”I am in the Sea Point. But in my car, I can get anywhere.”
”Then let us meet in Sea Point, on – say – Friday. At the Green Hat, in Beach Road, near the Pavilion. For a South African restaurant, it is quite inoffensive.”
”You find thees place offensive?”
” – It’s quite good, really. Bon, bon.”
”Ah, bon-bons. Yes. Thees is good.”
”Do you know it? The Green Hat?”
”I will find it.”
”Wonderful, magnifique! – One o’ clock?”
”One o’ clock. Until then!”
A few more graceful salutations, pretty compliments, some murmured innuendos, and Howard closed the conversation with his pride, and midday perkiness, restored. As he sauntered smiling through the hot bustling street, in Elvis’s final-hours glasses, to his car, Howard sniffed a certain elegance and allure in this encounter. Too bad he could not recall anything about last night, other than a blurry image of idiotically smiling faces, immoderate laughter, that endlessly throbbing, insistent sound disguised as music, flailing arms – his? – on the dance floor, and verbal intensities uttered far too loudly against huge speakers in a dim alcove off the dance floor, to – whom?
He grinned broadly, and unlocked the driver’s door of his faithful, grimy white Jetta. A dishevelled squint-eyed street rogue in a woollen cap – one of those self-appointed parking attendants who, besides being the butt of visiting comedians’ cheap jibes, adds fresh hazards to private transport in this aging, raddled port – hove into view, gesticulating, and Howard dispatched him with a cheery five-rand coin. For he felt a new age dawning, perhaps: this charming Frenchman, no doubt thirtyish or more, sophisticated, self-possessed, self-employed, self-secure, beckoned from the margins of his thought.
Howard saw the future: no more irritating boys, no more druggy romping, no more contrived laughter or spendthrift dalliances, but time spent and invested with a real grown-up. A new phase beckoned. As he climbed into his car, still grinning, the phone rang yet again: it was Terry, his thirtyish year-old friend and ex-student, pert, secure, and organised, child of the age, his adviser and guide in the strange outedly-out gay world.
”Hello, Howard! – Are you well? – Great! – listen, are you having a busy afternoon?”
”I shall be thinking about Cleopatra.”
”Beg your pardon?”
”I mean, I’m thinking about some copy.”
”Well, that’s better than writing it. – Listen, I know you’re going to that do tonight – that thing – what is it?”
”The Diner’s Club something-something award of the year. At the Vineyard Hotel”.
”Forgive me, Howard, but why on earth did they invite you? – What d’y’know about food? I mean, with respect, my sweet, but your cooking…”
Howard shrugged. ”I don’t really know. I suppose it’s because I wrote some ad copy for them at Cape Chat Radio the other day…”
”You’re still writing copy for that two-bit outfit?” Howard could hear the barely-disguised note of pity in his friend’s voice.
”Well…I prefer to say, I copy writing for them. Other people’s writing, that is…originality is not prized in this business.” He sighed, a touch too heavily. ”Anyway, it’s a free meal at a swanky Hotel. And I get a chance to wear my tux.” Howard looked wistful. ”Always thought I looked quite good in a tux.”
Terry laughed, in that pat, patronising way he had perfected. ”It’s certainly a vision to savour. – Listen, if you’ve finished your dinner by midnight, why not join us at The Night? It’s summer. It’s the season. And you might need it by then.”
”Need what?”
”You know, relief!”
”Oh, well, I’ll see. I fell amongst thieves last night. I need rest. I haven’t recovered…”
”You never do. Trust me: you’ll sleep this afternoon instead of writing about baked beans. – See you later!”
As Howard drove home, pleasantly drowsy, he thought: Terry’s wrong. I shall gather and save my forces tonight, and betake myself to an early bed. Yes, a new age. Persimmon tomorrow, then the captivating Jonny on Friday. Meantime, tonight; oddly enough, he had a feeling that somehow it was going to be intense – more intense than an evening amongst pretentious, superannuated foodie journos promised.
He would have occasion to recall this prediction, much later. For he could have no idea what, indeed, was going to happen. But then, neither do any of us: ever.