6 This Other Man (2/2)

Yes – on a piece of paper.

'When?'

Yesterday.

'Where?'

At Bob's.

Bob's. He remembered being there yesterday. He remembered leaving early. The recollection of the heavy sadness at his departure returned to the fore of his memory the lady for whom this sadness had been; and her man, the other man who had set fire to her face! The 'familiar' man, like a distant image on the fringes of one's memory, a blurred, out-of-focus face in a faded photograph, unremembered . . .

Do you remember?

The voice brought him back into the room and to the phone, and brought its owner's face into view with the warmth of that strange fondness one develops for random strangers.

'Yes, I do . . . But I don't remember giving you my number.' You don't? You did.

He sensed a frown of confusion enter her voice, shrink it – 'You did: when you pa.s.sed by my table on your way out; you slipped me a piece of paper...'

'I did?'

Yes, she said, and, with a sigh, decided she had to go into a semi-detailed narration of the evening's events to help jog his memory and probably absolve herself of the insinuated accusation of stalking:

You had been sitting at another table, then you rose and went out, and

surprisingly you came back; surprisingly because I wasn't expecting you to at the time. And you went straight to the bar, drank a beer . . . then on your way out you slipped me the paper; it had your phone number on it . . . (hesitation hinders her voice at this point, reduces it to a tentative whisper) I thought you wanted me to call you. . .

'You did? I did! I–'

Then you left almost immediately and when I came out I couldn't find you . . .

Sheri had been listening – but the frustration of her inability to make any sense of the dialogue from her husband's end of it aroused and amplified both curiosity and suspicion at the same time, such that she rose on her elbows and pointed the sour morning breath, now laced with growing apprehension, from her flaring nostrils at her husband in accusation –

'Who is that?'

Who is that? the lady asked, too.

Presently, the other man, the one from the bar, came into the room, in identical pyjamas to his.

'Who is that?' he asked Sheri, pointing at her husband with the limp whip in his hand.

Sheri looked down at the empty s.p.a.ce beside her, and she knew.

She knew this man, this other man.

Terror entered her face and closed it.

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