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First printing May 2015

Cover and text design by Suki Boynton

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

For Joe Silk

1977–2003

Too bad I’m not stronger. I’d be worse.

ARIANA REINES, Cœur de Lion

ONE

THE SKY WAS still black when the butchers began unloading the pigs from their vans at Smithfield Market. It was five in the morning. I had been to a party nearby. There he was, loitering across the road. He was watching the meat with terror and awe.

His black hair was lank, and, as I approached, I could see that a military medal of some kind was pinned to his beige crochet sweater. He was freakishly tall, about six foot seven. He wore a red hat and he was shaking with cold.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Ann-Marie. I’m twenty-three. How old are you?”

He seemed shocked that I was talking to him. “Thirty-six.”

“That’s a good age.” I shoved my hands deeper into my vintage structured tweed and asked him if he wanted to go for a coffee. “Maybe we’ve got something in common,” I suggested.

“I doubt it.”

“I adopt loads of pussies from a refuge,” I said. “Yeah, and I love to feed the pussies condensed milk in tiny china dishes. I lounge around on my chaise longue in my red silk kimono and I watch their pink tongues lap it up.” I paused for effect. “They love to lap it up.”

Vic gave me his email address.

That was yesterday.

Dear Vic,

It was lovely to meet you! What are you up to later? I’ll come to where you are.

Ann-Marie X

Today I was waiting at the window on the first floor of a waxing salon across the road from Chalk Farm station, where Vic had chosen to meet. The manager had told me that they were nearly closing, but I’d made my eyes look beseeching like a spaniel and the drowned aesthetic must have helped because she let me in. I could hear a panpipe rendition of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” emitting from a closed door; I couldn’t smell the floral notes of wax. I waited.

And waited.

To wait is a woman’s prerogative, according to Stephanie Haight, whose book Falling Out of Fate had recently been short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. To wait is a woman’s raison d’être. To wait and see what a man will do for you. Do to you. I hadn’t bought the book yet because I had no money, but I’d heard her speak on Start the Week. Her accent had a twang; I couldn’t tell if she was American or English. “Waiting for the call,” she’d said. “Waiting for that fateful ring of the telephone situates woman in a passive position. It is akin to waiting for the Call from God.”

November commuters were rushing away from the station in the street below. The rain was torrential; it obscured the stars. There was no one I recognized.

The waxing woman was trudging up the stairs behind me when at last I glimpsed that red, woolly hat. “Have you seen enough?” she was saying.

I watched Vic cross the road.

Now the woman had a hand on my shoulder. She turned me around.

“Do you mind if I wait here for just a few moments longer?” I said.

She returned downstairs so that I was alone again with that music, which had changed to “My Heart Will Go On.” Vic was wearing a red anorak. He didn’t smoke a cigarette; he didn’t look at his watch. He reminded me of a Giacometti: emaciated by the act of living.

I rooted around in my handbag for Heidegger: An Intro and read: “Concept of Thrown-ness: One is thrown into the world and one must deal with it.” I closed the book. Since I went crazy during my university finals a few months ago, I could only read these terrible comic-style philosophy manuals, and only one or two sentences at a time.

Now

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