Lonely Hearts

One

She hadn’t thought of him in a long time. The way he would hunch against the doorway, watching her as she dressed. Waiting to see which sweater she would choose, the soft green or maybe the red. You know it, don’t you? His voice, as she stood before the mirror, as clear inside her now as it had been those years before. Watching you like this, the way you do those things; I can’t keep my hands off you.

After they had started living together it had seemed that he could never leave her alone. She would wake in the night and he would be propped up in bed on one elbow, staring down at her. Once, he had parked his car across the street from the office building where she had been working and had sat there the whole day on the chance that she might walk past one of the windows. Whenever she had passed within reach of him inside the flat they had shared, his hands had moved for her, wanting to touch, to hold her. Just when she had become convinced it was going to be that way for ever, he had changed.

Tony.

Small ways at first, barely perceptible: he no longer held her hand when they were watching television; failed to dip his head into the corner of her neck as she stood at the stove, making Sunday morning scrambled eggs. She realized that she had dressed five mornings in a row without his coming through from the bathroom, shaving lather on his face, to watch.

After that there had been other things, clearer, impossible not to recognize.

“Tony?”

“Uh?”

“Are you okay?”

“Does it look like I’m okay?”

“No. That’s why I…”

“Then why ask?”

She looked at herself now in the mirror. A plain gray sweater over a calf-length black skirt; the boots she had had repaired for the second winter running. Her hair was dark, almost black, and she wore it down to her shoulders at the sides, the front cut thicker and short, clear of her forehead. This evening she had been more than usually careful with her makeup, not wanting to send out the wrong signals, certainly not too soon.

Something was not quite right. She pulled open the top drawer of the dressing table and took out a thin wool scarf, deep red; tying it loose at the side of her neck, rearranging it several times until it was right.

A smile came to her face.

“Shirley Peters, you’re not a bad looking woman.”

Her voice was loud in the small room, a rough undertow as if she might be going down with a cold.

“Still.”

The letter lay on the coffee table in front of the couch, a single sheet of notepaper, pale blue. Maybe the only reason she had read this one twice was that it had been written with a fountain pen. Black ink. Isn’t it strange how things that should be insignificant affect what we do?

Please be there between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty.

She carried it over to the narrow kitchen. A bottle of Italian red had been opened and recorked and she rinsed a glass under the cold tap before pouring herself a drink. The writing was distinctive, lowercase letters that were small and rounded, the capitals more pronounced and florid. The P of Please large enough to contain the whole word within its loop.

Shirley checked her watch again, plenty of time. Back in the living-room, she pushed a cassette into the tape deck and swung her legs up on to the cushions of the settee. One of her friends had told her it wasn’t fashionable to like Sinatra so much, but she didn’t care. There were not so many things she did like that she could afford to pass them up for the sake of fashion.

She smiled and, as Sinatra’s voice rose against a bank of strings, leaned back her head and, for no longer than a moment or two, closed her eyes.

The first ring of the phone merged with high-flown phrases, bits of a dream. As she went to pick it up, Shirley thought against logic it might be her date, canceling the evening. But then, removing one earring, that wasn’t the way it happened, no way for him to know her number, not yet; what happened was, he simply didn’t turn up.

“I thought I’d missed you.”

“Tony…?”

“Thought you’d left early.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Monday night, isn’t it? When did you ever stay in on a Monday night?”

She had a sense of her bones, fragile, pressing against the lightness of skin. Across the room a glimpsed reflection, the red scarf bright against the gray.

“Where are you? What do you want?”

“Long time since we talked.”

“We didn’t talk, we shouted.”

“That temper of mine…”

“I told you I didn’t want to see you again.”

“You did more than that.”

“I had to protect myself.”

“Oh, yeh…” His voice softening into a smile she could still see. “Tell me something, Shirl.”

“Go on.”

“Tell us what you’re wearing.”

Her eyes were closed as she set the receiver back in place. Damn him! In the kitchen she uncorked the bottle a second time. Court orders couldn’t free her from that look that had come back to his face after they had separated, couldn’t disguise the tone of his voice. She clunked the glass down in the sink and went to the wardrobe for her coat. He was right and it was Monday night and when had she stayed in on a Monday night these last twenty years? It was what got her through the rest of the week.

Careful, she released the catch, turned the key.