Personal Demons

PERMANENT FIXTURE

No man is an island, but quite a few are peninsulas. I guess if you really hate people, it's easy to cut yourself off. You move into the countryside, never go to the cinema or a football match, avoid casual arrangements, lock yourself away. But it won't make you a happier person. A friend of mine called Margaret told me this story over lunch the other day, and I'm still not sure if all of it's true, although she swears it is.

In 1972 Margaret upset her entire family by marrying a man they all felt to be unsuitable for her. She was nineteen years old, an only child who had just moved to North London from the kind of small Hertfordshire village where everyone knows everyone else's business and doesn't approve of it. She knew nothing of city life and very little about men. Kenneth was her first boyfriend, and the courtship lasted just four months. They were married in a registry office in Islington, and no-one was allowed to throw confetti because of the litter laws. The ceremony was reluctantly attended by Margaret's father, who barely bothered to conceal his disappointment and left immediately after the photographs were taken. Margaret's mother telephoned during the reception to wish her well, but turned the call into a catalogue of complaints, and only spoke to her daughter on one further occasion before she died of a stroke seven months later.

Kenneth Stanford was thirty-one. He drove a Ford Corsair, collected Miles Davis and Buddy Rich recordings, worked in a town planning office and promised to love Margaret forever. He decided he had enough money saved to buy a house, and carefully chose where he wanted to live. The location he picked was in Avenell Road, Highbury, right opposite the gate of the Arsenal football ground. He had supported the Gunners since he was a kid, and had recently bought himself a seat there.

In typical London style the area hid its surprises well, for who would have thought that such an immense stadium could be tucked so invisibly behind the rows of little houses? In an equally odd arrangement, famous film stars and directors often visited the road to check on their feature prints at the nearby Metrocolor film processing labs, but the child who ventured to suggest that he just saw Mel Gibson passing the fish shop usually received a cuff about the head for lying.

So it was that Margaret moved into a damp Victorian two-floor terraced house in the shadow of a great stadium. She became pregnant twice in quick succession, and saw very little of her husband, who worked late, spent his nights drinking at Ronnie Scott's and his weekends attending football matches, with his mates. In accordance with the social etiquette of the day he never introduced his wife to his friends – the people he met at the jazz club to whom he wished to appear cool – or his mates – the people he met on the terraces to whom he wished to appear laddish.

Margaret had no interest in football. She regarded the red and white hordes who periodically trooped past her bay window as some kind of natural phenomenon, like a plague of frogs. She learned not to invite friends over for lunch on Saturday afternoons. She grew used to being segregated from fans in the Arsenal tube station, watching guiltily as they were herded into the separate tunnel of their rat-run. She became accustomed to the closed-off streets, the suspended parking bays, the colour co-ordinated families, the makeshift souvenir stalls selling booklets, flags, scarves, T-shirts and rattles, the neighbours who ran out into the road to collect the horse-droppings from the mounted police for their gardens, or who turned the fronts of their houses into tea and sandwich shops. The fans were just another vexatious and slightly mysterious part of life, like wondering why garages sell charcoal briquettes in winter or why Rolf Harris never gets any older.

So she lived with the sharp smell of frying onions and beefburgers, the nights being lit as bright as day, the packets of chips chucked over her gate, the cans of Special Brew lefton her front windowsill, the local supermarkets bumping up their prices on Saturdays, the Scots boys for whom her bedraggled front garden held eerie allure as a urinal, the spontaneous outbursts of singing, the great endless flow of generally good-natured people. She accepted it all as something that came with the house, a permanent fixture, like having a pylon in the garden.

Eventually she rather liked it. She liked watching fathers pass by with their hands on the shoulders of their sons. She had given birth to two beautiful daughters. It was no coincidence that Kenneth's interest in football and marriage ebbed from this point. Soon he became indifferent to the point of vanishing altogether, and Margaret raised her children alone. He let her keep the house, which was falling into disrepair, and moved into the more spaciously appointed Westbourne Grove residence of a sometime nightclub singer who appreciated his record collection.

And through the years Margaret watched from her window as the great red and white sea trudged back and forth. It seemed strange that such a vast cross-section of humanity could remain so placid, but there was rarely any trouble in the street. A grudge match against Tottenham Hotspur would occasionally create a small explosive pocket of anger ending with shouts and the sound of broken bottles, and on one late summer afternoon somebody slipped a hand through her open bay window to steal the handbag she had foolishly left lying on a chair, but such incidents were spaced far apart across the seasons.

The girls grew tall, developing in a curious way that mixed coarse humour with immaculate behaviour. By the age of ten they were already growing familiar with the works of Lewis Carroll and Conan Doyle, but also knew the words to popular songs like 'You're Going Home in the Back of an Ambulance' and 'My Old Man Said "Be an Arsenal Fan", I Said "Fuck Off, Bollocks, You're a Cunt".' They weren't really fans, but so much of their lives had been played out before the audience that ebbed around the house, they knew more about the Arsenal and its people than seasoned veterans.

Times remained hard for Margaret and her children. Her maintenance cheques had to be extracted with threats. She feared the future. One Saturday afternoon she sat in her front garden in the slanting autumn sunlight and cried a little. The girls were both out with friends, and she was feeling alone and saddened by the knowledge that she would one day lose them when a grinning young man called at her from the ocean of people shuffling past, 'Hey, cheer up missus, can't be that bad, come along with us and have a laugh!' and she smiled and wiped her eyes and got up, and got on.

After that, she never felt alone on Saturdays.

But she met a man, a red-headed minicab driver seven years her junior called Malcolm, and in her desperation to overlook his faults she ignored his worst; his disrespect for everything except her sexuality. After the first time he hit her, he apologised for hours and even cried, and quoted the Bible, and treated her nicely for several weeks.

The girls stayed out of his way. He was infuriated by the creativity of their swearing (something they did naturally as a consequence of where they lived) and forced them to attend services at a bleak little baptist church near his cab office in Holloway, although they only managed to go three times. It seemed to Margaret that he stared at her girls too hard, sometimes with dead-eyed hatred, and sometimes with a little too much liking. He was an unhappy man, embittered by his lot in life, yet he could be kind and supportive, and she needed him, and the affair drifted on long enough for him to be given his own front door key.

But there came a time when she wanted it back, and she wanted him out. She knew that he looked upon the three of them as godless and doomed. He nagged at Margaret to be a better mother. He complained that she was disorganised, forgetful, useless, a lousy housekeeper. He worked nights and slept days, forcing her to creep around and hold her breath each time she dropped something. He warned the girls against forming undesirable friendships after school, then enforced the warning with a curfew. He did not approve of Margaret's friends, who were Caribbean and Greek and Indian and nothing at all like the suburban couples his parents invited over for barbecues. Little by little the house in Avenell Road became a prison with limited visiting hours. During the day its atmosphere was sepulchral, colder and quieter than the street outside.

Then the new season began. The Gunners played well and ascended the league table, swelling the gate and filling the streets with more fans than ever before. There was to be a midweek charity match for a beloved retiring player. By half past six that Wednesday evening the tide of fans had risen to a deluge. Gillespie Road and Plimsoll Road were at a standstill. The floodlights had given the backstreets the brightness of Las Vegas. Malcolm strode about the living room shouting, and Margaret became frightened that he would smack her again. He was annoyed that she had allowed the girls to bring friends to the house while he was trying to sleep. She knew he took 'jellies' – tamarzepam – to sleep, and suspected that this addiction was the cause of his mood-swings, but she could not bring herself to discuss the matter with him.

'If I don't sleep I can't work, and that means no money for any of us, do you understand?'

'I don't take anything from you,' she complained. 'I provide for the girls.' To cut a long story short, she asked for the front door key back and he refused to return it. Margaret's oldest daughter was away on a school trip, and Caroline, the younger one, was hovering by the kitchen door chewing a fingernail, listening to the escalating row. When she heard the screech of furniture shifting and something – a vase? – knocked over, then silence, she ran into the room to find her mother sitting on the floor with a look of surprise on her face, as if she had just slipped over while learning to ice-skate.

When Malcolm advanced on her again she yelped and scuttled into the hall like a frightened dog, and Caroline was ashamed of her mother's cowardly behaviour. 'Fucking kill you,' she heard him say, and now he had something in his hand, a poker she thought, but by this time she had opened the front door and was calling out for help. He said something about 'everyone knowing our business' and made to hit her because she was embarrassing him, but Caroline pulled her mother through the door into the front garden and stared desperately into the relentless crowds.

Which must have helped because there he was right in front of them, the grinning young man in his red and white scarf, him or someone very much like him, calling out 'Oi, you wanna hand? Is he botherin' you?', and she must have looked grateful because here were outstretched hands, dozens of hands, lifting her and her daughter over the garden wall, and into the crowd, over the heads of so many fathers and sons, cresting the human surf faster and faster, bearing them away from danger on the same surf that turned to crash against her attacker, to push him back, and the more Malcolm tried to struggle the more they pinned him down, so that it appeared as if he had been thrown into a boiling river with his clothes stuffed full of rocks.

Margaret and her daughter were borne aloft by the living wave, away into the beating heart of the maelstrom. The crowd was singing as it worked to protect them. It was here that she saw she had entirely misunderstood the football match. The centre of this mighty organism was not the pitch, not the game itself but the surrounding weight of life in the stands, in the street, a force that made her dizzy with its strength and vitality. Yet the centre was as hushed and calm as the eye of a hurricane, and it was here that the crowd set them down. Watching the men, women and children dividing around them like a living wall she momentarily felt part of something much larger. She somehow connected with the grander scheme for the first time in her life.

Of course, the crowd had also connected with Malcolm, or to be more accurate had connected with his collarbone, his left ankle, his skull and four of his ribs.

Margaret tells me that this is why she now goes to football, to experience that incredible moment when the crowd becomes a single powerful creature, when for a split-second it feels as though anything in the world is possible just by needing it.

She tries to tell me that here is something mystic, deep-rooted and inexplicable, but I point out the simple truth: when you have so many thousand people all concentrating on one man's ability to plant a ball in the back of a net, you harness an energy that can shift the world from its axis.

Margaret's children can tell you what life is really like. It smells of frying onions, and will beat the shit out of you if you resist it.

LOOKING FOR BOLIVAR

There are a number of ways you can change your life in a week.

You can fall in love with the wrong person. Career-switch from banking to wicker repair. Experience religious conversion. Get caught shoplifting. Change your barber. Undergo an epiphanal moment when you realise that you'll never drive through Rio in an open-top Mercedes unless you stop spending your weekends drifting around the shops looking at things you don't really want. What I mean is, at some point you either realise who you are and act toward the grain of your personality, no matter how unpalatable that might turn out to be, or you end up in a kind of bitter emotional cul-de-sac that eventually leads to you machine-gunning thirty people dead in McDonald's.

I saw this ad once for running shoes or CDs that said 'Whoever you are, be someone else.' I was twenty-four when I realised I could no longer imagine being someone else, and decided to make a change before it was too late. I moved from London to New York, and ended up looking for Bolivar.

As a child I was sickly, timid, sensible. Rejected by other kids, adored by adults. 'So grown-up!' my aunt would marvel, pinching my face between her fingers as if reaching a decision on curtain material. I left college with unimpressive credentials and was employed in the customer relations department of Barclays Bank, a job with an interest factor equivalent to staring at mud. To spend an evening in the pub with my colleagues was to grasp a sense of the infinite.

I rented a dingy flat in North London. 'It's not a lowerground,' my estate-agent brother informed me, 'it's a basement. I should know.' I failed to meet the Right Girl. 'Plenty of time for that,' said my mother, who had a mouth designed for holding pins, 'after you've done some hard work.' When the possibility of a transfer came up I took it without quite knowing why, although shifting from such a domineering family to a place where my nearest relative would be several thousand miles away seemed the sensible thing to do.

Maybe I was sick of living in a city that looked like a fish tank whose owner had forgotten to change its water. Maybe I went to New York because the streets were wide and thelight was high, because the wind swept in from the sea, because at night the town looked like Stromboli's fairground – how many reasons could there be?

On the day I left, I found myself at the departure gate surrounded by relatives vying with each other to impart advice. I boarded the flight with a head full of rules and lectures, and forgot them all before we landed.

The big things about New York were over-familiar before I'd even seen them. Vertiginous chromium avenues and yellow cabs were so instantly commonplace that they were rendered curiously unimpressive. Rather, I remember being struck by ground-level details. The colours of old Manhattan, faded reds and browns, interiors painted a dingy shade of ochre peculiar to the city. Those little iron hoops that bordered all the trees. Racks of vegetables sprayed with water. Basketball courts on the street. Smelly subway gratings through which could be heard the distant thunder of trains. Vending machines chained to the ground, but trusting you enough to take just one newspaper.

The bank rented me an apartment in Hoboken. My first mistake was to lease a flat where the bedroom window was situated above a bus stop. I had no idea people would actually sit on the bench below all night long, talking and playing ghetto-blasters. I wasn't about to go down and ask men with grey cotton hoods protruding over leather jackets to turn the music down.

After six weeks I was desperate. I am a light sleeper at the best of times, but this was impossible; I arrived at Union Square each morning lurching into work like a zombie. Finally I arranged to break the lease and move to another apartment in a quieter neighbourhood, but there was a shortfall between the dates of about a week, when I would have nowhere to stay.

One evening in early June I went out with some people from the bank. They were more conservative in conversation than their London counterparts, but spoke frankly of their careers and finances – subjects we tend to regard as slightly taboo. They were sending off a teller named Dean Stanowicz, who was leaving under some kind of cloud nobody wanted to talk about. We went to this little Jewish restaurant and they gave him a gaudy iced cake, a tradition for every staff birthday, anniversary and wedding. For some reason I found myself explaining my housing problem to Dean, and he told me about a woman he knew who owned an apartment on West 44th Street. It seemed this woman – I couldn't decide how the two of them were related – was going into hospital for a hip operation, and she needed someone to take care of her apartment for a week. It was perfect. Our dates matched exactly. Her name was Mary Amity, which sounded friendly.

Until then it hadn't occurred to me that people lived in the centre of Manhattan. On Saturday morning I arrived at the front door of Miss Amity's building carrying a bag of clothes, a bulky set of keys and a page of scribbled instructions. Dean was supposed to have taken me around the place on Friday evening, but didn't seem very reliable. I had called his home number, but his message service was switched on. I don't know what I was expecting to find inside that tall terraced house with brown window frames and black railings. I had not yet been invited inside an American home – my colleagues worked hard and kept to themselves, valuing their privacy and guarding it accordingly. I suspected they considered me unfriendly, and back then perhaps I was.

A deep brown hallway – that colour again – smelled of freshly polished boots, and led to four gloomy flights of stairs. At the top of these, a firetruck-red front door sported three hard-to-open locks. The keys weren't marked, and the elimination process took me twenty minutes. I resolved to label them before I attempted to regain entry. I was a tidy man, and liked labelling things.

Inside, a narrow hall led to a disproportionately enormous lounge that smelled strongly of cigarettes. There were dozens of scruffy plants dotted in between comfortable pieces of furniture, and as many stacks of books. In the corner was an easel with an odd half-finished painting of what appeared to be a three-legged cow, or an overweight hairless cat, on it. There were a number of seventies' new age items scattered about, including a blue glass bong and several sets of redundant wind chimes. Miss Amity had been admitted to hospital two days earlier, so I had the place to myself, or so I thought. No sooner had I set my bag down when a man in white overalls wandered out of the kitchen with a mug of tea in his hands, real PG-Tips-tea, not those perfumed things on strings you get in New York cafes.

'Hi,' he said amiably, 'do you know if there's a toy store around here?'

Thrown, I shrugged. 'I'm new in town. I don't know where everything is yet.'

'See, I gotta get my kid this troop-carrier spaceship for his birthday and I ain't got time to get to FAO Schwartz. Sixty bucks for something that'll be broke in a week. Crazy, huh? Makes me wish a bunch of real mean aliens would turn up and blast the shit outta the place just so kids would stop wanting models of 'em.'

I wasn't in the mood to conduct a conversation about spaceships with a total stranger when I had been expecting to be left in peace on my own. Just then, an extraordinary clanging noise started up in the next room.

'I'm Charles,' I shouted, holding out my hand and hoping for some reciprocal information.

'And I'm Carlos. Hey, Chuck.' He slapped my fingers.

'Charles, actually.'

'You the guy looking after the joint while the lady of the house is away?'

'Yes, but I don't know – I mean – I wasn't expecting anyone else to be here.'

He looked amazed. 'You mean Dean didn't say anything about me and Raoul?' He aimed a paint-spattered thumb back at the kitchen. 'Raoul's in there trying to get the wastepipe loose.'

'Not a word.'

'You want some tea?' He filled a mug from a large brown pot and returned with it. 'Miss Amity's kind of like the mother Dean never had. When he found out she'd have to go into hospital and miss her birthday, he arranged for us to come in and rebuild her bathroom, kind of a surprise for her when she comes out, so if she calls, don't say nothing about it. She's got this old bath that ain't plumbed in right and the tiles are all cracked, so we're putting in a load of new stuff.'

'Then why does she need someone to look after the place if you're here?'

'Because we're only gonna be here a couple days, and Bolivar gets lonely.' Skittering in across the polished floorboards came a bulky brindle bull terrier with a grinning mouth that looked wider than his body. He was wearing a broad leather collar studded with spikes, the kind of dog that looks like he's owned by the manager of a bar. I stepped back, alarmed. As a child, I'd had a bad experience with such an animal.

'Nobody said anything about a dog.'

'Hey, he's no trouble. Eats anything, waits till he gets outside to piss, spends most of the day snoring and farting. Not like a dog at all. More like an intelligent pygmy with a big appetite.'

The bedroom was filled with dusty velvet swagging and framed photographs crammed on to unstable tables. Miss Amity appeared to be a sparky, photogenic woman in her early fifties, well-preserved, compact, her hair a range of different colours from copper to blonde. She was strangely beautiful, in the way that very kind people eventually become. She seemed to attend a lot of charity events, and across the years had been photographed with an unlikely range of guests, including a couple of mayors, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Joe DiMaggio, Sylvia Miles, Joey Buttofuoco and someone who looked like – but surely couldn't be – Malcolm X. There was also a picture of a man dressed as a giant carrot.

She wore a lot of junk jewellery – the room looked like a dumping ground for Mardi Gras beads. It wasn't tidy, or very clean. Nor was the rest of the apartment. The refrigerator contained mostly items past their sell-by dates. There was something growing in a Tupperware tub, and a half-chewed plate of lasagna had a kind of pubic mould springing from it. While I was unpacking, Raoul wandered in chewing a chicken leg. He transferred the grease from his hand to his thigh and slapped his fingers against mine. 'Yo – Chaz, how ya doin'?'

'Er, Charles, actually.'

'Listen, you got no hot water tonight.'

'Great.'

'We're not plumbers.'

'I'm sorry?'

'You don't have to be all hoity-toity with us. We're not plumbers, we're just helpin' out, okay?'

I didn't wish to appear stuffy but they both seemed overfamiliar, with me, and with the apartment. Carlos was sitting with his legs hanging over an armchair watching NBA highlights on cable. Raoul was chugging a beer in the bathroom, hammering on the pipes again. Wandering uncomfortably from room to room, I announced that I was going to take the dog for a walk.

'A word of advice,' called Raoul. 'Let him lead you. He'll go the route Mary always takes him. Bolivar knows the way, okay?' Bolivar stared at me knowingly, then rolled back on his haunches and began licking his absurdly protruberant testicles. I slipped the heavy chain around his muscular neck and seconds later was dragged out to the stairs.

Ron's Lucky Silver Dollar Bar & Grill did not possess a grill, although there was a giant silver dollar in the window above a hand-painted sign that read SUBS & GYROS. Where I came from, a gyro was a cheque. I asked the barman if he was Ron.

'Nope. Ron's dead. He ate a bad scallop. Not here, somewhere else. I'm Bill.'

'Charles.'

'What can I get you, Chuck?'

'I don't really – the dog pulled me in here.' I pointed at my feet. Bill leaned over the bar. 'It just – wouldn't stop pulling.'

'Hey, that's Bolivar! Hey boy!' The dog hoisted itself clumsily on to its hind legs and began scuttling back and forth with its tongue lolling out. Bill poured two shots from bottle with a lot of signatures on it. He raised his glass. Not wishing to seem rude, I drank with him. The shot tasted like chillis mixed with liquid soap. I noticed that Ron had arms like a weightlifter, or someone who'd been in prison. His biceps were as big as his head. He had a tattoo of a scorpion stinging itself.

'So where's Mary?'

'She's in the hospital. I'm apartment-sitting for her.'

'She comes in most nights. Her son, Randy, used to work here.'

'He was a barman?'

'Well now, that's not for me to say. Randy operated for himself, kind of a one-man business.' Ron suddenly found something to do behind his bar. A crease of concentration ran across his forehead. Then he brightened. 'But you're welcome here any time. No friend of Mary's will ever be a stranger in the Lucky Dollar.' He grasped my hand warmly, grinding several bones to powder.

When I returned to the apartment, Raoul and Carlos had gone, locking up behind them. It took me ages to open the door again. They had left behind the remains of their dinner. I was washing their plates in cold water when the phone rang.

'Hey, Mary,' yelled a woman's voice. 'I have the armadillo. Do you realise Dan had to bring it in the back of his car from Tucson?'

'This is Charles,' I replied patiently.

'Oh. I must have the wrong – '

'This is Miss Amity's apartment.'

'Then who the hell are you?'

I explained. It was something I was obviously going to be doing a lot.

'Shit. Look, I'm gonna have to bring this damned thing around because it's making a hole in its box. You're Jewish, right?'

'How can you tell? Did you say an armadillo?'

'I can spot a nice Jewish boy like an eagle can see lambs in a canyon. Are you married? Don't answer. I'll be there in twenty minutes. No, don't thank me, just pour me a drink. Whisky, rocks, Jim Beam if there's any left.'

I replaced the receiver, puzzled.

'Mary paints,' said Melissa, setting her glass on to a paper coaster I'd found. She stifled a giggle.

'What's funny?' I asked.

'She'd get a kick seeing you put down coasters. She's not that kind of person.'

'What do you mean? What kind of person?'

'You know, like Tony Randall in The Odd Couple. She lets her drinks leave little rings on the table.' Melissa crossed long, jean-clad legs. 'She likes to paint animals, but it's tough painting at the zoo with so many people around, so I told my brother to get her something. Well, he drove up from Tucson to see me, and he brought this.' She pointed to the armadillo. It was scratching around in a corner of its strawfilled box. The creature was about a foot long, and had funny bristling ears. It looked mechanical, hardly a living creature at all. 'I can't keep it in my apartment because I have cats.'

'What about Bolivar?' I asked. The dog was whining in the kitchen, scrabbling at the door.

'Oh, he'll be fine. You take good care of him, he's Mary's pride and joy. The armadillo can look after itself, trust me. It's nocturnal, and that's when it'll try to dig its way out. I've left it a box of insects and vegetables. You just top it up with broccoli and cockroaches. But tell me about you, you adorable thing. You're English, single obviously.' She sat back and waited for me to talk.

Melissa originally came from Kansas, 'The Dorothy State', as she drily referred to it. She was as thin and brown as well-worn leather, her bony wrists covered in fat gold rope; someone who'd had a hard life and then found money. I like her from the first, which was just as well because she outstayed her welcome and got completely drunk. When I tried to get her to the door, she made a grab for my balls. 'Mary would like you,' she announced, 'but you need to get out more. Put that adorable face in the sun.'

I had to give the cab driver an extra ten dollars to take her. But that night I had my first decent eight-hour sleep in weeks.

The next morning was Sunday. I had a hangover, and was looking forward to a lie-in. There was a smell in the apartment beneath the ground-in cigarette smoke that I associated with my own childhood. It took me a while to realise that it was dampness, something I didn't associate with American homes, yet it made me feel comfortable and secure. Burrowing back into the blankets, my rest was rudely awakened by the front door slamming. I figured Carlos and Raoul were back, but then I heard different voices.

'Xanadu's fabulous. Olivia Newton-John as a Greek muse, all lip gloss and roller skates? It's been waiting fifteen years to be recognised as a classic, but the world is still not ready. You can learn so much about hair maintenance watching her.'

I pulled myself out of bed and opened the curtains. The day was warm and wet, the sidewalk empty and every bit as Sundayish as a residential English backstreet. The sky had adead, exhausted look. I listened to the lounge.

'Donald loses all his dates because of his terrible taste in movies,' said another voice. 'Just as they're starting to get along fine, he drags them off to see a double bill of something like Grease 2 and Yentl.'

Making sure my pyjamas were not exposing anything, I ventured out of the bedroom. There were three strangers in the kitchen making coffee. A muscular young man in a blacknylon T-shirt, a slender Asian boy wearing rather a lot of make-up for this time of the morning and an attractive, overweight girl with dyed black hair. They seemed as surprised to see me as I was them.

'Oh my God, we woke the maid,' cried the Max-Factored one. 'Who are you, honey? Did you know you got no hot water?'

'I'm Charles,' I explained. 'Yes, I did know. I'm looking after Miss Amity's apartment for her.'

'Well, Charlene, I'm sorry we woke you but Mary never mentioned anyone was staying here.'

'That's okay. I should be getting up anyway. Who are you?'

'Donald.' Mr Black T-shirt thumbed his chest. 'That's Jaffe, and Val's the female, gynaecologically speaking. Jaffe's still undergoing some kind of sexual identity crisis but the men are rooting for him, so he may get through it with just a few mascara burns. Your armadillo has escaped.'

Jaffe was wearing an extraordinary badge on his jacket, little pieces of broken mirror, an old Andrew Logan design from the eighties, and it kept catching the light, shimmying specks on to the nicotined ceiling like a disco ball. I saw that the armadillo was trying to dig its way out through the kitchen cabinets, away from the light. Fascinated, Bolivar was taking gentle snaps at the creature, as if trying to cradle it in his enormous jaws. I wanted to separate them, but I'd never touched an armadillo before.

'You can join us for brunch if you like,' Donald offered. 'We'll be discussing the movie career of Brad Pitt in depth, and you may wish to contribute something to that. Are you from Harvard or something? You have a funny accent.'

'I'm English,' I said apologetically, as you do. I wanted to ask why he had access to Mary's apartment, but could find no way of phrasing the question politely. At my feet the dog was whimpering in frustration and the armadillo was noisily butting its head against the units.

'So, Charlita, you going to join us for a glass of second-rate champagne and a Spanish meal presented between slices of cantaloupe?' asked Jaffe.

'Thank you for the offer,' I replied, offended, 'but I have things to do.'

'He's so polite. I love it.'

'We're old friends of Mary's,' Val took the trouble to explain. 'We always come by on a Sunday. She reads our tarot, then arranges my astrological week. I can't go out of the house without it.'

'Well, she won't be able to do it for you today.'

'She already did.' Val held up a scroll of paper. 'She left it out for me. What star-sign are you?'

'I don't believe in the stars,' I said testily. 'You have your own door keys for the apartment?'

Jaffe was defensive. 'Mary gives her keys to everyone. Don't think you're special.'

'What's she like?' I asked Val.

'Mary? A sweetie. Prickly as a cactus, soft as a pear. Bad at keeping secrets. Her parents were imprisoned by the Nazis. She's had a wild life. Come with us, we'll tell you all about her.'

'No, really, thank you, I can't.'

'Your choice. You're gonna miss the dish.'

Laughing, they left. I don't know why I refused their offer. Their over-friendliness unnerved me. In such situations I invariably retreated. After they had gone I wandered about the apartment wondering if I should clean it. I decided to wait until the bathroom was finished. The shower stall was filled with weird oils, dried flowers and glycerine soaps, none of which smelled very pleasant. Even in here there were buckled photographs taped on the walls. She seemed to have so many friends. I had virtually none. Bolivar was whining for a walk, and I was just about to take him when the telephone rang.

'Is that you, Charles?'

'Yes, it is,' I replied, instinctively knowing that this was Mary Amity.

'How are you settling in, dear?'

'Very well, thanks. I just wondered – forgive me for asking – how many people have you given your front door keys to?'

'I've never really counted. I could probably work it out. Do you need to know?'

'No, I was just thinking about security.'

'Darling, I have nothing worth stealing. My most precious possessions are all inside my head. Although if a woman called Sheryl-Ann tries to let herself in, you must stop her.'

'How do I do that?'

'Just put your foot against the door until you can get the chain on, that's what I always do. Then call the super. You'll recognise her easily, she looks like a hooker but I swear I had no idea she was when I gave her the keys. How is my Bolivar?'

'He's fine. He's – fine.' I looked down at Bolivar, who was trying to choke himself to death on the lead, torn between conflicting desires to torment the armadillo and get out on the street. 'How are you?'

'Thank you for asking. So polite. I've had the operation, I just have to lie here and heal. Take good care of him, won't you? Don't let him overeat. He'll eat absolutely anything. He ate a shovel once. Give me your work number, just in case.' She didn't explain in case of what, but I gave it to her. I was a guest in her apartment, after all.

'I wasn't able to get hold of Dean,' I explained. 'He was going to show me where everything was.'

'You're a big boy, you can find things out for yourself, can't you? You won't be hearing from Dean for a while. He's gone away.'

'Oh? He didn't tell me he was going -'

'Well, the truth is he's starting a jail sentence. It's not his fault. He's a good boy who's had some bad luck. Take my dog for a walk, will you? He likes walks.'

'Hey, Bolivar, c'mere you big hunk of muscle!' screamed the waitress, pulling Bolivar's front paws up on her apron. It seemed unhygienic. This time, the dog had stopped sharply on a corner three streets from the apartment, then dragged me into a coffee shop called Manny's Freshly Brewed Sip 'N' Go. The waitress, a slender, pretty Puerto Rican girl with smoky eyes, butted heads with the dog, then dropped him back down.

'I'm Maria. Listen, the manager'll piss blood if he sees the dog in here.' She laughed carelessly. 'The health board already hate him. They closed us down in '95 for having mice in the pan racks.'

'You know Miss Amity?'

'Oh sure. She used to teach tap over at this crummy little studio on West 46th. I wanted to be a dancer, but I really wasn't good enough.'

'Was she a dancer, then?'

'Once, long ago, out in Hollywood. Chorus stuff. Way before she took her accountancy exams and married that maniac, that crazy pianist.'

'She was married to a pianist?'

'Her second husband. The first one shot himself, but then I guess he had a good reason. Not that the pianist turned out any better. That was all before my time. Mary was sub-leasingthe studio from this guy who turned out to be some kind of gangster. He ran a luggage shop near the Marriot that was a front for a gambling syndicate, one of these places that sold suitcases, statues of Jesus and flick-knives, and had old Turkish guys in the back playing cards. He had to get out of town quick, and robbed the studio while everyone was in the tap class. Cleaned the place out of wallets, purses, jewelry, took all Mary's savings from the apartment. But he didn't get out in time, and they cut one of his feet off. The right, I think. Sure slowed him down. Mary says it made him a better person. She's always in trouble, one of those people, y'know? You wanna make sure you don't get caught up. It has a way of enveloping everyone. It's because she has this instinct, she knows stuff about people and sometimes they don't like it. You ready for a coffee?'

On the way home I met another half dozen people who were acquainted with Bolivar and Mary Amity. A Greek couple in a dry cleaners. Two old ladies in ratty fur coats who finished each other's sentences. A thin horse-faced man in a floor-length plastic slicker. A cop. I would have expected this sort of thing in an English country village, but it did not seem possible that one woman could be so well known in such a cosmopolitan neighbourhood. From each of them I gleaned another curious piece of information about my hostess, but they confused my picture of her instead of clarifying it. The cop mentioned her recent divorce from 'that writer, the guy who caused all that trouble at Rockaway Beach'. Was this the pianist, or someone else? The couple in the dry cleaners professed themselves glad that Mary had gotten her eyesight back. The horse-faced man asked me if she still had 'the singing hen'.

I returned to the apartment half-expecting to find another stranger sitting in the lounge, but for once it was empty, and I could concentrate on going through the figures I needed to prepare for work the following morning. Or I would have been able to, had the armadillo not clawed them all to pieces and pissed on them. It took me the rest of the day to put everything right, during which time I fielded over a dozen phonecalls from borderline-crazies asking for Mary. Apparently she ran some kind of astrology hotline on her other number Sunday evenings. I don't know the details but I think there was some kind of gambling element involved because one guy asked if he could put thirty dollars on Saturn. Deciding to set her voicemail in future, I finally got to bed just before one, having first locked the rewritten papers safely inside my briefcase.

Sleep did not come easily. My head was full of questions. Why had Mary's first husband killed himself? Why was the second one a maniac? Why was Dean in jail? Why couldn't I just ignore all this stuff and quietly get on with my own life?

On Monday, Bolivar had to stay behind in the apartment while I went to work, but Raoul and Carlos arrived just as I was leaving.

'Yo! The Chuckster!' bellowed Carlos. 'The new tub is arriving today. Gonna be some banging.'

'That's fine,' I said, relieved. 'Do your worst. I won't be here.' I stopped in the doorway. 'As a matter of interest, how do you know Miss Amity?'

She had helped the pair out of some difficulty when they were little more than schoolkids, in trouble with the law. Carlos now worked for a security firm and Raoul was a hot-diver. That is, he explained, he was paid to jump into radioactive water at power plants, in order to fix things. 'It hasn't done a hell of a lot for my sperm-count and my pants glow in the dark,' he laughed, 'but the money's good.'

The great thing about the location of Mary's apartment was its proximity to the bank. I could be there in a few minutes, not that I particularly wanted to. It wasn't a very interesting job. That evening I was back by five-thirty, and returned to find the front door standing wide open. Carlos was on the floor doing something intricate with spanners. His portable cassette recorder was playing a mutilated tape of mariachi music.

'You know the front door's been left wide open?'

'Raoul, I asked you to shut it, man.'

'Where's the dog?' I asked.

'You didn't take him to work with you?'

They looked from one to the other, then back at me.

I asked the neighbours. I walked the streets. I reported the loss to the police. Bolivar was nowhere to be found. He could have left the apartment at any time during the day. By ten o'clock I was in a state of panic, but there was nothing to do except return home and see if he had managed to find his way back.

There was no sign of him. I fed the armadillo, which by this time was making the kitchen smell strange, and went to bed, if not to sleep.

When I awoke the following morning to find yet another stranger in the apartment, I was glad to have someone to talk to. He was a very large black man named Gregor, and was washing his underpants in the kitchen sink.

'You have something wrong with your water.'

'What are you doing?' I asked.

'Your basement washer-dryer is being overhauled and I couldn't get in the bathroom, there's pipes an' shit everywhere,' he explained.

'I mean, what are you doing here in this apartment?' I noticed an aggressive tone in my voice that I could have sworn wasn't normally there.

'See, Mary lets me use her utility room because mine is full of hookers.' He wrung out an enormous pair of Calvin Klein Y -fronts and draped them over a radiator. 'They work the street a block down from here, right outside my building, and we have a deal with them to be off the sidewalk by seven in the morning, when our kids start getting up, but in return they get to wash all their stuff in the utility room, and I don't want to be sharing a drum with all their split-crotch shit. So Mary gave me her – '

' -apartment keys. I understand. I'm Charles. You want some coffee?'

'Sure thing, Charlie,' he said gratefully. 'I hope I'm not putting you to trouble or nothing.'

'Oh, it's no trouble,' I said wearily, reaching for the coffee pot.

I could hardly concentrate on work that day, I was so worried. There had been no word about Bolivar, and I wondered how long a dog could survive by itself on the streets of Manhattan. He was wearing a collar, but to my knowledge there was no address on it. I called the police again, but finding a lost dog came a pretty long way down their list of things to do today. I resolved to leave work early and continue trawling the streets. Naturally, by five o'clock it was raining so hard that you couldn't see more than the blurred red tail-lights of the nearest retreating cab.

By eight o'clock, soaked through and in despair, I ended up back at the apartment. I had just managed to get the door open when the telephone rang.

'Oh, I'm so glad you're there,' said Mary. 'I tried you at work but they said you'd gone for the evening. I spoke to a nice young lady named Barbara. Such a nice voice. She broke up with her boyfriend, did you know?'

'No, I didn't know that.'

'You should talk to her. A good soul, but lonely. When she's not with someone she puts on weight. You can tell just by listening.'

'Yes, she's very nice,' I agreed, pulling off my wet raincoat. 'I was just taking the dog for a walk.'

'In this terrible weather? Oh, you didn't have to do that. Put him on, will you? Let me hear him.'

I desperately looked around. 'He can't come to the phone right now. He's eating.'

'He'll come when he hears my voice. Bolivar!' She began shouting his name over and over. I hoped she was in a private room. With no other choice available, I was forced to impersonate the bull terrier. I interspersed ragged breathy gasps with some swallows of saliva.

'Good boy! Good boy! Put Charles back on now.'

I wiped my mouth. 'Hello, Miss Amity.'

'Oh call me Mary, everyone does. I just wanted to thank you for being so kind to me, Charles. Lying here in hospital you start worrying about all sorts of things, and it's such a comfort knowing that someone responsible is taking care of my precious baby.'

Fifteen minutes later I was in Ron's Lucky Silver Dollar Bar & Grill, chugging back beers and telling the barman my problem. I had to tell someone.

'I've let the poor woman down, Bill. She allowed me to stay in her home, not because she needed someone to look after the place but because this guy I know told her I needed somewhere to stay for a week. She trusted me out of the goodness of her heart. I see that now. But I let her down. I lost her prized possession, her best friend! How could I do that? How could I be so irresponsible?'

'Strictly speaking it wasn't your fault,' said Bill, flicking something out of a beermug. 'The builders, they should have kept the front door shut.'

'You don't understand. It's a matter of good faith.'

At the other end of the bar, one of the patrons switched on the wall TV. Lady and the Tramp was showing. The film had just reached the part where the unclaimed dog in the pound was walking the last mile to the gas chamber. All the other dogs were howling as it went to its lonely death.

'Hey, turn that thing off!' shouted Bill. 'Jeez, sorry about that, Chuck.'

'How am I going to tell her, Bill? I mean, Dean would able to break it to her gently, but he had to go to jail.'

'I know about that.'

'You do?'

'Sure. He comes in here with Mary.'

'Why is he going to jail?'

'He used to do a little – freelancing – for Mary.' He seemed reluctant to broach the subject.

'Oh? Was he handling her accounting work?' I knew she'd sat accountancy exams, and Dean was a teller, after all. The thought crossed my mind that they had been caught working some kind of financial scam together, and that Mary was not in hospital at all but with him in jail.

'No,' replied Bill, 'dancing.'

'What do you mean?'

'She has this entertainment company that supplies dancers to office parties, you know the kind of thing, sexy girls coming out of cakes, stuff like that. Meter maids, nurses who strip, all above-board and legit. And she has some guys who take their clothes off. Well, Dean owed some money and needed to get cash fast. She persuaded Dean to earn it by doing this act where he was dressed as a cop, and he'd turn up in some chick's office and tell them they were under arrest, and they'd ask why, and he'd say for breaking men's hearts, and then he'd whip out his tape deck and play Stop! In The Name Of Love! and strip down to a sequined jockstrap.'

'So why was he arrested?' I asked.

'He was coming out of the Flatiron Building after a birthday appointment and saw somebody being mugged. Well, he was still in uniform, and saw this guy off, but get this, the victim reported him for not being a real cop. And it turned out this wasn't the first time he'd used his outfit in public. They found him guilty of impersonating a police officer. That's taken very seriously around here.' He saw my mug was empty. 'Let me fill that for ya?'

I sat in the apartment, staring at the spot where Bolivar had spent his evenings happily assaulting the armadillo. When he wagged his tail, his entire body flexed back and forth like a single muscle, a grin on legs. I missed him.

Mary owned the fattest telephone book I had ever seen, but as I only knew the first names of her friends I couldn't find any of them listed within its pages. Raoul and Carlos had finished the bathroom and gone, leaving a bunch of red roses behind in the sink, and the armadillo, which seemed to have discovered a prisoner-of-war method of getting out of its box and back in before I got home, had eaten the piece of paper bearing the number of Carlos's mobile phone. I was trying to figure out my next move when the telephone rang.

This time it was Donald. Apparently, Mary had rung him and asked him to call me. I hadn't liked his attitude the other morning, but now he seemed a lot friendlier. Still, it seemed odd that he should call. I decided to break the news to him about losing Bolivar. He told me that the first thing I needed to do was duplicate a stack of posters and staple them on telephone poles around the neighbourhood.

'You think it's wise putting Miss Amity's number on them?'

'You worry too much, anyone ever point that out to you? Listen, it's easy, I'll help if you want.'

My first instinct, the one that came all too naturally, was to say no. Nobody in our family ever accepted help of any kind. Then I thought, this is crazy, and accepted his offer. That evening we put up nearly a hundred posters. The rain didn't stop for a second, but it was fun walking around the backstreets, past the glowing restaurant windows, talking to someone so alien that everything we spoke of began from opposite points of view. We didn't find Bolivar but at least I had done something positive, and that felt good.

The next day was Wednesday. Mary was due out of hospital on Friday. She called again that evening, and this time I managed to avoid bringing the dog to the telephone for a conversation. She wanted to know about my parents, and I had to admit I found it easier talking to someone I had never met.

'Families. They mean well but they're blind,' she said.

'I miss my dad.'

'Of course you do. I come from a very big family. My father planned to bring us here for many years, but by the time we finally reached New York there were only a few of us left. So I made the city my family. It was the most logical thing to do. A little assimilation is good for you. How's my doggie?'

'Uh, he's fine. He's in the kitchen, eating.'

'Then I won't disturb him. And I won't keep you from your evening. Nurse Ratchett is about to come around with my knockout pills. I hide them down the side of the bed. It drives her nuts. What birth sign are you?'

'Pisces.'

'Ah.' I could hear her smile. 'That would explain it.'

The rain had stopped. The street glittered and beckoned. As a European I find it impossible to watch American network TV because of the commercials, so after a quarter-hour of fidgety channel-hopping I headed back outside. I tried to imagine where Bolivar might have gone, but the dog knew so many stores and bars in the neighbourhood I had no idea where to start. He had a better social life than me. Deliberately ignoring my boss's advice – 'If you have to walk in New York, pick a destination and home in on it like a Cruise missile' – I wandered aimlessly for half an hour, then headed back to the apartment.

On the front steps I collided with Melissa, who was coming out of the building.

'I left you a Dutch Apple cake. I baked too much for myself. You need more flesh. Oh, and I topped up the armadillo's box with some cabbage leaves and a mouse. Manny can get them for you, from his coffee shop.'

I was touched. 'Thanks, Melissa, that's really sweet of you. Do you want to come up for a drin- coffee?'

She waved the offer away. 'No, I can't stop. Besides, you already have a visitor.'

'Who?' I'd been hoping for a quiet night.

'I didn't catch his name but he looks like one of Mary's emotional cripples. She does this course, this therapy-thing. Did you know she's a qualified therapist? By the way, this came off.' She put the top of the bathroom's hot-water tap in my hand.

'No, I didn't,' I replied, pocketing the faucet. 'If someone told me she was a freelance lion-tamer, it wouldn't surprise me.' Wondering who or what I was in for now, I ventured upstairs.

'Bad luck doesn't make you a loser. Do I look like a loser to you? No, you give me respect, 'cause what you see is a chick-magnet, a pretty sharp guy. Not a loser.' He wore Ray-bans on top of his head, silver-backed Cuban heels and a blue tropical shirt covered in marlins. Slick-black hair, a hula-girl tattoo on his forearm, jiggling above a diamante watch 'with a rock so big it could choke a fucking horse' (his words). He was settled in the armchair I had come to think of as Carlos's chair, nursing a large whisky. He seemed edgy and anxious to get something off his chest, and I wasn't about to argue. For all I knew he was carrying a gun. He looked the type, only more weaselly, like if he shot someone it would be because the safety catch had accidentally come off.

'Yeah. So. I got this debt around my neck from some stuff I'd picked up in the Keys. Not drugs, man, everyone thinks drugs in Florida but this was a shipment of French silverware, like cutlery and salt cellars and stuff, I figured from some Louisiana family. And I can't get rid of it because, get this, it's too valuable. I called Mary and at first she told me to return it, like I could just waltz back and cancel the deal.'

I could sense it was going to be a long night, and that I wouldn't like whatever it was this guy was working toward, so I poured myself a whisky. I never used to drink.

'She already knew what I was holding 'cause she'd seen it on the news – the national news – on account of the silverware once belonged to some French bigwig or something. Now a guy in Harlem called Dolphin Eddie is offering me a cash deal so low it's a fucking offence to nature, but I figure okay, I won't make a profit but it'll wipe the slate on my debts.' He held up his glass. 'Can I get another one of these?'

'Look here, Mr-'

'Randy. Randy Amity. This is my mother's apartment. I'm her only kid. I guess you think that's weird, considering how many times she's been married, but something went wrong with her tubes after she had me. You're Chuck, right?'

Now I saw the family resemblance. God, she must have been disappointed.

'Anyways, I'm leaving the stuff here.'

'Here?' I exploded. 'Are you crazy? Where is it?'

'Relax.' Randy sat forward and drained his drink. 'It's safely stashed away.'

'What if your mother finds out? Good Lord, she could get hurt.'

'I don't think so. It was her idea. I was just gonna stop by, stash the silverware for a couple of nights and take a bath, but the hotwater faucet is missing.'

'Can I at least see this – merchandise?'

'Sure.' He reached beneath the armchair and pulled up a large inlaid gold and blue leather case. Inside the silk-sewn lid was a brass panel faced in dense scrollwork. I tipped the case to the light and read the owner's name. Donatien-Alphonse-François, Comte de -

My jaw dropped. 'You mean to tell me you stole the cutlery of the Marquis de Sade?' I asked, appalled. 'Do you have any idea how valuable this stuff is?' The carvings on the bone-handled fish-knives, in particular, were outrageous.

'What can I tell you?' shrugged Randy, 'I'm the black sheep of the family. Only Mama loves me, even though she won't introduce me to her friends.'

'You don't look like her.'

'That's good. I guess I'm more like my pa.'

'Which one of her husbands is that?'

'The one she didn't marry,' he replied thoughtfully.

Just then, the door buzzer went and we both flew into a panic, shovelling the knives and forks back into the canteen like a pair of kids caught smoking dope in their bedroom. Randy stowed the case and signalled the all-clear, and I answered the door to find myself looking at a very frail elderly man in a ratty cardigan, holding a ficus tree almost as tall as himself.

'I want you should give this to Mary,' he said, shouting at the top of his voice. 'I don't want it no more. It ain't the plant, it's the money.'

'I – what? Wait.' I held up my hand. I didn't want him to repeat what he had said. He was extremely deaf and possibly half-blind, for he seemed to be addressing a spot several feet above my head.

'The tree, it's full of money,' he bellowed. 'I don't want it no more.'

I looked back at Randy, who was hiding behind the couch. He gave a puzzled 'Wassamatta?' look.

'I want you should give this to Mary,' the old man repeated. I felt like asking him why he hadn't used his keys like everyone else. 'I'm not crazy or nothing. You're looking at me like I'm crazy.'

'I'm sorry, I don't mean to,' I apologised. 'I'll give her the plant.' I wanted him to put it down before he fell down.

'It's her damn plant anyway. She lends her plants to people. I'm in her Thursday night group. Every week since my wife died. Exploring The Senses. I told her I was depressed and she gave me the plant, but she stuck money in the pot, like this way I won't think it's charity or a handout or nothin', but I saw through her, so I'm bringing it back. There's sixty dollars there and you can tell her I ain't touched a damn penny.' He thrust the battered tree into my arms and started off for the stairs. How he ever got up them in the first place I'll never know.

'An' tell her from me,' he yelled, looking back over his shoulder, 'that's a great plant she has there. Tell her it did the trick.'

Much to my relief, Randy left at midnight. He was staying at his ex-girlfriend's mother's house in Queens. From the way he was talking, I had a suspicion that he might be sleeping with her. He promised me the cutlery would only remain in the apartment for a few days, but I knew that someone with eyes like a starving boa constrictor would be capable of telling anything to anyone.

I put the ficus in with the other plants, made myself a coffee and sat by the window for a while. The room seemed oddly silent now. For the first time in ages I thought about sharing my life with someone. No-one in particular, just someone.

On Thursday I called the police again, with no luck. Miss Amity was due home the next evening, and I dreaded to think what I would say to her. I played back her messages; the usual assortment of normality-impaired individuals, someone asking her about selling a speedboat – she seemed to be acting as the middleman in a deal – someone else wanting to know if you could put a copyright on planets and sell them as brand-names.

Someone had also been in the apartment. I could smell cigar smoke. There was a squashed-out butt in the sink, and a pair of half-empty coffee cups beside the sofa. Worse still, it looked to me as though they had made love on the bed. The covers were rumpled and the room smelled stale and faintly perfumy. There was a time, just a few days ago, when the discovery would have shocked me, but my accumulated indirect knowledge of Miss Amity told me something about these new occupants. That, trapped perhaps in loveless relationships, they had fallen for each other and were unable to meet anywhere else, so she had allowed them to use the apartment for their trysts.

When Miss Amity called, I told her my suspicions.

'Damn,' she cried, 'that filthy whore has been dragging her johns in again. I warned you about Sheryl-Ann. Once I came home and found some poor businessman tied naked to a chair with duct-tape. It took hours to get it all off because he was so hairy. A nice man. I had to lend him cab fare because she took his wallet. His wife couldn't see they had a problem. Listen, I must tell you my news. Barbara has a date. Aren't you pleased for her?'

She never waited for you to catch up. 'Who are we talking about now?'

'Oh, Charles! The girl in your office. I fixed her up with my cousin Joel. He owns a chain of hardware stores. Is two a chain? He's taking her dancing. Isn't that great? Do you like mariachi music?'

She seemed to be moving in circles around me, making waves, brushing against the lives of others. This was beyond my experience. 'I'm very glad for her,' I replied. 'How did you -'

'If somebody calls about a speedboat, don't talk to them. I checked it out, and I get the feeling it was not acquired legally, if you know what I mean.'

I took Friday afternoon off. I was so nervous about Miss Amity coming home, I wanted some time to myself to figure out how to handle it. She called from the hospital at four to say she was just leaving. At half-past, there was another call.

'Guess what?' shouted Donald, out of breath. 'We found the dog.'

I leapt out of the armchair. 'My God, Miss Amity's due back any minute. Where is he?'

'In your building. He's been there the whole time. Mrs Beckerman's been looking after him. He stays with her whenever Mary goes out of town.'

'Why on earth didn't she bring him back?'

'I guess she thought she was meant to look after him, what with Mary in the hospital. She called me to ask when Mary was getting out. Ground floor, apartment 1b. Go get 'im.'

'Donald, you are a lifesaver.'

'So buy me a drink sometime, Mr Snooty Englishman.'

'Tomorrow,' I promised. 'Tomorrow night.'

'Deal.'

The other line rang. I switched across and answered. 'Hello?'

'It's me, Mary. I stopped to get some groceries on the way. Listen, I can't get in. I don't seem to have my keys. You will be there, won't you?'

'Of course. I'm looking forward to meeting you.'

'Did you get the dog back from Mrs Beckerman?'

'You mean – you knew?'

'That you'd lost him? Of course I knew. From the moment you performed that ridiculous impersonation over the phone.'

'But if you knew, you must have had an idea where Bolivar had gone.'

'Well, of course,' she replied.

'Then why didn't you tell me?'

'I would have thought that was obvious. I wanted you to spend some time with Donald. Charles, I have something to tell you. I was talking to your mother earlier and -'

'My mother? My mother in England?'

'You have another?'

'How did you get her number?'

'Barbara found it in your address book. She's seeing Joel Saturday. I hope they get on. They're the same height; it's a start. I called your mother because I wanted to ask her something, that's all. She thinks an awful lot of you. We talked for quite a while, her and me, and one thing led to another, and I accidentally let slip -'

The other line rang.

'There's another call.'

'I have a feeling that'll be her now. Don't be mad.'

'Hold on.'

I gingerly switched to the other line.

'Mary Amity tells me you're gay,' said my mother. I nearly dropped the phone. Regaining my composure, I switched lines back.

'I didn't mean to out you,' said Miss Amity apologetically, 'I wasn't sure you even knew yourself, but it was obvious to me. Families. We shock and disappoint each other, but there's still love. Look at Randy. Pour a drink. Brandy is good. Talk to your ma, don't fight, just run with it, she's fine. I'll be there soon.'

I talked to my mother.

I collected the dog.

I waited for Mary.

But Mary Amity never arrived. We never did meet.

She hadn't been in the hospital for a hip operation. The doctors had removed a tumour. She didn't want to worry people. In the cab she developed a cramp and asked the driver to take her back. She died a few minutes after being readmitted. She was the only person who ever got my name right.

I no longer work at the bank. I have an apartment of my own now, a modest place in Brooklyn. Two floors up, with four rooms, one bull terrier and far too many sets of keys.