These Dreams of You

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As if he’s taunting her — and finally her ambivalence about him metastasizes to dislike. He’s trying to incite me and, jolted as much by the way he’s said it as what he’s said, she wants to walk away. His idea, she wonders, of taking the piss? Delivered with the same bullying bluntness as everything else he’s said tonight? An insensitive, even cruel retaliation for. . what? good-natured teasing about not knowing who Elvis Presley is?

Of course it can’t help feeling like a violation. She’s restrained from leaving only by the regret she’ll feel not having told him to sod off. “On business?” Reg says with an obliviousness that would infuriate her more if she weren’t so used to it: Jasmine may not be political but Reg is hopeless. He doesn’t know South Africa from South Antarctica and now she’s not sure which of them to be angrier at. “Yes,” Bob says, not taking his eyes from hers, still the taunt, “business,” and then turns to continue walking. Reg follows. She hangs back and Reg turns to look. “Can we leave?” she says.

Reg insists, “Let’s walk a bit more.” In the early-morning hours the three make their way up Charing Cross along Soho’s eastern border. Looming before them is the head of an incandescent African woman, painted on the side of a seven-story building; she has crouching day-glo lions for eyes and, like Medusa, her skull flames with bright violet dreadlocks that glimmer from the rain and appear to slither up the street. The words Abyssinia and Queen Sheba wreathe the woman’s face like smoke. “Right,” Reg says, practically jaunty, “so what was it took you back to Leicester Square anyway this time of night, Bob? A little late for the theatre.” He glances up at the huge painting of the woman’s lysergic dreadlocks and peers back over his shoulder at Jasmine, who walks along behind glaring at the ground, arms folded.

Bob never looks up from the ground. “A little late for the theater. . ” he nods.

“Never fancied the theatre myself.”

“Retracing steps. . ”

“How’s that?”

“From, uh, an earlier trip.”

“Back when you were living here.”

“No. After the War.”

“So you’ve been back since?”

“I met an actress then, in one of the shows.”

“Not your wife?” Reg says. Jasmine still lags behind alienated, head full of her own voice.

“No.” He stops to look up at the sky.

“Fancy being married?”

“Sure.” The Yank holds out his palm.

“Kids?”

“Lots.” Still looking up, “It’s about to rain.”

“Right, I felt something too.”

“So we’re checking out the haunts of old flames,” says Jasmine, “brilliant,” and Reg looks at her.

“I suppose,” Bob answers quietly.

Reg says, “London bird then,” still looking at Jasmine, finally sensing her mood. She stares back defiantly and Reg tears himself from her stare.

“She was in a show playing my older sister who, uh, just had been killed in a plane crash.”

“Hang on,” says Reg. “The actress you were dating was playing your sister?”

“It’s queer, I suppose.”

“You suppose it’s queer?” says Jasmine.

“It is bloody odd,” agrees Reg.

“Fancied a woman playing your dead sister?” Jasmine says, taking some satisfaction from her own tactlessness.

“What happened?” says Reg.

“My father strongly discouraged it.” The Yank adds, wryly, “He, uh, knew something about showgirls.”

“Or perhaps,” says Jasmine, “just showgirls playing your sister.”