Alison Moore - He Wants

She picks up the phone again, dials the printers and listens to the ringing for a while before replacing the receiver.

Sydney picked the venue, suggested the date and time. She wonders why he changed his mind. That might have been him sitting on the bench, getting a good look at her first. She feels rather foolish.

She is eating her apple when she suddenly thinks, ‘It was a scam. He was just getting me out of the house so that he could burgle me.’ And then she thinks, ‘But he wasn’t getting me out of the house, he was getting me out of work. He doesn’t know where I live.’ Frowning, she finishes the apple. There were girls at school who would eat the whole thing, the core, the pips, the calyx. She found it astonishing. She throws her core away.

Norman, returning from his meeting, settling himself at his desk, says, ‘Did your friend show up?’

‘What?’ says Ruth, looking up quickly.

‘A friend of yours was here, asking for you. I thought it was your dad at first, because of his age. Is he a family friend?’

‘What was his name?’

‘Stanley or Sidney, something like that. I told him you were at home waiting in for something. I asked if he knew where you lived and he said he did. He didn’t come and see you?’

‘No,’ says Ruth. She wonders why he said he knew where she lived. Just so as not to appear suspicious, she supposes, having come to the office pretending to be a friend, when in fact, no doubt, he was hoping to burgle it in her absence. Presumably, he was in cahoots with the man on the bench whose job it was to let Sydney know that she was safely installed in the café.

‘Where are we with the print? Is it ready?’

‘There’s no one there,’ says Ruth. ‘No one’s picking up the phone.’

‘They must be there,’ says Norman. ‘I want that print today. If they’re not picking up, you’d better go there in person.’

Ruth puts on her coat (‘New coat?’ asks Norman) and picks up her handbag. As she heads through the door, Norman calls out to her, ‘Are you going anywhere near a bakery?’

‘No,’ says Ruth.

She steps outside, into the cold, fresh air, and as her feet hit the pavement she recalls an evening the previous week when she got the feeling that she was being followed home from work, although, whenever she turned to look behind her, she could see no one there, and nothing happened.

She gets into her car, and into her mind comes the possibility that it was Sydney that evening, following her home so that he would know where she lived and could break in while she was wasting her time in that strange little café. Except that she was not going home; she was on her way to her dad’s to look at his computer. He’d been getting emails he didn’t want. ‘They’re still sending those emails,’ he said, as if they were like nuisance calls, somebody hounding him. She does not usually visit him in the evening, but she had not been surprised to find him right where she had left him that morning, in his armchair. She thought at first that he was praying, the way his head was bowed towards the lamplight, but he was asleep.

She turns around, no longer heading for town, heading instead towards her dad’s house, worrying about the possibility of a break-in, and the likelihood — Ruth, in her little car, speeds up — that her dad would have been at home at the time, the burglar giving him a surprise.

LEWIS STANDS FOR a minute outside the nursing home, in the darkening car park. He considers going back inside, braving the woman who grabs at his wrist as he goes by, but instead he walks home.

He goes slowly, resting often, leaning on a lamppost, a bin, a low wall, pushing his tongue against a shard of walnut stuck in his tooth. He wonders if Sydney will come back.

He feels his mobile phone — the one Ruth gave to him for emergencies — trembling against his thigh. He puts his hand into his trouser pocket and realises that the phone is still in the kitchen drawer, no doubt with the battery run down. The trembling he felt against his leg was a phantom; it was his body playing tricks on him.

The tune the phone plays when someone is trying to get in touch with him is something Ruth put on there, or else it came with the phone. It is the same tune they play in the doctor’s waiting room and down the phone when they have you on hold and when the ice cream van is coming. It is as if it is the only song there is, the only piece of music in the world.

When Lewis opens his front door and finds someone standing in his hallway, it takes him a moment to adjust to the fact that it is not Sydney but Ruth.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ she says, and her cursing, her saying ‘hell’ like that, makes him flinch. Lewis has never spoken that way. He thinks of Sydney saying Jesus fucking Christ . What if he were to talk like that? He imagines saying to her now, Jesus fucking Christ, Ruth. Chill out. That’s how they talk, the young people: Chill out. Take a chill pill.

‘I thought something had happened to you,’ says Ruth.

Lewis has to wait for her to take a few steps back before he can get inside and close the door behind him. ‘Nothing’s happened,’ he says.

‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ she says. ‘And you’ve done something else as well.’ She studies his face while Lewis looks over her shoulder into his house. ‘Where are your glasses?’

‘They got broken,’ says Lewis, moving past her towards the stairs, where he sits down to take off his shoes.

Ruth stands over him. ‘I’ve been on the phone to everyone,’ she says.

‘I went to see Granddad,’ says Lewis. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I was worried about you. I tried ringing your mobile but I couldn’t get you. Your phone’s in the kitchen drawer.’

Pulling on his slippers, Lewis stands again and hangs up his coat. ‘What were you ringing for?’ he asks, as he limps down the hallway towards the living room.

‘Have you walked all the way from the home? For God’s sake, Dad.’ She goes with him and gets him settled into his chair. ‘Where’s your spare pair of glasses?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know,’ says Lewis.

Ruth looks in the kitchen but doesn’t find them, just the empty case in the drawer. Coming out again, she says, ‘Why have you got sake? Have you been into town? Have you been to the new deli?’

‘No. Do they sell it there?’

‘You won’t like it. You only like shandy.’

Before she leaves, she makes Lewis a cup of milky tea, and as she hands it to him, he says, ‘Have you ever had Goldschläger?’

‘ Goldschläger ?’ she says. ‘What’s got into you? Yes,’ she adds, going into the hallway to get her coat, ‘I have.’ She comes back into the living room with his broken spectacles in her hand. ‘I’ll take these for mending,’ she says, leaning over him and kissing him near the corner of his eye.

When Ruth has gone, Lewis goes into the kitchen. Edie’s best pie dish is still on the floor. The sake is still on the table. Ruth was right — he does not like anything strong. He is not like John used to be, passionately opposed to alcohol and pouring away gifts of wine; Lewis just does not much like the taste.

He opens the sake and puts the carton to his nose. He does not like the smell. He takes a glass down from the cupboard and pours out a measure. He looks at it, this exotic drink from the golden carton. He lifts the glass to his lips and takes a sip. It makes him grimace; it is like drinking vinegar. He tries to bring it close to his mouth again but he can’t bring himself to do it. He wants to like it, but he does not.

He puts the glass down by the sink. He ought to give the sake to Ruth but he isn’t sure that he will. He screws the top back onto the carton and puts it away in the fridge.