Aidan, if you mind, just show me and I’ll never see him again. Give me some sort of sign. Anything at all. Okay, I’ll make it easy for you—I’m going to keep walking down this street, and if you’re angry about Mitch, how about…how about…making a flowerpot fall from a window ledge right into my path. I’d prefer if it didn’t actually land on me, but if that’s what you need to do…

I walked and walked and nothing happened and I wondered if I’d been too specific. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “flowerpot.” Maybe I should have just said “something.” Make “something” fall into my path.

Okay. Anything at all. Not just a flowerpot.

But nothing landed on or near me and I was hot and tired and eventually I hailed a cab. The driver, a young Indian man, was on his mobile. I gave my address and slumped back into the seat and suddenly I heard, “You’re a filthy, dirty man and I’m going to punish you.”

It was the driver, talking into his phone. I sat up straight, keen to eavesdrop.

“Pull down your pants, you bad, bad man. I am going to punish you!”

“Excuse me, sir, who are you talking to?”

He turned around quickly, raised a finger to his lips, leaving a grand total of none on the steering wheel, then he went back to his conversation. “I am going to beat you for being so bad. Yes, beat you, you bad, bad man. Beat you on the butt with the cane. On the butt with the cane. Because you’re bad, bad, dirty and bad!”

Oh, Aidan, you have sent me a sign. A nine-out-of-ten taxi driver! So you don’t mind about Mitch!

“Hard, hard is how I will beat you. Bend over and I will count the strokes. Swish, one! Swish, two! Swish, three! Swish, four! Swish, five! Swish, SIX!”

Swish six seemed to bring things to a head: a cry came from inside the phone, then all went quiet for a while, until the driver said, “Thank you, sir. It is my pleasure, sir. Please call again.”

He hung up, and bursting with curiosity, I asked, “What was that all about?”

“I am a sex worker.” He said this quite proudly.

“You are?”

“Yes. Men pay me to abuse them. But I must also drive the cab. I have a large family back in Punjab. I send—” The chirp of his phone interrupted; he checked the caller and slightly wearily answered, “Good day, young master Thomas. What have you been doing? Have you been bad? How bad?”

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: The woman and her dog

Dear Anna,

She has “upped the auntie.” (I’ve never understood that phrase. Is it meant to be vulgar? Let me know as I will not say it at bridge if it’s vulgar. I will simply say she has “raised her game.”) More number twos.

Helen stood in it on her way home, all “loved up” (disgusting phrase) from sleeping with that Colin fellow, and she went mentalist. Effing and blinding out by the gate. “Come on,” sez she. “We’re going to see the old boot.”

There and then we drove over. I rang the bell and Zoe started to bark, then suddenly Zoe stopped barking. The old woman must have seen us through some spy hole and decided to pretend she wasn’t in. It’s Zoe I feel for. Locked away wearing a gag. A sock, or maybe a “bandanna.” She could suffocate that way. Helen shouted through the letter box, “We’ll be back, you mad old boot. I’m one of Ireland’s premeer private investigators, you know.”

Ireland’s, no less! I said nothing, but the night with Colin had obviously gone to her head.

Your loving mother,

Mum

73

Joey in love was compelling viewing. A dinner had been organized for no other reason than everyone wanted to see the unlikely combination of Jacqui and Joey together.

It wasn’t just for the usual suspects of Rachel, Luke, me, Shake, etc., but a whole swath of second-tier Real Men who held Joey in high regard. Not to mention Leon and Dana, Nell and Nell’s strange friend, and some people from Jacqui’s work. Even some people from my work asked to come: Teenie (who had slept with Joey ages ago) and Brooke—Brooke Edison.

In all, twenty-three of us came along to Haiku on the Lower East Side one Thursday night. (We’d had to keep ringing the restaurant to increase the table size.)

Joey and Jacqui were twined around each other in the center of a long booth and there was a bit of unseemly jostling from the rest of us to get the seats nearest to them. The places with the highest premium were the ones directly opposite the lovers.

“Check out Joey’s ‘in love’ face,” Teenie whispered.

It was strange: Joey hadn’t started smiling or anything—he still looked narky—but when he was tracing the curve of Jacqui’s face with his finger, or staring into her eyes, his narkiness looked quite nice. Quite sexy, actually. Intense, Heathcliffy, although his hair wasn’t dark enough. It might be if he stopped using Sun-In (he denied it vigorously but we all knew), but he was very attached to his goldeny-brown lowlights.

“This is going to be good,” Teenie said with glee.

And it was. All through the dinner, Joey and Jacqui were constantly at each other, whispering and giggling and feeding each other.

The only person who wasn’t mesmerized was Gaz and that was presumably because, night after night, he got a ringside seat in his own apartment. He wandered among us, bearing a sinister-looking little leather pouch; I knew what was in there.

“Anna,” he said, “I can help with your grief. I’m learning acupuncture!” He whipped open the pouch to display a load of needles inside. “I know which acupoints will give you relief.”

“That’s lovely. Thank you.”

“You mean you’ll let me do it?!”

“What? Now? Oh God, no, Gaz, not now. We’re in a public place. I can’t be sitting in a restaurant with needles sticking out of me. Even if we are on the Lower East Side.”

“Oh. I thought you meant…Well, some other time? Sometime soon?”

“Mmm.” I’d heard what had happened to Luke. He’d been feeling fine until Gaz had offered to “increase his endorphins.” The next thing, Luke was curled in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, unable to decide whether he was going to puke or to faint.