Perfect Day

kitchen never making contact, because if they do they might both become nothing.
    He closes his eyes, trying to conjure Kate for one last time shivering in her chocolate silk lingerie. He hears her saying, ‘You know how you have one image of someone that always comes first when you’re thinking about them?’
    But now, he can only see Nell. Nell’s uncomprehending frown, Nell’s despair, Nell’s disappointment in him.
    He must go.
    He must wash the smell of sex away and go home.

    Alexander draws a bath and lies in it. He lathers himself all over, then sniffs the soap bar. It smells of coconuts. Kate’s smell. In the warm water, his penis begins to harden, he slides further down.
    Keys jangle in the door. Alexander sits up and a wave of bathwater sploshes over the edge of the tub.
    The door opens and the draught turns his wet skin cold. The light’s switched on.
    ‘Don’t you ever knock?’ he jokes, nervous about still being there, but gladdened she’s returned to delay his departure just a little longer.
    ‘You’d better be out of here before I count to ten, or you’ll be out the window. One, two...’
    The voice is like Kate’s, but harder. Much harder.
    Alexander turns round very slowly, half expecting to see a gun pointing at him.
    Kate’s sister is standing in the door, her small figure straight and determined. For a second, he wonders how she plans to throw him out of a window that she can’t even open. The thought makes him smile.
    ‘Hang on,’ she says, focusing on his face, ‘I’ve seen you before.’
    She looks around the room, taking in the open lingerie drawer, the scattering of underwear.
    ‘I’m a friend of Kate’s,’ Alexander explains, stretching his fingers towards the bath towel on the bed, but unable to reach it without standing up.
    ‘Friend?’
    ‘I met her yesterday.’
    ‘The little slut,’ says Marie. Her voice contains both shock and admiration. Then: ‘Oh hang on, you’re not the stoopy one?’ Stoop-eh.
    ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘The teacher.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh, I see.’
    He’s oddly pleased to know that Kate talked about him, but alarmed by Marie’s description and the obviousness of her disappointment. Stoopy ?
    Her eyes slip from dishevelled bed to the surface of the bathwater.
    ‘Well, make yourself at home...?’
    ‘Alexander.’
    It’s hard to muster any dignity with a stranger when you’re naked and lying without permission in their pink tub.
    ‘Alexander.’ She repeats it in exactly the same way that Kate did yesterday, as if the four syllables are almost unbelievably pretentious.
    ‘And you’re?’ he asks, trying to grab back a little respect.
    ‘Bloody hell!’ she says. ‘I’m Marie. And that’s my bath you’re in. Sir!’ she adds with insolent mock-deference.
    One little word tells the entire history of her teenage years at school.
    ‘I’m not that sort of teacher,’ he says.
    ‘You’re still in my bath.’
    ‘Well, if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll get out,’ he reasons.
    ‘Go on, then. I don’t suppose it’s anything I haven’t seen before.’
    In the bathwater his penis shrinks to its minimum size, the soft shrunken thing it becomes when he’s got flu. He doesn’t move.
    With an impatient sigh, she turns her back to him.
    He hears the rasp of a cigarette lighter and a long intake of breath. He grabs the towel and is about to step out onto the carpet.
    ‘Dry yourself in the bath, will you?’ she says, then exhales. ‘I don’t want the carpet going mouldy.’ A
    Alexander rubs the damp towel over himself as quickly as he can and pulls on his shirt. The circle of back beneath his shoulder blades is still wet and he feels the cotton fabric sticking to it. He rubs his legs down and steps out of the bath. He suspects his underpants are hidden somewhere in a fold of rumpled duvet, so he pulls his chinos on without them.
    ‘Peter Stringfellow doesn’t wear underpants,’ Marie says.
    And he realizes that she’s been peeking at him.
    ‘How do you know?’ he asks, as if they’re making polite small talk. He feels his whole body flushing, his penis smaller than ever but with a flashing red light on it.
    ‘Everyone knows that,’ Marie says, blowing a smoke ring at him. ‘I’ve always wondered how he stops his pubes getting caught in the zip.’
    It takes a moment or two for Alexander to realize that she’s really asking a question, but he feels that he’ll be in more trouble if he tries to explain that he