The Last Letter from Your Lover

the bar.
    ‘Nice of you to stop by,’ he had said sarcastically, raising a glass to her. He had drunk four double whiskies in the two hours he had waited.
    She had pulled off her headscarf, ordered a martini and, a second later, cancelled it.
    ‘Not staying?’
    ‘I don’t want to watch you like this.’
    He had berated her for the lack of all the things he felt from her – the lack of time, the lack of anything on paper that he could hold to him – ignoring the restraining hand that Felipe, the barman, had laid on his arm. What he felt terrified him, and he wanted to hurt her for it. ‘What’s the matter? Scared of putting down anything that might be used in evidence against you?’
    He had hated himself as he said the words, knew he had become ugly, the object of pity he had tried so desperately to conceal from her.
    Jennifer had turned on her heel and walked swiftly up the stairs, ignoring his yelled apology, his demand for her to return.
    He had left a one-word message in the PO box the following morning, and two long, guilt-ridden days later he had received a letter.
    Boot. I do not give my feelings easily to paper. I do not give them easily at all. You deal in the business of words, and I cherish each one you write to me. But do not judge my feelings by the fact that I don’t respond in kind.
    I am afraid that if I tried to write as you do you would feel badly let down. Like I once said, my opinion is rarely sought on anything – let alone something as important as this – and I don’t find it easy to volunteer it. Trust that I am here. Trust me by my actions, my affections. Those are my currency.
    Yours,
    J
    He had cried with shame and relief when he got it. He suspected afterwards that part of it, the part she did not talk about, was that she still bore the humiliation of that hotel room, no matter how hard he tried to convince her of his reason for not making love to her. For all that he said, he suspected she was still not convinced that she was more than just another of his married women.
    ‘Your girlfriend not coming?’ Felipe slid into the seat beside him. The club had filled up now. Tables buzzed with chatter, a pianist played in the corner, and there was another half hour before Felipe would take up his trumpet. Overhead, the fan whirred lazily, hardly stirring the thick air. ‘Now, you ain’t going to end up slaughtered again, are you?’
    ‘It’s coffee.’
    ‘You want to be careful, Tony.’
    ‘I told you, it’s coffee.’
    ‘Not the drink. One of these days, you’re going to fool around with the wrong woman. One day a husband’s going to do for you.’
    Anthony held up his hand for more coffee. ‘I’m flattered, Felipe, that you take my welfare so seriously but, first, I’ve always been careful in my choice of partner.’ He flashed a sideways grin. ‘Believe me, you have to have a certain confidence in your powers of discretion to let a dentist loose with a drill in your mouth less than an hour after you’ve . . . um . . . entertained his wife.’
    Felipe couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You’re shameless, man.’
    ‘Not at all. Because, second, there will be no more married women.’
    ‘Just single ones, eh?’
    ‘No. No more women. This is The One.’
    ‘The one hundred and one, you mean.’ Felipe barked a laugh. ‘You’re gonna tell me you’ve taken up Bible studies next.’
    And there was the irony: the more he wrote and the harder he tried to convince her of what he felt, the more it seemed she suspected that the words were meaningless, that they tripped from his pen too easily. She had teased him about it several times – but he could taste the gunmetal bite of truth underneath.
    She and Felipe saw the same thing: someone incapable of real love. Someone who would desire the unobtainable for just as long as it took to get it.
    ‘One day, Felipe, my friend, I might just surprise you.’
    ‘Tony, you sit in this place long enough, there are no more surprises. And, look, talk of the devil. Here comes your birthday present. And so nicely wrapped too.’
    Anthony glanced up and saw a pair of emerald green silk shoes negotiating the stairs. She walked slowly, one hand on the rail, as she had the first time he watched her coming down her front steps, revealing herself inch by inch until her face, flushed and slightly damp, was directly before him. At the sight of her, his breath was briefly knocked from his chest.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, as she