Perfect Day

him.
    ‘Why not?’ he says, as if he has been involved in the decision to move on.
    As he steps out of the restaurant onto the pavement, the brightness of the afternoon is a surprise. He has no idea what time it is. He follows Mel and the others down several streets he does not recognize. Even though he has worked in this part of London for several years, the only streets he is familiar with are those he uses every day that lead from the tube station to the school and from the school to the sandwich shop.
    The pub has a cellar bar with a jukebox. They occupy a table in a low-ceilinged brick alcove with hard wooden benches like pews. Malcolm puts a glass of lager in front of him. Alexander rests his head against the wall. He hears Vivienne say as she raises her pint glass,
    ‘Here’s to escape...’
    He dreams that he is walking along a great white curve of sand. There are palm trees back up the beach and a wind blowing in off the sea which is cooling one side of his face. There’s someone walking along next to him. For some reason he cannot turn his head to see who it is. She says, ‘It’s so like you expect a paradise island to be, you can’t believe it’s real, can you?’
    He hears the echo of a laugh that slips away as he wakes up.

    Mel and Joe are slow-dancing near the jukebox to Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’. Mel is looking over Joe’s shoulder at Alexander. Alexander smiles at her, and wonders whether any of them have noticed his brief lapse into sleep. She stares back at him with the meaningful look she has sometimes given him since they snogged each other a little too long, a little too passionately, in the passage leading to the pizzeria toilets at the Christmas party.
    The following day they had lunch together at an Italian café, a turkey special on a flat white plate spilling over with pale gravy.
    ‘What happened,’ she said looking just over his shoulder, ‘didn’t mean anything, did it?’ Then she attempted to spear a Brussels sprout casually, as if his answer didn’t matter to her at all. The sprout slid off the plate onto the Formica table top.
    ‘No,’ he replied, trying to dredge some charm from his dull hungover brain, ‘I mean, I think you’re lovely, but…’
    ‘I know,’ she cut off the sentence he was never going to finish anyway, the effort of trying to smile making her eyes fill.
    ‘Well, at least I won’t spend all of Christmas hoping you’ll call!’
    Soon after New Year, she hooked up with Joe. But Alexander still catches her looking at him sometimes, and he can’t decide whether her eyes are saying ‘I still want you,’ or ‘Look what you’ve missed.’

    Vivienne sees that Alexander is awake.
    ‘Welcome to the land of the living,’ she says; ‘you must be exhausted.’
    ‘Wine at lunch.’ Alexander stretches, unwilling to be drawn.
    Vivienne likes to be the confessor of problems which she then will keep on returning to, giving both the problem and herself a status they never previously enjoyed. He knows that she means well, but he finds her way of being friendly depressing.
    ‘My round?’ Alexander asks, looking at the empties.
    ‘We’re just leaving,’ Vivienne says, taking Malcolm’s arm. As she pulls on her jacket, she leans down to Alexander’s ear and whispers, ‘He’s going to give Werner the big heave-ho tonight and I’m going along for moral support.’
    Which leaves Alexander with Mel and Joe. He does not want to stay, but he does not feel like going home. He looks at his bare wrist. When he is teaching he takes his watch off and puts it on the desk, and today he forgot to put it on again.

    In the mirror above the cracked white sink in the Gents, he sees that one cheek is stippled with the imprint of the brick wall, his eyes are slightly bloodshot and his hair is a little damp from the sweat of an afternoon sleep. His mouth tastes yeasty and sore. He ought to go home.
    The cellar is crowded now.
    Alexander orders soda and lime and stands at the bar. The bartender has ambitions to be a cocktail waiter and makes a performance of being busy. A pint glass is thrown from one hand to the other, cordial is poured through a chrome spout from a great height. Alexander stares past him, ignoring him as he would a child who is showing off. Then suddenly the smoke and the noise are too much for him. He pushes upstairs through the tide of office workers coming in the other direction. Outside, he breathes deeply. It is still bright and sunny.