I wish, she said, doing that thing with her eyes; you’d never read any J.D. Salinger. Fucked up clever boys who think that because they know they’re fucked up and clever makes it alright to be fucked up and clever never get anywhere. I helped myself to her last cigarette and stared at the jukebox, watching the numbers flicker as the next song cued up. It was 158, Dave and Ansel Collins, Double Barrel. I waited for the piano part to start.

All I’m saying, I said; is that the future has already happened and I’ve seen it and it’s really nothing that should concern us. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we could dismiss it out of hand here and now without any further discussion. It’s just you and me sitting in this bar and me obsessing over a series of interchangeable girls and you listening or not listening. You might become interested in a certain pair of shoes at one point. The precise details elude me.

She did that other thing with her eyes and picked up the empty box of Marlboro Lights, opening it then closing it, tracing the gold diagonals with her fingernail. She looked for a moment that she was thinking that I was thinking she was going to start crying, which I was, but she wasn’t.

Haven’t you noticed anything different about me today? she asked, in a way that made it clear that there was something different about her today and that I hadn’t noticed and that this latest small but significant failure had been noted. I stared at the jukebox again and tried to blow a smoke ring like my grandfather could. I couldn’t.

Yes. I said, screwing up my eye against the smoke, trying to make the movement look natural. You’re sitting in a different chair. This was true. Normally, she sat in the chair by the fireplace with its cracked kitchen tiles and year old newspapers stuffed into the flue to block out the draught. I usually looked over her shoulder when she was talking and tried to pick out the headlines and think how much better things had been then even though I hadn’t known it at the time. But tonight she was sitting at the next chair around, facing the door. She’d been glancing towards it all night. I told her all of this. She did the first thing with her eyes again.

I’m not all in black. she said. I stopped drawing diagrams in the spilt beer on the tabletop and checked the truth of this statement. The statement was true. Her skirt was black and her shoes were black and her coat that had been hanging over the back of her chair before it had slipped onto the floor was black and her hair was black and her glasses were black but she had a silk scarf tied around her neck that wasn’t black. I looked at it for a long time, trying to make my mind up what colour it was, whether it was scarlet or crimson or vermilion, before deciding that such a level of detail was not necessary and that it was just red. I thought I should say something so I told her how French aristocrats during the revolution used to fasten red ribbons around their throats to show that they weren’t afraid of the guillotine. She was silent and then the door opened and I watched her look up and then look down.

It’s that dog again. she said. The one that got into my handbag and ate my nicotine gum. The dog, the old dog, a terrier of some sort with a little beard like a jazz man with flecks of white, the dog that didn’t belong to anyone, the dog that got into her handbag and ate her nicotine gum and got so wired it chased its tail for three hours straight and made me laugh so much I thought I was never going to come down. I watched it make a circuit of the bar, hard pads tapping on the lino, then go up to the Spanish girl and lick her hand until she woke up, her eyes slowly opening, her hair half over her face and her mouth crooked, like someone had drawn it on and slipped.

Who is that girl? I said. And why does the dog that got into your handbag and ate your nicotine gum always go up to her?

You know who she is. she said. It’s the girl that you always pretend not to remember after that night when you tried to kiss her and she turned her face away. The one you think is Spanish because she lisps when she says the letter c. And the dog that got into my handbag and ate my nicotine gum hasn’t always gone up to her. It’s only gone up to her since that night when she was here with the boy with the scar and the motorcycle helmet and she was laughing and laughing and then he said something quiet and left and she was crying for hours and they got some gin from behind the bar.

The door opened again and she looked up and then down again. The song on the jukebox finished and the numbers flickered and I said what I always said, that this song was a message song and that all previous omens were annulled and that this was the one that counted and she said what she always said, that you couldn’t push the universe around like that. What about that time that I’d said that the next song was a message song and it had come on and it had been Tiger Feet by Mudd because the man with the long hair and the crazy fringe was drunk and he always put it on when he was drunk and did that dance like the boys on Top of the Pops did with their thumbs in their belt loops? Then I was going to say that the absence of an omen was an omen in itself, the most profound omen of all, in point of fact, because it proved that omens were complex and had to be respected but that this time was different but then she started talking again and I forgot.

He’s just come in. she said. The boy with the scar and the motorcycle helmet. The one who made the girl that you think is Spanish cry. I shifted in my seat so I could watch them in the mirror hanging over the fireplace, could see him go over to her and her look up and him sit down and she wasn’t crying this time but he was crying and he put his head on her shoulder and she ran her fingernails through his hair. His hair was tangled and her fingernail kept snagging and she stopped and unpicked the tangles until there were no tangles left and her fingernails went straight through. He closed his eyes and opened them again and when he opened them again they were bright and washed clean. And while all this went on the dog walked off from the Spanish girl and went behind the bar and stood up on its legs and licked the drips off the Guinness tap, creamy froth collecting in its beard like it was going to have a shave like a dog in a cartoon. I was drinking Guinness like always and I thought that I should have been bothered because if it was drinking now and no-one was stopping it then chances were it had done it before and no-one had stopped it but I wasn’t bothered, I wasn’t bothered at all.

Do you think I’m a genius? I asked her, I mean her as in her, not the Spanish girl; Because if I am then all of this doesn’t matter and it doesn’t matter that I can’t do the simple things that everyone can do without thinking about it for hours on end and trying to make it all fit together all the time when it doesn’t all fit together. I wish you could just go to some mystic in a cave and he’d place a hand on your head and say a word or give you some infusion made from tree bark and flowers that only open at night and make it all go away. She didn’t answer, but took hold of my hand, spreading it palm up on the table, tracing the lines with her fingernail, the heart line straight and carrying on and then stopping under the middle finger, the life line curving and then breaking up into little plaits like water breaking up around a rock. I watched her do it and it was all a million miles away even though I could feel her nail as it traced the lines, not sharp and jagged at the point where she’d bitten it like it normally was but blunt and smooth, like she’d filed it. I looked at it and thought that I was right and that she had filed it and I looked at her other nails and thought that she’d filed those as well. Then I looked at them again and thought that she hadn’t just filed them she’d put something on them too, something clear that made them shine when they hadn’t been shiny before.

I looked in the mirror at the Spanish girl and the boy with the motorcycle helmet and the scar again and they were sitting facing each other with their foreheads touching and her hair falling away from her face and slipping into his hair and winding around it so that you couldn’t tell whose hair was whose. Then the door opened and closed again and she, I mean she as in she, not the Spanish girl, looked up and this time she didn’t look down again and she took her hand away from my hand and closed it up, finger by finger, making a fist.

Check this out. I said, looking at the man who had just walked in. I mean, who precisely does he think he is with those shoes and that Death in Venice suit? He looks like he should be lurking around canals staring mournfully at gondolas and having inappropriate yearnings towards golden haired boys. Either that or off admiring some ruins somewhere and boring some poor taxi driver senseless about the ineffable beauty of an Ionic column and the lost vitality of Classical pantheism. I was on a roll and I’d only touched on his linen suit and his loafers and I hadn’t even started on his jewellery. I was on a roll and I was about to start on the ring he was wearing, heavy white gold with a heavy jewel, a heavy blue jewel, an emerald or a sapphire or whatever it was and I was going to tell her that it made him look like some cardinal gone to seed and like he should be swinging a censer of incense rather than that frankly ludicrous umbrella which was a separate matter entirely. But I couldn’t say any of this because instead of him walking into earshot and me having to stop talking or not stop talking but just drop my voice for a second but then him walking out of earshot, to the bar or wherever, and me being able to talk normally again, instead of this he walked into earshot and stayed in earshot. More than this, he came up to the table and stood next to her and looked down at her and I made like I was exasperated but really I was pleased because I knew that we’d have something to talk about afterwards, that he’d say something or do something and we could say it or do it afterwards and it would be something else to say or do. And it happened straight away and it was better than I’d thought it would be, the way he brought up his hand and touched the side of her face and brushed back a stray lock of her hair that had fallen down and was curving across her cheek and tucked it behind her ear and asked her if she was ready to go. And even before he’d finished doing it I was running it through in my mind, trying it out, practicing the way he was sort of half smiling and the way that his eyes sort of went bigger when he was speaking and smaller when he wasn’t and I was thinking about how I’d do it later, how I’d brush back her hair and half smile and make my eyes go bigger and then go smaller and ask her if she was ready to go. And I was thinking how I wouldn’t just do it once but lots of times, how I wouldn’t just do it tonight but lots of other nights and how it would be funnier every time and I looked over at her to see what her face was saying and to see if she knew how funny it was going to be, but instead she was nodding and saying yes, saying yes she was ready to go and standing up and smoothing her skirt with her hands and fiddling with the silk scarf, the red silk scarf around her throat. And then he was looking down at me and sort of half-smiling again and then he had his hand on her elbow and was guiding her towards the door like he was guiding her towards the dance floor for the waltz or across the deck of some ocean liner in the 1920s, all ease and gracious living. And I was going to say all this but I couldn’t because by the time I’d finished thinking it they were at the door and he was out of the door but she was leaning back in and looking at me and raising her hand to wave and we sort of looked at one another for seconds and seconds and it was longer or felt longer.

I suppose, I said; there’s always something I could do. If it came to it, I mean. And she smiled a thin straight smile and shook her head so slightly you almost couldn’t see it happen and then she was gone, the door swinging shut, open, shut behind her. In the mirror the Spanish girl and the boy with the motorcycle helmet and the scar were still sitting with their foreheads touching but the dog wasn’t there and I wondered where the dog was and then I looked down and it was at my feet sort of tugging at my shoelace with its teeth and I thought that I should have minded but I didn’t mind, I didn’t mind at all.

Then I remembered the song, the message song and it was right, it was just a silly phase I was going through.