I’m showing signs of enjoying Denise’s company that little bit too much and I’ve got to watch myself. It would be so easy to have another go at it. Pity fuck if it’s true that she’s been ill. If that is the case then it’s highly probable that she hasn’t had much action going on. And I want sex, I want it very much. It is Jenny that I want but in my eyes that doesn’t seem to be the real issue at this particular moment in time. I am getting such a rise out of Denise with my jokes. I have always believed in my dry wit and with a bit of lubrication it feels effortless. Denise is enjoying my stories, whatever it is that I am narrating to her with conviction. Everything feels right.

Time moves much more quickly than it does normally for me when I am drunk. I wish that the night could last forever. The bar is practically empty apart from the two of us. Graham and the younger girls have gone. The rest of the clientele have hiked off to bed because it’s a Tuesday night and the kind of people who are staying here in this establishment are the kind of people who have early meetings in the morning and they are the kind of people who will take a flight back to Dublin rather than take the train. Because of these observations I rationalize the need to get another drink in quickly in case the staff decide to close the bar. After I order more drinks from the lounge boy I call him back over to me to ask him what time the residents’ bar closes and he says 4 a.m. It is half three in the morning. We have enough time.

Later on we each clutch at our room keys in the lift. Her room is number 401 and that is where we go. Denise opens a bottle of prosecco from the mini bar. We sip it from plastic cups. I tell her all about Jenny and Jerome and what I did to Jenny’s work and the group show. There is nothing that I don’t tell her. As she listens to me I start to kiss her. It is sloppy and I try to undress her, to remove her bra but I can’t undo the catch and it’s as if this very problem is enough to bring me to my senses, the realization that I’m going down a road that I shouldn’t be going down. I want to go there, I want to go there very much. I cannot drink prosecco.

I remove myself from Denise and I touch her face and I tell her that she is very pretty and kind because she is both of these things. But she is not beautiful. I keep that to myself.