We talked for two hours. Espresso gave way to cappuccino. For half an hour, he discussed the special report. Ella Fitzgerald and her golden voice were a seductive distraction but I listened attentively and took notes, being the highly trained professional that I am. Then he asked, ‘Do you still live with your parents?’

I was stunned by the question. I told him I lived alone. Said that my parents lived outside the city and that I was an only child. He told me that he was, too.

Then began the dangerous ritual of clichés about an unhappy marriage. That his wife was busy pursuing her own ambitions, that they had no child to bind them.

I had to put an end to this. He was looking for prey.

I am too. Is anyone willing to surrender a soul?

‘I have to go,’ I said.

It wasn’t all that late, yet Irwan wanted to escort me home. I said it wasn’t necessary but he insisted.

‘Okay, as far as the front gate.’

The man knows you live alone.

You and I are lonely creatures. I absorb life that is in the throes of death because red is almost finished, fatal, a full stop.

He asked to use the bathroom, so I let him in.

Enter. Scale the fence, O prowlers. Let us leap, do not skulk. Look what you can taste in the orchard. I followed because I too am a thief, a pilferer of life and death, and I will make you a ghost.

He sat in my wicker chair, drinking a glass of water. He opened a button of his shirt and loosened his tie – a tie that was totally wrong.

Look at the man’s neck. Do you like vanilla ice-cream? Taste its iciness with your tongue and it will melt in your mouth.

He spoke my name. It was a murmur, but I caught what he said afterwards: ‘We always knew what would happen between us.’

I was shaking. My fears had come true. But I was professional; I knew to reject him, to throw him out if necessary.

Yet I felt him getting closer and closer. Cologne and cigarette smoke wafted from his neatly trimmed hair. I felt as if –

Sucked in?

Atop the ice-cream sits a shiny, round cherry. The fruit tempts, challenges danger. Will I fall? But I want it so much. I imbibe life.

His neck is so beautiful. And I am so thirsty for blood.

—

8:00 am. The phone rings.

‘Hello, Saras?’ A woman’s voice on the other end. ‘Irwan’s not answering his phone. He has a meeting with a client at eleven – could you remind him as soon as you see him?’

Beauty and the Seventh Dwarf

I never knew her real name.