He was consoled, he didn’t want sweetening anyway, but revelled imperceptibly in the control that he interpreted as care. It was nice to be cared for. To be thought about. Considered. He just hoped she would give him milk.

No names had been exchanged and he wondered whether he should ask the question. Her shape was thin, and her skin had witnessed hours of sun in an era when people loved it, without guilt. Her hair swept back, clean and grey but thick for someone who must be seventy? Eighty? Had he any idea at all?

Her dress rolled over her thighs and he could see the underneath of her right leg in its motion of crossing lightly over the left. It was wrinkled with the pressure of leg on leg.

Her precision at pouring betrayed the ritual of someone conditioned by solitude, giving every moment purpose and elegance. The ritual of the day; he wondered if, at six o’clock, there would be a drink poured with the same attention to the physical movement of hands and arms and a sweeping of the air that moved with pleasure out of the way, sensing this effortless lift of cup to lip and lip back to saucer, which was held in the left hand as the right did the sweep.

Not work, just rhythm. Grace.

‘Tell me.’

Broke his trance.

‘Why are you here?’

‘You invited me.’

‘But why accept, have you nothing to do?’

This completely stopped him. He had a lot to do, but why had he accepted? It was pertinent as a question.

Her legs uncrossed, and he felt the embarrassment of looking at them as they did so. Something that women must take so much for granted. But this one watched his watching, and he awkwardly slurped his tea, attempting to convince that was what he was intending to do while his gaze was fixed. Post movement she sat still with the confidence of someone who was used to being observed.

He thought that she was really quite beautiful. Wrinkled and thin, but really quite. Her question had still received no reply.

‘I suppose I am not very happy really.’

She said without any emotion at all. After a contemplative silence, that appeared to concern neither of them.

*

He had rented the apartment on Havenhurst Drive.

In West Hollywood for one month; it should be ample time, he thought, to carry out what he needed to do. What he felt committed to do. The only thing at thirty that he felt able to do now; knowing that he would never get away with it, but incapable of doing anything else. It was like an inertia, set in concrete.

*

Thirty years on earth and a realisation that in fact he didn’t really have quite the same lust.

At least in quality and quantity anymore, this hit him like a missed sit.

Gosh oh God, that which drove him now didn’t even get him standing.