Or 1950s Los Angeles beige, with a tint of the dreaded green, as if dullness was needed to compensate for the endless sun that now seemed a little less endless in the face of a changing climate.

‘My name is Lomita Nairn.’

And her hand hung in the space between them.

He touched her skin, satin or silk, confused in that second as to which was softer, then his name syllabled out of his mouth. Two of them.

‘Ever.’

She remained impassive, demanding explanation by her stare.

‘Short for Everett. I will love you Ever, forever, my mother used to say, so…’

She smiled and said,

‘Come again. We’ll have dinner. Maybe. That is if you would like. Or – do you prefer to watch a motion picture?’

‘I don’t mind.’

Intrigued by the formality of the words – motion picture.

‘I sometimes watch old ones in the evening. Dinner is optional.’

‘Yours?’

Responded Ever, with a smile and the consciousness of flattery.

‘No. Good heavens, no, one I made, not really, but… that is all.’

The ‘but’ held for a longer moment than a moment and he sensed it, the feeling of something that hadn’t been done for a long time. That sense of nothing in the in-between time when something should have happened. But hadn’t. And didn’t. And Lomita, in that indeterminate time, did not know why she had proffered the mention of a motion picture. Of the one film. She was frozen with the mistake.

‘I would be delighted.’

Not sure as he said it why he would be or what about, but he decided he wanted to see her again and talk. Yes, next time talk, not stare. The smell was there again. The perfume and just the cleanliness. The organisation of it all, as a person.

‘Goodbye Lomita, if I may call you that, or Miss Nairn.’

‘Lomita is fine.’

She said and he thanked her for the tea.

The pause stood for a time.

And then.

And then.

*

He walked down the circular driveway.

The short distance to the road, he turned right onto Elevado and then left up Doheny. Up the hill to Sunset, passing the almost concealed and decaying precision of an early Frank Lloyd Wright construction, with the singular intention of buying a bottle of tequila at Gil Turner’s on the corner.

He hoped, and had concern, that she would have made the journey back across the big brown room with safety, Manita escorting her for a rest on her bed. A large bed he imagined. A California King he supposed, without any evidence to support his supposition; he thought of her fragility in the expanse of bedding.