Well, we had two cars. Mine was the smaller one. One afternoon, I left the club early and told her I was going home. She was at the bar, still in those tennis shorts. I went out of the club and I drove my car a block or two away from the club and parked it and then I went back to the club parking lot. I waited until the colored boy who parked the cars had gone into the club and then I opened the trunk of my wife’s car and crawled into it and pulled the cover shut.

I can see now that it was stupid. Worse than stupid: ridiculous. Hiding there in that trunk airless in almost a foetal position for nearly two hours. I thought I was doing it because I absolutely had to have the truth. I had to catch them at it. But, of course, that wasn’t what I was after at all. It has taken me all this time in New York to find out why I really got into the trunk of my wife’s car. The why is very interesting.

I did it because I wanted to be smashed totally flat.

Yes.

I wanted to be demolished. Utterly. To go under. Really, under. To be eliminated. From all the fucking tennis games this world consists of.

The killer games.

Yes.

You know: the court is really nicest when it’s empty and the net sags a little, and all the players have gone home. It’s very peaceful then and almost beautiful.

She came out finally and got in the car and I felt it start. There isn’t much point in describing how I felt or what I thought inside the trunk except to say that by now the one thing I didn’t want her to do was drive home. That is, I didn’t want her to be innocent. I had nothing to be afraid of there: she wasn’t.

The car stopped. The car door slammed. I waited. When I thought I had waited long enough I let myself out of the trunk of the car. It was dark. Her car was parked in a driveway. The street sloped. His house had a lawn. I crept across the lawn. There was a bush with some large white heavy flowers on it. The bush screened most of the window. I got around or rather into the bush and I looked into the window. They were on the floor in the living room.

When I say on the floor I don’t mean prone on the floor. I mean sitting on the floor. Prone is what comes later. It winds up prone. I was watching the introductory rites. The stuff that goes with sitting on the floor with the hi-fi and the uncorked bottle on the rug under the piano with the pouring her glass full with the seeing the lights aren’t too bright the atmospheric stuff the lead-up. She had on a short tweed skirt and a sweater. The sweater I may add was of a very good English wool and bought by me. He was wearing a polo shirt with short sleeves. So actually the only things naked at the moment were his arms and her face. Very often that’s enough.