His wife rolled him over and began to rub the muscles of his stomach. He opened his eyes a fraction and glimpsed the glint of her earring through her sheet of black hair. She was perspiring. He could smell the natural gardenia odour of her body through the chemical tuberose. She’d be hot to trot tonight. He wondered if there’d be anything worth trotting out for.

Then a provocative idea for a game floated into his head, just as his wife said, “By the way, Turk, thought of a good opener for tonight."

THE EVENING

PRUDENCE COULD HEAR murmurings as she passed the second-floor bathroom. She didn’t stop; it was a weekly ritual, one of the many that Zeno still indulged in with his daughter. This particular routine had started soon after Zen was born. Bath night was something her husband had brought with him from his working-class boyhood; showers sufficed for most of the week, but Friday was bath time. The high-pressure alternating shower that Kenny Wisdom had bought for them in America still functioned perfectly and was used by Zeno religiously every day. But Prudence felt sure it was only to give ‘tub night’ its sense of occasion. She had often said that their daughter was getting too old to still be bathing with her father, and Zeno had promised to change the routine when she was nine. Zen had celebrated her ninth birthday this week (a high tea had been given, with Zen’s two best friends, Karma and Alleluiah, in attendance), and Prudence waited to see if Zeno would keep his word.

Inside the bathroom, bevelled discs of glass cast prisms on the walls. The windows were misted up, and the condensation had been used by father and daughter to practise freehand circles drawn with their fingers. Some were quite perfect. Those less good had been made into faces, with the names of Zen’s schoolteachers written underneath.

The tub itself had seen better days. An important feature of the house when Zeno purchased it, the bath was deep enough to cover his shoulders when he sat at the wide end. Zen admired her dad’s shoulders. Lately, she had started taking note of the boys at PE lessons, on the lookout for a similar pair.

“Who’s this Miss Davidson you don’t like?” asked Zeno, pointing to one of his daughter’s mist-drawings.

“She’s horrible and she hates me.”

“Does she? Are you sure?”

“Well, she always picks on me.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I dunno.”

“Maybe she picks on you because you don’t like her.”

“Oh, don’t be soft, Dad.”

“It could be true. I bet she doesn’t get up the noses of the other kids who don’t mind her. It’s your resistance to her that she pushes like a button. If you could lose the button she wouldn’t have anything to push. Now wouldn’t that be a smarter way of dealing with her?”

Zen considered a moment. “It would, if I could do it.”

“Of course you can do it. Just look at her eyes the way you do the sad animals you like so much, and then you could touch her.