The cement stairway going down to his door smells of piss and antiseptic; I hold my breath as usual. I look in through the letter flap: he isn’t up, so I let myself in with my key. His two-room flat is more untidy than last time but it’s been worse. Today the dust and litter leave my skin alone. I set my black bag on the table and go through to the bedroom.

He’s on the bed, asleep in a tangled net of blankets, on his back with his knees up. I’m always afraid to wake him: I remember the stories about men who kill in their sleep with their eyes open, thinking the woman is a burglar or an enemy soldier. You can’t be convicted for it. I touch him on the leg and stand back, ready to run, but he wakes immediately and turns his head towards me.

“Hi,” he says. “Jesus I’m hung over.”

It’s rude of him to be hung over when I’ve come all this way to see him. “I brought you a flower,” I say, determined to be calm and cheerful.

I go out to the other room and unwind the rose from its toilet paper and look for something to put it in. There’s a stack of never-used plates in his cupboard, the rest of the space is books and papers. I find a lone glass and fill it with water at the sink. Forks and knives, also unused, are rusting in the drainer. I list to myself the things he needs: a vase, more glasses, a dishtowel.

I carry the rose in to him and he sniffs at it dutifully and I set the glass beside the alarm clock on the improvised table, two chairs and a board. He would really like to go back to sleep, but he compromises by pulling me down beside him and involving me in the blankets. His head seeks the hollow between my shoulder and collarbone and he closes his eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” he says. Why should he have missed me, I’ve only been gone five days. The last time wasn’t good, I was nervous, the wallpaper was bothering me and the bright peel-off stick-on butterflies on the cupboard, not his, prior to him. He kisses me: he does have a hangover, his mouth tastes of used wine, tobacco resin and urban decay. He doesn’t want to make love, I can tell, I stroke his head understandingly; he nuzzles. I think again of the Moonlight Pavilion, the Slow Loris creeping cautiously through its artificial world, water dishes and withering branches, its eyes large with apprehension, its baby clutched to its fur.

“Want to have lunch?” he says. This is his way of telling me he’s in no shape.

“I brought it. Or most of it anyway. I’ll go round the corner and get the rest. It’s healthier than those greasy hamburgers and chips.”

“Great,” he says, but he makes no move to get up.

“Have you been taking your vitamin pills?” They were my idea, I was afraid he’d get scurvy, eating the way he does. I always take them myself. I feel him nod ritualistically.

I can’t see whether he’s telling the truth. I turn over so I’m looking down at him. “Who were you drinking with? Did you go out after you moved the furniture?”

“The furniture was already moved when I got there. She couldn’t call to tell me.” That’s true, he has no phone; our conversations take place in booths. “She wanted to go out and drink instead. I spilled chop suey all over myself,” he says with self-pity.

I am supposed to commiserate. “Was it digested or undigested?” I ask.

“I hadn’t touched a bite of it.”

I’m surprised at her for being so obvious, but then she’s always seemed unsubtle, blunt and straightforward, captain of a women’s basketball team, no, high school gym teacher with whistle in mouth. An old friend. No nonsense. Mine had bloomers and skinny legs and made jokes about what she called The Cramps in a way that suggested we weren’t supposed to have them. Trampolines, the body contorted, made to perform, the mind barking orders.

“She’s been trying to seduce you for months,” I say, smiling; the thought amuses me, she looks like a marmot. At this he tries to shrug, but I have him pinned, one arm across the neck. “Did she succeed?”

“By the time we got out of the bar the subway was closed.”

I hadn’t been serious, but this is suddenly a confession. I want to ignore it but I go on. “You mean she spent the night here?”

“As opposed to trying to get all the way back to her place,” he says, “yes.” It would be a reason like that. Logical as hell.

What do you think you are, the YWCA, I want to say, but instead I ask the obvious. “I suppose you slept with her.” My voice is steady, I’m steady too, I won’t let it tip me.

“It was her idea. I was drunk.” He thinks both these things are good excuses.

“Why did you tell me?” If he hadn’t told me and I’d found out I’d say, Why didn’t you tell me; I know this while I’m asking it.

“You could have figured it out for yourself, the alarm’s set for eight.”

“What does that mean?” I say; I don’t connect. I’m cold, I get up off the bed and move backwards towards the doorway.

I am sitting in a brand-new hamburger palace; across the table from me is a man eating a cheeseburger. Feeding places are the only chances I have to watch him: the rest of the time I’m looking at the blurs through taxi windows or tracing the unfamiliar wallpaper designs. The colour of his face matches the Formica tabletops: off-white. At other tables are other men, also eating cheeseburgers and being watched by other women. We all have our coats on. The air shimmers with rock music and the smell of exhausted french fries. Though it is winter the room reminds me of a beach, even to the crumpled .paper napkins and pop bottles discarded here and there and the slightly gritty texture of the cheeseburgers.

He pushes away his cole slaw.

“You should eat it,” I say.

“No no; can’t eat vegies,” he says. The suppressed dietician in me notes that he is probably suffering from a vitamin A deficiency. I should have been a health inspector, or maybe an organic farmer.

“I’ll trade you then,” I say. “I’ll eat your cole slaw if you’ll finish my cheeseburger.”

He thinks there’s a catch somewhere but decides to risk it. The switch is made and we both examine our halves of the deal. Beyond the plate-glass window slush drifts from the night sky, inside though we are lighted, safe and warm, filtering music through our gills as though it’s oxygen.

He finishes my cheeseburger and lights a cigarette. I’m annoyed with him for some reason, though I can’t recall which. I thumb my card-file of nasty remarks, choose one: You make love like a cowboy raping a sheep. I’ve been waiting for the right time to say that, but maybe peace is more important.

Not for him; hunger satisfied, he turns back to an earlier argument. “You’re trying to see how much shit I’ll take, aren’t you?” he says. “Stop treating me like a nine-year-old.”

“There’s one good way to keep me from treating you like one,” I say. What I mean is that he should stop acting like one, but he doesn’t bite. In fact he may not even have heard: the music is louder.

“Let’s split,” he says, and we get up. I check the cashier as we go out: cashiers fill me with dismay, I want them to be happy but they never are. This one is waterlogged and baggy, saturated with too much sound and too many french fries. She is apathetic rather than surly. Fight back, I tell her silently.

We hit the air and walk, not touching. I can’t remember what he did but he won’t get away with it. He’s wearing a long khaki army surplus coat with brass buttons; it’s handsome, but right now it only reminds me of my fear of doormen, bus drivers and postal officials, those who use their uniforms as excuses. I steer my course so he will have to go through all the puddles. If I can’t win, I tell him, neither can you. I was saner then, I had defences.

“I never get up at eight. She had to go to work.” He’s conscious now that I’m not going to laugh with him over this one as I have over the others. “If you’d been here it wouldn’t have happened,” he says, trying to put it off on me.