like a fool, I start to cry.’
As I watched, her eyes brimmed with tears.
‘I cry right there in the middle of the day on the street, with my friends watching. And I say, “I can’t tell you.” And then he gets mad. Wants to know if his wife was rude to me. Or whether something has happened at work. And then finally I tell him, “I can’t come because I like you. I like you very much. And this is very unprofessional. And I can lose my job.” And he looks at me for one moment and he says nothing. Nothing at all. And then he gets back in his car and his driver takes him away. And I think, Oh, no. Now I will never see this man again, and I have lost my job. And I go to work the next day and I am so nervous. So nervous, Louisa. My stomach hurts!’
‘Because you thought he’d tell your boss.’
‘Exactly this. But you know what happened when I arrive?’
‘What?’
‘Enormous bouquet of red roses is waiting for me. Biggest I have ever seen, with beautiful velvet scented roses. So soft you want to touch them. No name on it. But I know immediately. And then every day a new bouquet of red roses. Our apartment is filled with roses. My friends say they are sick from the smell.’ She started to laugh. ‘And then on the last day he comes to my house again and I go down and he asks me to get in the car with him. And we sit in the back and he asks the driver to go for a walk and he tells me he is so unhappy and that from the moment we met he could not stop thinking about me and that all I have to say is one word and he will leave his wife and we will be together.’
‘And you hadn’t even kissed?’
‘Nothing. I have massaged his buttocks, sure, but is not the same.’ She breathed out, savouring the memory. ‘And I knew. I knew we must be together. And I said it. I said, “Yes.” ’
I was transfixed.
‘That night he goes home and he tells his wife that he does not want to be married any more. And she is mad. So mad. And she ask him why and he tells her he cannot live in marriage with no love. And that night he calls me up from hotel and asks me to come meet him and we are in this suite at the Ritz Carlton. You stayed at Ritz Carlton?’
‘Uh – no.’
‘I walk in and he is standing by the door, like he is too nervous to sit down, and he tells me he knows he is stereotype and he is too old for me and his body is wrecked from this arthritis but if there is a chance I really do want to be with him he will do everything he can to make me happy. Because he just has feeling about us, you know? That we are soulmates. And then we hold each other and finally we kiss, and then we stay awake all night, talking, talking about our childhoods and our lives and our hopes and dreams.’
‘This is the most romantic story I’ve ever heard.’
‘And then we fuck, of course, and my God, I can feel that this man has been frozen for years, you know?’
At this point I coughed a piece of ramen onto the table. When I looked up several people at nearby tables were watching us.
Agnes’s voice lifted. She gesticulated into the air. ‘You cannot believe it. It is like a hunger in him, like all this hunger from years and years is just pulsing through him. Pulsing! That first night he is insatiable.’
‘Okay,’ I squeaked, wiping my mouth with a paper napkin.
‘It is magical, this meeting of our bodies. And afterwards we just hold each other for hours and I wrap myself around him and he lays his head on my breasts and I promise him he will never be frozen again. You understand?’
There was silence in the restaurant. Behind Agnes, a young man in a hooded top was staring at the back of her head, his spoon raised halfway to his mouth. When he saw me watching, he dropped it with a clatter.
‘That – that’s a really lovely story.’
‘And he keeps his promise. Everything he says is true. We are happy together. So happy.’ Her face fell a little. ‘But his