Page 12 of Last Night

This is so grimly tragi-comic and he’s so earnest that I have to make an effort not to laugh.

‘You know it could be psychosomatic?’ I say. ‘You think of her, and then you feel her sitting on you?’

‘I didn’t fancy her! She was, like, sixty! Ugh.’

‘No … I … OK.’

I’m going to copulate with someone who sincerely believes in ghosts, and doesn’t understand the word psychosomatic.

‘Other times, I’ve heard her walking about in here,’ Zack continues, on a Lore of Linda roll now, hands on hips, casting a suspicious look around the room.

‘How do you know it’s her?’ I say. ‘This is quite an old building. Could be any number of dead people?’

‘Because she had these shoes that made her sound like a clippy-cloppy goat. Heels. Brrr.’ Zack shudders.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I say.

‘I do. It’s only science,’ Zack says.

‘I’m fairly sure, whatever else it is, it’s not science.’

‘It is. Principle of physics, a form of energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change form, right?’

‘… Riiight?’

‘So when someone dies, where does their energy go? Into another form. Ghosts.’

‘Well, no, if you’re buried and decompose into the earth you’re worm food. That’s the transfer of energy. Into the soil.’

‘Worm food energy.’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s cremation then? What does that energy become?’

‘Fire?’

‘Woah …’ Zack pauses. ‘I still think there’s spirit energy. That has to go somewhere.’

This is pretty bad foreplay, it has to be said, and my worm energy is seriously on the wane.

I look at the recliner and wonder if Zack always brings women he meets in the bar up here to this seat. I’m grateful for the fact he starts some enthusiastic kissing so I can stop thinking.

I push him down on the cushions and straddle him, a knee either side of his legs, while he does some unpromisingly aggressive tit-squeezing, as if he’s assessing the freshness of fruit at a market. As if he’s Rick Stein with a couple of pomegranates at a souk in Fez. He’ll give them a sniff in a second.

I had forgotten how stressful sex with a new person is, the pressure to perform being a really sexy person who is naturally good at sex, a part-time erotica master. The stupid hair-tossing stuff and the arching of your back. As if there’s a panel watching you beyond a one-way mirror, appraising your performance and holding up paddle boards with their scores. It’s kind of inimical to enjoying yourself.

Sex is inherently ridiculous. You get better at it once you accept that. Really don’t want to be thinking of Ed quotes right now. What if … I imagine Zack is …

‘Oh, shit. I should’ve said,’ Zack says, looking suddenly worried, catching his breath, his large, hot hands clamped on my seventy-denier-clad thighs.

‘It’s OK,’ I say, smiling, moving my hair over one shoulder in a hopefully alluring way, ‘I have condoms.’

Hah, do you seriously think I’d leave that to you, and/or chance.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t do hair.’

‘You don’t do what?’ I’d thought that move looked pretty good.

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