Chapter 16

After Hours

I was near Shane, who was spooning an egg dish into his mouth, eyeing the last remnants of a dazzling sunset through one of the hall’s tall windows.

“Have you tried Juan’s tacos?” Dianne, next to me, inquired.

Shane turned to Dianne. One of the tacos was firmly in her hand, partly consumed. “Not as yet,” Shane replied. “Do you recommend them?”

Her nodding response was eloquently muffled by the bite she took as the question was asked, so Shane took the chance to recommend a Thai omelette.

A friendly debate ensued, occasionally turning to quiet exaggeration, about the relative merits of dishes we had sampled at the post-meeting feast, and others besides.

I had sampled freely, but had stayed close to David and Dianne. In particular, I had kept my distance from Mattie.

After Shane moved away, Dianne whispered to me, “Our fondness for spicy foods is perhaps the only common interest he and I have. But here, at least, it suffices.”

“This is glorious food,” I said, grabbing another samosa. Most of the dishes were simple but very flavoursome. “Who does the catering?”

Dianne, still free of her fidgeting, explained that each month, except January and December, the task of preparing post-meeting feasts was rotated between groups of seven or eight households. Combinations changed each year, except for firm favourites, though three households who never attended the feasts excluded themselves from the task. In January, the most laid-back month, still the most popular for holidays, no feast was held—but then, many people were often still recovering from the previous month’s grand gorge, to which all ten of the monthly cooking groups contributed. It all cost nothing, other than time and energy—unless exotic ingredients were included. When the cooks ordered the food to be prepared, they simply ‘billed’ it as a locality ‘expense’—CAPE then treated the food as part of the yearly quotas for the locality’s members (non-attendees excepted).

Later, queuing for an additional helping of salad and a third or fourth top-up of wine, I belatedly noticed that the woman in front of me looked exactly like Yvette—from the rear at least. I found myself hoping. Why not? She’d already appeared in this dream once, if in a somewhat unwelcome way, so why not again, more conveniently? The woman selected her food and turned to head off, but then noticed me.

With a generous enchanting smile, she said, “Hello Ernest.” The smile was also Yvette’s, as was the straight nose, full red lips, and soft blue eyes. But she was not Yvette. Her voice was deeper and huskier for one, and she may have been a little younger for another. Still, I could not take my eyes off her. She wore a loose, highly coloured, floral top which left her arms bare, but gave no more than a hint of cleavage, and an even more colourful pair of striped but tight slacks. Yet it was not her clothes that caught my eye—it was her tantalising resemblance to Yvette, and, I must admit, her equally tantalising differences.

When I failed to respond to her greeting, she tilted her head and said, “Is something wrong? Do I have crumbs on my lips?”

She tried to wipe away the imaginary crumbs before I could reply. “No, there’s nothing there,” I said. “Sorry, I just…”

A friendly voice jostled me from behind. “Hey, Ernest, are you going to top up your plate or not?”

The woman moved off, and I hurriedly scooped a generous helping of salad onto my plate. When I turned, I could not see her. I moved about, trying to look nonchalant but searching for her. When I finally found her, she was chatting with another woman of about her age, close to the food table but further along it. I wandered near, trying to look as if she was not the sole object of my attention, but then stopped, stunned to hear the other woman say, “O Yvette, you didn’t?!”

I almost dropped my plate. The efforts I made to prevent it happening must have caught Yvette’s eye, for when I looked up, she was watching me. “Are you okay, Ernest?” she said. The other woman also watched me, but her attention was diverted by a man who walked up to her and started talking about the weather. Yvette walked closer to me, apparently demanding a response.

“I’m not Ernest,” I finally said.

She smiled. “O? Who are you then? Charlie Chaplin?”

“My name is Steven Stone, and I’m dreaming this. All of it.” Her eyebrows lowered in uncertainty, but she kept smiling. “I’m not joking. I know everyone else thinks I’m Ernest, too, and I look just like him. But I’m not him. You look a lot like my wife, but you’re not. Although you have her name.”

“Her name?!” she said with obvious scepticism, her smile disappearing, and her head tilting. “Has your experience with Mattie suddenly scared you straight?”

“I’ve always been straight.”

“That will come as something of a surprise to many men. And to me! How many times did I try to convert you at school?” The smile returned, a knowing version, which left me guessing—and curious.

With my mind’s track derailed by her words, I found myself unsure how to reply, though I kept gazing intently at her.

Her smile faded with concern. “Are you all right, Ernest?”

“Steven,” I said calmly.

“Okay—Steven, then. Should I come up with a new name for myself, too? What about Cleo?”

“No,” I said, earnestly (or, rather, stevenly). “Yvette sounds just right.” Realising that if I did not soon prove to be more engaging company, she would likely seek it elsewhere, I made a hurried attempt to be conversational, the choice of topic perhaps inevitable. “This ‘converting’ you attempted—I take it, it failed.”

The smile returned, complete with the briefest most delicate guffaw I’ve ever heard. “Yes, it failed. Don’t you remember?”

“How could I? It wasn’t me.”

“Come on, Ernest, a joke’s a joke.”

“It’s no joke. My name is Steven.”

“Right! And you’re in the middle of a dream?”

“Right.”

“And you’re straight as a board!?”

“Right.”

She tilted her head again and studied me long and hard. She hadn’t removed her eyes from mine since our conversation began, and in marked contrast to Dianne, she almost never blinked. I almost felt like I was starting to wilt under her steady gaze. “Don’t believe you,” she said suddenly, matter-of-factly. She straightened her head, and drained her almost empty glass. “You’ll have to prove it to me,” she added in the same tone, before surprising me with a slow wink. “Your place or mine?” she added, smiling.

My earlier cognitive derailment suddenly detoured and sped up, racing in the direction of a possible tunnel. What sort of dream was this? I could not think what to say.

“So,” she said, “when it comes to the crunch…”

“No,” I said, “it’s not that. It’s… well, there’s my wife.”

“O right. Your wife. Is she part of this dream, too?”

“No, no,” I said, shaking my head.

“Then why not? If this isn’t real, why not go for it? Is your sense of fidelity so overpowering you have to reject a wet dream?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, are you dreaming, or aren’t you?”

I could not reply. Sinking in indecision, I drained my glass, put my plate down, and bought time by offering her a refill, which she accepted. But the time it took me to return with two full glasses did not bring me any closer to a decision. It had to be a dream, and yet I could not shake the feeling that were I to indulge in it fully, I would be betraying Yvette—the real Yvette. My Yvette.

When I handed the other Yvette her drink, she looked me in the eye and grinned. At first, I thought her grin was wanton, but the next moment it struck me as cynical, sceptical. “Well?” she said, “is it to be a sweet dream or not?”

A sudden loud noise from the front of the hall saved us from another awkward silence. A young man with outlandishly coloured patchwork clothes and a shock of bright red hair had apparently fallen over on the stage, and was noisily clambering upright. Only after he stood, did I realise he had fallen off a unicycle and was attempting to re-mount it.

“Ahhh,” drawled a woman behind Yvette. “The entertainment.” She and the rest of the hall’s occupants gave a brief round of applause.

Yvette, still grinning, turned from me to watch the man on stage. Although I was glad for his inadvertent interruption of my conversation with Yvette, his obviously clownish antics gave me no joy. Nevertheless, occasional gentle laughter erupted from many in the hall, especially children.

After one tired routine twisting balloons into shapes that were only supposed to be animals, I could not restrain myself. “I hope this guy is cheap,” I whispered into Yvette’s ear.

She turned to me and her smile was gone, replaced with a bemused expression. “What’re you talking about?” she whispered. “You must recognise Luke. As if we’d pay him! Or he’d accept payment.”

A soft groan escaped me. “Another free service?!” I said, in a loud whisper not directed especially at Yvette. “You are a selfless bunch of do-gooders, aren’t you?” I took another long swig of wine.

One or two closest by turned their heads to me in mild and clearly surprised disapproval, but it was Yvette’s reaction that took most of my attention. She tilted her head again—something I soon realised she did whenever surprised or curious—and her bemusement turned darker. “What are you talking about, Ernest?” she said, just loudly enough for me to hear.

Feeling frustrated, and suddenly impulsive, I whispered, “How about your place?” The question apparently caught Yvette by nearly as much surprise as it did me. And yet almost immediately I said it, I was glad. Maybe it was just the wine going to my head, or maybe the ‘entertainment’ was driving me to seek a more enjoyable alternative, but I suddenly felt like I’d wracked myself with enough indecision. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Of course this was all a dream. Surely that was made obvious by the fact that the one woman in it for whom I felt an attraction resembled my wife and even shared her name. Why my subconscious was doing this to me, what the point of it all was, I still did not know. But I’d laboured under the same uncertainty ever since the dream had begun (as was typical of most of my dreams). Maybe I really was having a fortieth birthday crisis—there was a certain unwelcome plausibility to the idea.

Yvette studied me closely, apparently unsure how to take me.

“You said I’d have to prove it to you,” I whispered, hoping to end her indecision. “So let me prove it.”

Her expression and scrutiny did not waver, until with sudden resolution, she sipped her drink, placed it on the table, looked me in the eye, and said, “Okay. Let’s see if you can prove it.” She moved toward the hall entrance, only to stop and turn to me when she realised I wasn’t following. She tilted her head again, this time clearly as a question, to which my answer was to swallow hard, drain my glass, put it on the table—so roughly it fell sideways and had to be righted—and then follow her.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Ernest,” she said as we left the hall, “but this little game of yours is intriguing.”

“Steven,” I said. “And it’s no game. I’m deadly serious.”

“Are you?” she said. Her eyes locked on mine. “So who’re you meant to be really, Steven? Someone who doesn’t recognise Luke or know he’s an amateur, apparently. How come you’re so ignorant?”

“This is not my time,” I said, quietly, my eyes scanning from side to side as we crossed the road in late twilight. “I’m dreaming I’m forty years in the future. And it’s a future with no one I know. With very little of anything I know.” I looked upwards. “Even the sky. The moon was a thin crescent just before this dream started, yet now it’s nearly full!” And there was no sign of Jupiter which was high in the sky when I was last home. At least the constellations were the same: Scorpio, for instance, was in the right spot above us.

Earthbound, though, a Concorde-car cruised quietly and slowly into view as Yvette and I reached the footpath. “Even cars are nearly unrecognisable,” I continued.

“You recognised me.”

“No, I didn’t. You just look a fair bit like my wife.” I glanced at her: wearing a sly smile, she was watching me as intently as walking allowed.

“And do you like this future?”

“The jury’s still out on that. Truth is, I don’t altogether understand it. It’s certainly not what I expected.” I laughed abruptly. “I didn’t expect locality meetings and a clown. Are we missing any other riveting stuff?”

“Some music,” she said, “including a solo ukulele recital by Wanda Jones.” She shuddered. “Some attempted stand-up routines. And, I think, a short play. Thankfully, after last month, no poetry.”

“So what I saw was typically ordinary?”

“Come on, Ernest, you’ve been to plenty of meetings—you know what goes on afterward.”

“Steven! And I told you, I don’t.” When she just looked at me, without replying, I pushed on. “You don’t have to believe me—god knows, Wilbur doesn’t; he thinks I have amnesia and false memories—but you could at least humour me. Was it typical?”

She sighed and relented. “If that’s what keeps you in the mood… Yes, it was pretty typical. Except for the rare occasions we hire a professional performer. You can’t expect too much from locals. They may have copious spare-time to pursue their art, but very few have much real talent. I think Hans is about the only one who’s gone on to greater things.”

“Hans?”

“You must remember him. You were one of his strongest advocates. In fact, I think you were the one who first suggested we use Chord funds to pay him to perform after a meeting. He needed encouragement you said.”

“Encouragement for what?”

“His comedy.” She stopped in her tracks, and stared at me. “How do you make a camel hump?”

“What?!”

“It’s his most famous line. How do you make a camel hump?”

I shrugged my lack of knowledge of the answer.

“Use an Arab,” she said.

After a brief and laughter-free silence, I said, “Isn’t that a bit lacking in political correctness?”

“There’s an expression I haven’t heard for a while. What do you expect from a pseudo-surrealist comic?”

She resumed walking—to my surprise, not further along the footpath, but into the front yard of a house. I belatedly realised it was next door to Ernest’s. “You and I are neighbours?!” I said.

“O right! You forgot that too!”

“I didn’t forget. I never knew. I never laid eyes on you until tonight.”

“Whatever you say, Steven,” she said, with a weary tone. She opened the front door of the house and moved inside, leaving me for a moment alone on the doorstep. “Feel like another wine?” she said.

“Think I need another one,” I replied, moving inside and shutting the door. I followed the direction of her voice and found her in the kitchen. We were silent a few moments until, perhaps stalling, I picked up the discussion where we had left off. “So this Hans—he actually manages to make a living from jokes like the one you just told?”

“Yes,” she said, taking two glasses and moving to the refrigerator. “He’s officially paid by Hillbeach at the standard comic’s rate. He was something of a hit at his first post-meeting performance. They’re as good a way as any for amateur performers to get noticed. Though it takes raw talent, as well as persistence, to convince any plurocracy to pay a performer’s wage. Or an artist’s.” She poured generous glasses of a dry white wine.

“Are you saying performers and artists survive entirely by state assistance, like in Soviet Russia?”

“Goodness, Steven,” she said, again emphasising my name in obvious mockery. “This game of yours is starting to wear a little thin. Artists and performers survive quite comfortably, like the rest of us. But not many achieve enough recognition or popularity for plurocracies to pay them a wage, especially full-time. Instead, most do other work as their needay, and pursue their muse entirely in their spare time.” She handed me my glass and gestured towards another room.

“The professional artists, though—they’d all have to be budgeted for by CAPE, wouldn’t they?”

“Of course. As well as can be anticipated.”

“So who gets to own the art? Or is it never owned, merely stewarded?” We sat down next to each other in a large three-seater couch. I began to drink my wine in big gulps, whereas she took smaller sips.

“Good guess,” she said, with the last word emphasised to make it clear she thought I was not guessing at all. “Artists can be commissioned by individuals or plurocracies—who then steward the works created. But there’s also plenty of non-commissioned art produced, which artists can give away to the first interested party they approve of, or keep for themselves if they’re amateurs.”

“Give away!” I blurted out. “Surely you’re not claiming all art is free!?”

“Not everywhere,” she replied, with a tinge of irritation. “Each plurocratic region and above chooses whether the price of its art is different to its cost. But Hillbeach has voted for free art—at least for the art itself, not performances or displays which often cost something to see.”

“What about old art, like Van Gogh’s paintings which used to sell for millions? Surely they can’t be free. They’re priceless!”

“In every sense of the word. That’s why the most famous art is plurocratically stewarded—it can’t be bought or sold but moves from one place of public display to another, usually within a plurocracy, but sometimes on loan to others.”

“So no one can have a Picasso hanging on their wall, they can only visit them in galleries?”

“Of course. Although the main reason is preservation—too much risk of damage or deterioration hanging an old masters on a living room wall. Most people, of course, are content with copies.”

“I can’t believe artists are happy with this arrangement. How do their egos cope with their work not being fought over with hard cash? It must cripple their creativity!”

“Quite the opposite. Creativity flourishes. Artists have the time and financial freedom to explore their interests, without worrying about making sales and commissions.”

“But it’s so uniform. All artists on the same wage.”

“Who said anything about a single wage? Artists’ wages vary. It depends on the nature and costs involved in their art, as well as on public perception and popularity. Much like successful musicians and authors.”

“So the unpopular artist can’t flourish? Van Gogh would still die in poverty if he was alive today.”

“Hardly. Chances are, with the Net available to record and publicise his work, and have it rated, he’d have gained some sort of following. Capturing the attention of a fanatical few’s just as often as successful as gaining the mild interest of many. That’s more or less how Hans won his wage. But even if Van Gogh had no fans today, he wouldn’t have to endure poverty: at worst, he’d suffer the restrictions placed on some burdos; more likely, he’d just put in his one day of work a week and live like the rest of us, exploring his art in his copious spare time.”

I shook my head vigorously. “Now that is something I cannot get my head around. If everyone can spend pretty much as they like, why does anyone bother working?”

“Because we have a duty to do our share.”

“A duty you can ignore! Don’t you have the right to choose not to work?”

“Yes, but also a duty not to harm others by exercising that right. If any of us chooses not to work, the work still has to be done, so others’ working hours increase.”

“But then you are obliged to work. And all your talk about it being a choice is self-deception.”

“Anything but. There are no compelling laws and orders—no one’s forced to work, just encouraged in different ways to do the responsible thing. A few don’t, but rarely for long—they only end up ostracising themselves. The rest, liberated by stable economic conditions, and the abolition of any need to compete, make the responsible choice because it can be done without coercion.”

“If it’s harmful to not work,” I said, all but ignoring her words, “why not just make everyone work? In fact, couldn’t you plurocratically decide everything that’s harmful, and then ban it? Like racism.”

“Banning something doesn’t stop it. Order can’t be imposed, only built from within. The trick is to accept that there will always be people with different views, habits, and cultures—and to not let it matter. Not unless it’s causing genuine harm. Toleration of differences is at the root of cooperation.”

“But how do you ensure that people do tolerate? Or cooperate?”

“You can’t ensure it. There are no absolute solutions, no hard and fast realities. Each moment involves choice and chance. Control is not possible, only trust. And care. And forgiveness and understanding when mistakes are made.”

“So, despite endless involved decision-making, you just trust people to make the right choices? To agree to work, for instance?”

“In a manner of speaking, but the guiding rule encourages the right choices.”

“It doesn’t guarantee them.”

“As I said, nothing can. In any case, all other approaches have failed, as history attests.”

“Failed!? At what? In my time, we had more people wanting to work than could.”

“Is that supposed to be an achievement?” she said, calmly. “Or having more work than was needed? More pollution than could be dealt with? More stress, alienation, violence, war? I wonder sometimes how we ever got through it. Tell me, Steven, was your time really such a great time to live? As Ernest, you’ve never thought so.”

“It had its problems, but it also had plenty going for it. For one thing, it was progressive. And bold and innovative. I can’t believe it led to this. The future I expected was one of genetically engineered people, nanotechnology, bio-implants, asteroid-deterrent systems, space exploration—at least some dazzling skyscrapers. Where is it? All I’ve seen of 2070 is more like 1970. Like a large-scale retirement home for the terminally uninspired. Low tech provincialism with an environmental twist. Green suburbia.”

She took a deep breath, before responding, to my surprise, without any noticeable animosity. “Chord is suburban, but hardly backward. We have everything you mentioned, it simply doesn’t dominate our lives.”

“Really? You’re genetically engineered are you? Let me guess, you have wings folded behind your back.”

“O for god’s sake. As you well know, genetic engineering is mostly used to remove some of the more obvious recessive genes, to avoid hardship and suffering. It’s a medical aid, like the limited nanotechnology that’s been developed, and the odd bio-implant, not some mandatory brave new world procedure. Occasionally, it’s applied to crop and animal breeding, but with more care, more safeguards than the pursuit of profit ever allowed—and without corporate gene ownership. Just because we don’t parade our technology in front of your eyes every moment, doesn’t mean we don’t have it, or use it in an appropriate and plurocratically agreed way. This is not some turn of the century Hollywood sci-fi epic.”

“You can say that again. It’s more like a post-war Jimmy Stewart film.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter. I just— I don’t belong here. Everything was simpler and easier in my own time. You could make a decision to do something without so much fuss, without the self-deception and dilemmas of choice you’re faced with here over the simplest bloody issue.”

Yvette snorted derisively. “If that’s true, then why didn’t you address the problems of your time? If it was so much simpler and easier to make decisions, why didn’t you make them? Instead of speeches? That seems to be what you did most—endless lip-service to the difficult issues of the day. The bigger the problem, the longer the speech—and the more the problem tended to fester untreated. Spin instead of action. Were you all unaware of what was going on around you?”

Anger building, I drained my glass. “We knew what was going on, of course we did.”

“Then why didn’t you do something about it?”

I rubbed my forehead, flushed and irritated. “We did plenty.”

“Plenty of nothing. O, some had genuine concerns and intentions, they at least tried to do something, but most missed the point. They just couldn’t accept that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. And so, millionaires who claimed to be environmentalists regularly took their carbon-emitting private jets to well-meaning blab-fests all over the world. While their less well-off followers jet-setted overseas for annual vacations. And left their energy-efficient lights needlessly burning in vacant rooms. And justified having dishwashers because they saved water, while ignoring all the water and other resources used before and during the manufacturing process and after the machine reached the end of its life. What they really needed to do, above all else, was set an example: stop consuming to excess, live simply and modestly, not replace things grown unfashionable or boring every few years, settle for enough instead of for ever more and never enough. But instead, everyone just soldiered on with business as usual. Even though that was what was exhausting the planet and causing most of the problems you faced. You did know that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, we knew.” It felt like my head was spinning. Yvette’s accusations were aggravating my already degraded state. Loathe though I would have been to admit it, least of all to myself, but I was labouring not only under the mental duress of my sudden unexpected displacement into this foreign world and the information overload I’d endured since arriving, but also under the mounting physical discomfort of my recent excessive consumption of alcohol. I might have been dreaming it all but it was becoming a subtle nightmare. “We knew,” I repeated. “We just didn’t want to accept it. So we put it to the back of our minds, and hoped it’d go away. Or someone else’d fix it. We had a right of our own—a right to try to enjoy what we could of what we had, despite the mess. A right to our own lives. But we knew what was going on. Many of us anyway. We just did nothing.”

I stood, intending to refill my glass, but instead, the parlous state of my head was suddenly mimicked by my stomach. I did not take a further step, though I remained on my feet, wavering from side to side. I glanced at Yvette and saw concern. I rejected it with a broad sweep of my hand. “And you’re telling me this is our future?!” I railed. “This citadel of co-operation and responsibility.” My movements did not help the state of my stomach. “What did we do to deserve this future?!”

“We chose to make it happen,” said Yvette calmly. “And then we did make it happen.”

I had no reply—but my stomach demanded its own form of utterance. “Where’s your toilet?” I grunted, staggering forward, doing my best to keep my stomach’s ‘language’ to itself.

“Through here,” said Yvette, standing quickly and leading me to the right place, just in the nick of time. I heaved uncontrollably for several minutes. It’s never pleasant, not even when the results resemble Monet.

After I’d finished, I found Yvette in the kitchen, stirring a glass of clear liquid. Shamefaced and repentant of anger and excess, I nonetheless found it difficult to apologise. I avoided doing so by raising an irrelevant topic. “This future sure has weird toilets. I’ve never seen such a dry flush.”

“It’s perfectly normal,” she replied, scrutinising me carefully while stirring. “Here in your future, we treat even human waste as a resource.” With a small sigh, she correctly interpreted my expression, and continued in a tired voice. “All the toilets on this block are linked to an underground storage system near the central pond, where it degrades with minimal treatment into high quality fertiliser, and gas used for heating and cooking.”

“No shit!” With that unbidden comment, and another of Yvette’s head-tilts, I belatedly realised I was truly drunk. “Sorry. Think I better sit down.” I moved to the lounge again and sat on the nearest couch, a single-seater. I did not feel good.

Yvette joined me at once, and offered the glass of clear liquid to me. “This should calm your stomach and get rid of the bad taste. As well as avoid a hangover.” When I looked at her dubiously, she said, “Unless you’d rather another wine?”

I took the glass immediately, but drank cautiously. She sat opposite, at the closest end of the long couch.

“What’s going on, Ernest?” she said. “We’ve had many a drink over the years, but you’ve never had more than you could handle. And all this talk about being Steven… Are you having some sort of crisis with your research?” When I said nothing, lost for a reply, she continued. “It’s not Mattie is it? I thought you were well over him.”

I shook my head (which only made it feel worse). “No, it’s none of that. It’s what I told you. I really am Steven from forty years ago.”

“And you think you’re dreaming?”

“I know I’m dreaming,” I said, calmly for once. “I have to be dreaming.”

It was her turn to shake her head, gently. “This is no dream.”

I suddenly felt amused. “It’s certainly no wet dream,” I said. “Are you turned on yet?” I started to laugh. “Have my seductive charms and winning ways convinced you to submit?”

She laughed as well, but briefly. “Long ago, Ernest, long ago.”

I stopped laughing, suddenly giddy in perhaps more ways than one. “Is there no one else in your life?” I said.

“Not at the moment.” She took her glass of wine from the table between us, and sipped from it, just as I drained my own glass. “Still haven’t found Mr Right.” With another abrupt laugh, she put the glass down. “Like you don’t know! How many times have you let me cry on your shoulder?”

“What are neighbours for?” I said, lightly.

“Even before we were neighbours,” said Yvette. “Still can’t believe how lucky I was this house became available.”

“Took your fancy did it?”

“Less than others. But having you so close decided it for me.” She smiled warmly.

It was Yvette’s smile. My Yvette’s. This had to be a dream. I certainly wanted it to be.

I put my glass on the table, stood and, taking great efforts not to fall over, staggered across to sit on one arm of her couch—the closest one, as it turned out, though my original intention had been to move to the other side of her and sit on the couch itself. I put an arm round her shoulders. She nestled her head against my side. But the situation was not stable, not with my wavering sense of balance—very soon, I slipped off the arm of the couch with a sudden lurch, my full weight landing against Yvette, who collapsed sideways, sprawling.

Suddenly, I was on top of her, our faces close, one of my hands partly under her neck, the other resting on one of her breasts. Intense looks followed, her smile wide. My hand began caressing as if of its own accord. Her smile morphed to uncertainty. I moved my face closer to hers—but halted when she spoke.

“Are you sure about this, Ernest?”

I nodded blissfully, lost on autopilot.

“Are you sure you’re up to it?

My groin answered for me, a gentle press acting as translator.

Her eyes widened—full of surprise—and her smile returned. “Feels like you are.”

I kissed her and she returned it with passion. My giddiness increased.