There is a very attractive lady of forty years of age sitting just opposite wearing a skirt which is clearly inappropriate for the weather.
She also wears a pair of grey patent leather shoes, which are fetching, but not with extravagant heels. She is clearly married, but not bejewelled. She has a nice white bag that looks as though it could have been sold as Cartier on a dark night. And just a little bit of make-up.
Classy was the word that came to mind…
Some scratches on her legs, which are shapely, but with a hint of cellulite. Perhaps from tending her garden? He can see her moving purposefully amongst the delphiniums and the holly hocks.
She has a full set of very white teeth (he notes when she’s looking at her phone) and is very nonchalant about everything.
She tip-types on her phone and then smiles secretively.
As they get off, his curiosity cannot be reined in.
“Dinner or theatre?”
“Excuse me?”
“I am curious where you are going?”
“Going to a meeting,” she says.
“You don’t have all the usual business stuff?”
“I’m a pen and paper girl,” she says, “so no laptop.”
He watches her as she walks off. It’s a saunter that’s heading anywhere but an office.
Oh, what the hell, he tells himself, and follows her round the corner.
There she is, standing in the taxi rank next to a non-descript man wearing a suit.
As the man steps forward to take his taxi, she climbs into the taxi after him.
He hails another taxi and follows them.
I knew it, he cries inwardly, tapping the window of his taxi.
“Drop me here,” he says. “I’ll walk on.”
When their taxi pulls up in front of the Chagall, the taxi driver can’t find a pen to write out the receipt.
The man checks his pockets to no avail. He looks at his companion, standing next to him.
“Good lord, no!” she says. “Why would I have something so desperately old-fashioned as a pen?”
*
“Do you think she knew she was being stalked?”
“Good point. One gets a sixth sense about these things.”
“Sylvia says she enjoys it.”
“Really?”
“Because she knows she can tell them to fuck off.”
“What about you?”
“Maude, that’s far too difficult a question for this time of night.”
“But would you tell him to fuck off?”
“What’s the difference between a perv and creep?”
“Aren’t they the same?”
“A perv is always trying to look at your underwear, while a creep says he was merely admiring your thigh.”