at around ten o’clock but since then had been winding down so that now it only hurt when he moved or thought. Watching children’s television required him to do neither.
Johnathan’s dog, Schroedinger, was asleep next to him on the sofa, his head resting peacefully in Johnathan’s lap. Nobody knew exactly what unlikely communion had produced him. He looked like the result of a bizarre experiment where a Scottie had mated with a porcupine.
When first-time visitors to the flat met Schroedinger, the conversation always followed the same course with an inevitability which Johnathan had begun to resent.
Visitor: Ah, what’s his name.
Johnathan (gloomily, for he knows what is to come): Schroedinger.
Visitor (frowning): You can’t call a dog Schroedinger.
Johnathan: Why not?
Visitor: Well, you know, Schroedinger’s Cat.
Johnathan (peevishly): Yes?
Visitor: So. It would be all right for a cat, but not for a dog.
Johnathan (testily): But the cat wasn’t called Schroedinger. The cat belonged to Schroedinger. Sort of.
Visitor: Yes?
Johnathan: So, logically, a cat is the last creature you would call Schroedinger.
Visitor (uncertainly): Because.
Johnathan: Because cats don’t own cats.
Visitor: Are you telling me that your dog owns a cat?
Johnathan: No of course not–
Visitor: Well then.
Johnathan:–all I’m saying is that, logically, it makes more sense to call a dog Schroedinger than a cat.
Visitor (unconvinced): But Schroedinger’s Cat.
Johnathan: OK, take another example. Take a Rubik’s cube.
Visitor (unsure where this is leading): OK.
Johnathan: Well, you obviously wouldn’t call a Rubik’s cube ‘Rubik’, would you, because we all know that’s the name of the chap who invented it.
Visitor: ?
Johnathan: Look, if you’re going to be picky, Schroedinger’s Cat was dead anyway.
Visitor (cleverly): Ah, but that’s the point. We don’t know that.
It was on days like this that Johnathan was relieved that Schroedinger was, if anything, lazier than he was. He was not the sort of dog which insists on dragging its owner for a brisk tour around all the interesting piles of dog shit in the area within five minutes of its owner’s first bleary-eyed appearance in the morning, and Johnathan loved him dearly for it. Schroedinger preferred to remain in the relative tranquillity of Johnathan’s small garden, where he could relax and defecate at leisure.
Johnathan sat back and sighed. He stared up at the ceiling and considered the weekend that lay ahead. His fridge was presently home to a half-empty jar of mayonnaise and an onion. His entire week’s washing lay crumpled at the foot of his bed.
He decided to slip out to do his weekend shop at the local store. Gently he pushed Schroedinger’s head off his lap and stood up. Schroedinger wagged the stump where his tail should have been, and yawned at Johnathan’s disappearing back.
When Johnathan returned home, having bought some fantastically expensive baked beans and a pre-sealed pack of bacon, his answer-phone was winking at him. Chloe, he thought. He put down his shopping and debated whether or not he was feeling sufficiently robust of spirit to listen to the message. Finally he pressed the little red button. The tape whizzed back and crackled into action. There was a beep.
‘Hi, it’s Topaz. Could you give me a ring as soon as you get in, if you’re back today? You could just be a life saver. OK. Hope to hear from you later. Ciao.’
Johnathan’s heart leaped, and then sank again. He knew at once what Topaz wanted. Someone must have turned down her dinner party invitation, and she was one short for the night. Few things were as important to Johnathan’s friends as getting the boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangements just so at their dinner parties. Absences were not tolerated kindly. Johnathan had, by accident rather than design, carved a niche amongst his circle of acquaintances as a last-minute social substitute extraordinaire. He rarely had any social engagements of his own and so was always available to turn up on short notice and make up numbers. Unfortunately he had proved himself so reliable in this capacity that people had stopped inviting him to dinner parties at all, just in case anybody dropped out. His social life therefore depended upon other people falling ill, breaking promises, or suffering unforeseen mishaps. When things went according to plan, Johnathan was redundant. When things went wrong, he was a hero. Johnathan knew how members of the medical profession felt.
Still, he told himself, it was Topaz. At least she was thinking of him, if only as a last resort.
Topaz was the sort of girl Johnathan had dreamed about meeting for years. Now that he had, he found himself awake in the middle of a nightmare. They had met some years previously at the birthday party of a mutual friend whom Johnathan had known at university. It had been a fancy dress party. The theme had been ‘The Empire’. Johnathan had, rather wittily he thought, gone as a mint imperial. He first met Topaz, who was dressed as Princess Leia from Star Wars, as he was coming out of the downstairs toilet. When she came out a few minutes later, Johnathan was still standing there, trying to reach a zip at the back of his costume. Topaz took pity on him, and helped. Fuelled by embarrassment and alcohol, Johnathan had misinterpreted this act of kindness as a clear indication that Topaz wished to go to bed with him, and later on the same evening he had clumsily propositioned her. Topaz, crushingly amused, had politely declined his offer. Instead she had kissed him lightly on the cheek and told him he was sweet. Despite the ‘sweet’ comment, they had remained friends.
She worked as a subeditor for a home furnishings and interior decorating magazine. She was independently wealthy, intelligent, and impossibly gorgeous. She was also not the slightest bit interested in Johnathan in a sexual context. Johnathan, on the other hand, was extremely interested in Topaz in a sexual context. She appeared to him in his dreams, usually either sitting naked in his kitchen slicing up cucumbers or emerging from the sea in a low-cut rubber wetsuit holding a large harpoon that had already shot its bolt. This unhealthy obsession had continued unabated throughout Johnathan’s other recent relationships. If anything, it had become worse. Topaz was a useful means of distracting Johnathan from Chloe’s relentless barrage of inanities, and he would frequently drift off into a lustful reverie while she jabbered on, which had on one occasion been awkward as he had been unable to explain why Chloe’s discourse on parachutes, and their colours, had produced a rather obvious erection. Chloe had begun to suspect that he was actually turned on by that stuff.
Johnathan had by now resigned himself to the fact that he would never summon up enough courage to ask Topaz whether she might consider taking their relationship beyond the merely platonic. He thought that perhaps initially there had been a flicker of interest from her, but now, nothing. Things were strictly platonic. Indeed, things were so platonic that Topaz felt able to regale Johnathan with stories of her sexual adventures with such attention to detail that it made him weep; not with sympathy or jealousy, but from the pain of his erection straining against his trousers.
It was a difficult position. He didn’t love her, or anything complicated like that. He was just desperate to go to bed with her. As he became more and more obsessed, her company became less and less bearable. Now, of course, with Chloe out of the way, there was no reason why he shouldn’t just ask her, but he knew that he was too much of a coward. He decided that he would rather suffer the priapic indignities of being her principal sexual confessor than run the risk of scaring her off completely. This sort of agonising pain was better than that sort of agonising pain.
Why? Johnathan asked himself as he picked up the phone. Why do I do this?