Free Repeat It Today With Tears by Anne Peile

height accentuated by his inevitable companion, the little old man in a beret who was the washer-up. The little man worked in rubber gloves which extended past his elbows; he seemed to speak no English. Ali spoke only a little; Renata said that he knew all the wrong words. His moods transformed with rapidity, from anger to lechery, from melancholy to a loud, singing cheerfulness. At this moment he was already furious, prowling around the stainless steel kitchen in clog shoes and shaking his black curls. ‘Hey, you twos,’ he called us through the hatch, ‘you, bloody shits delivery don’t come, bloody shits.’
    His voice was very deep and rolling; he pronounced bloody as if there were one o and two ds. I looked over at the clock which told the time with Coca Cola bottle hands, calculating the hours until I could revisit my father’s room. Ali muttered and swiped at the prep table with a cleaver. The little man, who seemed sometimes to assume the role of a placatory, long suffering spouse, tuned in their radio. A Neil Young song was playing. Ali began to hum along with it,
‘When you were young and on your own,
how did it feel to be alone…
Only love can break your heart…
yes only love can break your heart… ’
    and then he slopped back to the hatch and rested his elbows there, tweaking at hairs in his beard and rolling his eyes at me in a grotesque pantomime parody of seduction.
     
    ‘You want to come in the alley with me, sugar pie?’
    ‘No.’ I was pairing knives and forks in red paper napkins.
    ‘I’m hot sex,’ he insisted, ‘real hot Ali.’
    ‘I don’t want to, thank you.’ I shook my head over the cutlery. Mireille, the French waitress arrived. She wore a scarlet cheesecloth smock without a bra beneath it. Her prim brown bobbed hair framed her face all of a piece.
    ‘Hey, Mireille, you don’t want to come in Ali’s alley, do you?’ He turned back to me, ‘Mireille don’t want to, she is lez. You is lez, ain’t you, honey?’
    ‘Fuck off,’ said Mireille, swinging her Millie Molly Mandy bob.
    ‘Fuck off you self,’ returned Ali, ‘bloody fucks to you.’
    The restaurant was very busy and our apron pockets were weighed down with tips which we were not allowed to change in the till. At my break Ali, unexpectedly, brought me a plate loaded with all the specials from the menu. ‘You eat,’ he said, banging the plate down.
    I looked at him questioningly.
    ‘You have a man now, you have to eat. Men like, you know, big all over. You know it’s the truth.’ He nodded to affirm his message.
    At the end of the shift I washed away the restaurant smells in the staff shower. My hair was still damp when I walked down Kings Road and my scalp felt the chill edge to the air. The scent I used in those days was Diorissimo, it was like lily of the valley.
    Jack’s writing on the card for the bell push was black italic. He was wearing the same navy blue jersey and he looked at me with a kind of reproof. ‘So, you came back then.’
    Up in his room his manner was at first pedagogic, as though he must instruct me in the complicated parts of some theorem. ‘Listen, Susie, I’ve been thinking about this a lot since last night, well, all the time, actually… ’
    He moved his thoughts along with his hands; the leaves and plantlets of the spider plant on the windowsill trembled slightly at the disturbance.
    ‘I think I have to tell you, first, about me, and then you decide… whether you really want to keep coming to see me. You know that I really don’t have anything to offer you… I am married, permanently, I suppose you could say. I’ve not been unfaithful, at all, before, to Olive – that’s my wife. Years ago, it was a different story, I was a different man… I behaved in ways that I am not proud of; I let people down, all sorts of people. Then, and it served me right, I got myself into a mess, I was drinking too much, I couldn’t work, it all sort of caught up with me. Then I met Olive