Free Sparrow Nights by David Gilmour Page A

remind me a little bit of my father, actually. He prefers younger women too. That’s how he says it. He says, ‘I prefer young women, dear.’”
    “You like your father?”
    “Oh, terribly.” Here a hand sought the back of her neck.
    “What are you two talking about?” her husband asked, turning a handsome, open face to us.
    “My father,” she replied.
    “Ah,” he said diplomatically, and turned back to his conversation.
    “They don’t get along,” Jennifer whispered.
    Across the table the blonde woman had moved on to movies. “I just don’t think he’s a very good actor, that’s all,” she said, popping an ice cube into her mouth and crunching down loudly on it.
    “Who?”
    “Oh, what’s his name? That guy . Christopher somebody.”
    “Christopher Walken?”
    “That’s him.”
    “You don’t think Christopher Walken is a good actor?”
    Jennifer returned her attention to me. “So you’re here by yourself?”
    “Yes.”
    “Seems like an odd place to come by yourself.”
    “I needed to get away.”
    “Woman trouble? That’s another of my father’s expressions.”
    “No, actually. I poisoned my neighbour’s dogs.”
    After a moment she said, “How drunk are you?”
    “Quite.”
    “Is that true?”
    “What?”
    “That you poisoned your neighbour’s dogs.”
    “I’m afraid it is.”
    “I have dogs.”
    “Well, keep them away from me.”
    And on it went. We had more drinks, hard liquor this round, and after a while we left the restaurant, the five of us cramming into a taxi, women on men’s laps, and drove into town. We ended up in a thumping second-floor discotheque near two in the morning. I went in the door and the bass hit me so hard in the chest that I wondered for a second if it was interfering with the rhythm of my heart. We sat around an absurdly small table in a dark corner. White rum and Cokes all around.
    Leaning back in his chair, Jennifer’s husband was watching the dance floor with something like amusement.
    “Don’t you dance, Professor?” he asked.
    “Never,” I said.
    “Never?” shouted the stockbroker.
    “Sometimes I slow dance,” I said, but my words got lost in the smoke and the rolling bass line.
    “What?” someone hollered across the table, frowning.
    I cupped my hands over my mouth. “It’s not worth repeating.”
    “I’ve heard people say that before,” Jennifer’s husband threw in. (Was he taking a turn for the sour?) “It means he wants someone to ask him to dance.”
    “Good heavens!” I protested.
    “I’ll slow dance with you, Professor,” Jennifer said.
    “Now?”
    “Sure, why not?”
    I didn’t look at her husband as I got to my feet, but I thought I heard him shout a not very pleasant “Oh boy!” and clap his hands. I followed her past the front few couples and put my hand on her damp back.
    “My husband is getting wrecked,” she said. “This always happens on the last night of our holiday.”
    “No trouble, I hope.”
    “None worth talking about.
    She slipped her cheek against mine and it seemed to me that she gave just the tiniest squiggle.
    “Anyway,” she said.
    A couple banged into us. Sorry, sorry .
    We danced on for a few moments and then I found myself coming to the gradual realization that I couldn’t remember who I was dancing with. The white rum had taken a lethal step forward. I tried to visualize the face of the young woman with her head on my shoulder.
    “What are you thinking about, Professor?” she asked. “You did a sort of change-up there.”
    “Nothing really.”
    “You must have been thinking about something. I could feel it.”
    I pulled back my head and looked at her.
    “Oh,” I said quietly. “It’s you.”
    I heard her husband call out something. In a second he’d stagger onto the dance floor or she’d touch her temples and say, I don’t feel well, I have to sit down.
    “Listen,” I said, “may I ask you something?”
    “Sure.”
    “It’s a little favour actually.”
    “What