Free On Chasing Brad Through Purgatory by Stephen Benatar Page B

title.”
    We shook hands before I saw him into his taxi and shut the door on him. It was a long and firm and meaningful handshake (and not far off electric). As the taxi moved away he turned and waved. I liked that; I had always liked people who waved. I didn’t take the bus, I suddenly wanted to walk. After some forty minutes when I was two-thirds of the way home it came on to rain again. Quite heavily. I didn’t mind. In fact I was wearing only a shirt above my jeans and I unbuttoned this right down to my belt. I got drenched and fairly revelled in it. I sang ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and several other things not at all connected with the weather. I felt wonderful. I had the shrewdest suspicion even then that I’d just met the man who was going to change my life.

9
    I didn’t tell Richard or Hermione a single thing about my adventure with Katy—not in the end. Thinking about Brad as I walked back up Pack Hill (as when wasn’t I thinking about Brad? It was like the first weeks of our being in love. No, months. Had I ever really stopped?), thinking about those very early days of our friendship/courtship/romance—whatever the proper expression is—I suddenly remembered a time when sauntering along in the sunshine to Leicester Square, a little early for our date, I had caught sight of him in the crowds a bit further on and had naturally broken into a run. But before I reached him he’d begun speaking to a boy of about sixteen who was sitting on the pavement outside an amusement arcade with his back against the wall and a piece of cardboard in his lap: “Hungry and homeless.” Coming to a stop nearby I saw Brad squat down, obviously to talk more easily, then hand the lad a banknote—or what might have been several banknotes—and even more remarkably hand him something else he’d just extracted from his wallet: his business card no less, a brother to the one he’d given me outside the restaurant on our first night. Then after glancing at his watch Brad rose from his haunches and shook the boy’s hand. He headed again towards the Odeon but turned and waved briefly (he waves to all of us I thought). The boy was gazing after him with a rapt expression on his foxy pockmarked face—the ‘foxy’ could be subjective, I simply had no sympathy for losers—yet didn’t acknowledge the wave. I made a quick but effective detour then hurried after Brad. “Are you crazy?” I asked without preamble, without even the least attempt at greeting.
    â€œWhy? What’s the matter?” None too surprisingly he seemed rather taken aback. We stood outside the entrance to the cinema.
    â€œWhat’s the matter? Only that you’ll end up with a knife between the shoulder blades—that’s what’s the matter—or a robbed and vandalized apartment! Or at the very least a non-stop string of beggars at your front door! That is what’s the matter!”
    â€œOh! You mean that boy just now…?”
    I’d at sometime read or heard that adults didn’t blush or, if there were to be exceptions, only those with the lightest colouring and the fairest skin. But Brad blushed. He most definitely did blush.
    â€œMy God!” I said. “You couldn’t possibly have thought him pretty?”
    â€œNo of course not. What is this? What’s got into you?”
    â€œAre you in the habit of handing out your card to all and sundry?”
    â€œI warn you: this is a conversation I’m not enjoying. So shall we put an end to it and go in and see this wretched film you want to see?”
    â€œYou would never have told me would you? If I hadn’t happened to come along at the exact right moment?”
    â€œTold you what precisely? And no. Why should I have?”
    I was almost shaking in my anger; my humiliation. I hadn’t yet been to his flat, two DVDs to be watched or no, because I’d known full well