Free Angelica's Grotto by Russell Hoban Page B

Steps.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Quarter past ten – 22.15 hours. Does that work for you?’
    ‘I’ll be there. How shall I know you?’
    ‘You won’t need to know me; I’ll know you. There won’t be that many old Ruggieros standing in that particular spot at that time on a Monday night. See you then.’ She hung up.
    ‘See you,’ said Klein to a dead phone. ‘Harold’s Monday night. Destiny? Something’s moving me; it’s like being swept along by a fast-flowing river. Am I going to drown, be broken on rocks – what?’
    He poured himself a large Glenfiddich, knowing that it would make him sleepy, and put on Astor Piazzolla’s
Tango Sensations.
The music was sombre, dark, fateful. He saw Hannelore walking towards him, smiling with the sun behind her shining through her hair. ‘I haven’t seen much of you lately, Hannelore,’ he said. ‘Mostly what I get are memories from further back. Much further back. Well, whatever’s happening now, things will be what they want to be.’ And he fell asleep in his chair.

17

The Goodbye Look
    Monday afternoon: Temple Underground Station. ‘“
Waltz me around again, Willy,”
’ Klein sang softly to himself as he climbed the stairs to WAY OUT, “‘
around, around, around. The music is dreamy, it’s peaches-and-creamy – oh don’t let my feet touch the ground
…”’ His meeting with the pornographer known as Angelica was almost seven hours away but he wanted to reconnoitre Surrey Street before dark.
    The station was full of motion as people came and went, their various destinies intersecting and diverging. ‘“Look thy last on all things lovely,”’ said Klein, “‘every hour.’” Beyond the turnstiles he saw golden sunlight and the fruit and vegetable stall, brightly lit and festive, the gloss and colour of its offerings ticketed with white price cards. To the right of it was the flower stall, its blooms flaunting themselves under fluorescence and sunlight. To the left of it was the bright and cosy world of the newsstand, its wares ranked under the blazon of
The Economist,
the white title stentorian on a scarlet background.
    Men and women waiting to meet someone stood by the station entrance. A
Big Issue
vendor, bearded and lonely, held up a magazine hopefully. Beyond him was the rushof cars on the Victoria Embankment; beyond the cars the river with its boats and sunpoints in a golden haze. ‘Sunpoints on the water,’ said Klein, ‘sunpoints dazzling on different waters, different times, other rivers watched by faces speaking and silent.’
    Integral with the station entrance, the Temple Bar Restaurant was a haven for drinkers of coffee, perusers of newspapers, and those given to contemplation. ‘They mostly look like regulars,’ said Klein. ‘They can come into the Temple Bar Restaurant and say, “The usual.” Or maybe they just go in and sit down and it’s brought to them. Probably the regulars were here before the restaurant; they brought their coffee in thermos flasks and they read their newspapers leaning against a wall until the tables and chairs, the coffee urn and the steamed-up windows happened around them. This may be a demonstration of the anthropic principle.’
    He mounted the steps to the street as men and women young and old, fast and slow, singly and in couples and groups, came down past him towards the station entrance. ‘Golden, golden,’ he said, ‘such a goldenness in the November afternoon sunlight!’ He crossed Temple Place with the low sun on the left side of his face, looked briefly up the long perspective of Arundel Street with its vanishing point somewhere beyond the Strand, and turned left with the sun in his eyes, his gaze following an adorable pair of legs moving briskly towards the Howard Hotel. ‘Don’t reify,’ he admonished himself, ‘but how can one not?’ The legs, diminishing rapidly, kept on straight ahead as he turned right into Surrey Street on the other side of which stood a King’s College