I still like your trousers

…con­tin­ued from I like your trousers

‘Per­haps,’ I say.

Patsy looks up from the desk oppos­ite mine. ‘Per­haps what?’ she says.

I frown at my half-full paper cup. ‘I’m not ready for what comes after ‘per­haps’ yet,’ I say enig­mat­ic­ally. I hunch my shoulders and glower into the cup, try­ing to look like someone har­bour­ing dark, omin­ous thoughts.

‘Dude,’ says Patsy, ‘you’re going to have to go back there.’

Patsy is from Cali­for­nia. She says ‘dude’ when she is annoyed. She has been say­ing ‘dude’ a lot over the last four hours.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘The “per­haps” relates to what I might do when I get there. What do you think I should do?’

‘Dude, you should just go back there, gauge the situ­ation and work out what to do from there. The most import­ant thing is that you go before five.’

I check the clock. It’s four twenty-five.

‘Per­haps,’ I say.

‘How else will you know?’ says Patsy.

‘This is com­pletely unfair,’ I say.

‘Dude!’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Dude …’

‘I’m still wear­ing the trousers! It’s not fair on the poor man!’

‘Dude.’

She has a point. I pout for a few minutes. Patsy begins to rum­mage in a desk drawer.

Go; don’t go. Know; don’t know. Caff; decaf. I drain the cup. My cof­fee went cold hours ago.

‘If you think it’s the right thing to do,’ I say.

‘I’ve only got your best interests at heart,’ says Patsy, fid­dling with some­thing small and shiny.

I stand up. ‘Right,’ I say, ‘I’m off to the café.’

‘Awe­some,’ says Patsy, and thrusts two gold coins into my hand. I blink at them.

‘Strong lattè, no sugar,’ she explains.

‘Dude,’ I say.

The café is crowded, which gives me a chance to slink in undetec­ted and loiter at the back to observe Justin. He is dol­ing out muffins, cof­fee and bons mots with cha­ris­matic zeal to jones­ing office-workers who offer little in the way of intercourse.

Cer­tainly, less than I did.

My head starts to spin. More caf­feine is cur­rently occupy­ing my blood­stream than has occu­pied it in nearly a dec­ade. There are ants in my stom­ach. I may have acci­dent­ally arranged a five o’clock date with Justin, and bad though this is, it is not as colon-freezingly pet­ri­fy­ing as the pos­sib­il­ity that Justin and I actu­ally were only jok­ing earlier in the day; that we were in fact enjoy­ing one of the most fun con­ver­sa­tions I’ve recently had with a stranger; that I did not arrange a five o’clock date with Justin, yet I’m here to talk to him about it, and there’s only one per­son in front of me, and I’ve just noticed it’s four fifty-nine.

I decide to run. Unfor­tu­nately, I decide to run just as Justin sends away his final cus­tomer, so the cus­tomer gets in my way and I almost squash his muffin in the door­way, an action inher­ently so euphemistic I let out a hys­ter­ical half-giggle.

‘What’s all this non­sense?’ asks Justin, who is tak­ing off his apron. I turn and we look at each other. He looks at the clock. I also look at the clock. It is exactly five.

‘Um,’ says Justin. There is ter­ror in his eyes. ‘Hello.’

Sud­denly, I see my mis­take. I thought I was ready. I am not ready. The thought is among my most lib­er­at­ing. I take a deep breath.

‘Justin,’ I say in my best cod-Russian accent, ‘I vood like a decaf lattè pliz.’

I jeté joy­fully out onto the street three minutes later with my steam­ing paper cup, feel­ing the caf­feine drain out of my blood and back into the inde­term­in­ate future where, for now, it belongs.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he still likes my trousers.’

‘Cool. Did you get my coffee?’

‘Ah.’

‘Oh, dude.’