The Nine-Chambered Heart. Janice Pariat

other, I’m not sure. More like an excuse for all of us to gather and drink middlingly expensive alcohol, eye each other’s partners, check out the new youngsters on the scene. You can spot them a mile away. They’re eager, and they smile a lot, and say things like, ‘Yes, I’m a poet.’

      Perhaps you’re a friend of one of these youngsters, for somehow, you aren’t quite … indigenous. You seem – and I’m not prone to using the word – unreal. Suddenly, I grow afraid you’ll walk into the shadowy edges of the lawn and I’ll lose you. If I don’t speak to you now, you’ll step away from the fire and disappear.

      So I walk up and ask why you don’t stand closer to the burner.

      ‘It’s pointless.’

      ‘To keep yourself from freezing to death?’

      ‘Perhaps. Only it’s much worse to warm just your hands, don’t you think? Or your – back.’ I think you almost said ‘ass’, but maybe I seem dignified (read ‘old’), and you haven’t drunk enough wine yet. Besides, for now, we’re strangers.

      ‘I’d rather be cold all over.’

      ‘Or warm all over.’

      Did that sound cheap? I took care to say ‘warm’ instead of ‘hot’.

      You turn to me.

      Your eyes fall on my neck. I’m certain you’re thinking, ‘Oh god, he wears cravats.’ I’ve always felt they suit me; that a tie is a touch too plebeian. Although maybe to you, it makes me look ancient. I’m barely past fifty, but at twenty-something, that must seem light years away.