The Favourite Game. Leonard Cohen

He had tried to bring her out too quickly and it hadn’t taken. Slowly he worked her back to full wakefulness. She would be refreshed and gay. She would remember nothing.

      This time she came round correctly. He chatted with her a while just to make sure. She stood up with a puzzled look and patted her hips.

      ‘Hey! My pants!’

      Wedged between the couch and wall were her pink elastic-bottomed panties. He had forgotten to hand them to her when she was dressing.

      Skilfully and modestly she slipped into them.

      He waited for the unnatural punishment, the humiliation of the master, the collapse of his proud house.

      ‘What have you been doing?’ she said slyly, chucking him under the chin. ‘What went on while I was asleep? Eh? Eh?’

      ‘What do you remember?’

      She put her hands on her hips and smiled broadly at him.

      ‘I’d never of thought it could be done. Never of thought.’

      ‘Nothing happened, Heather, I swear.’

      ‘And what would your mother say? Be looking for a job, I would.’

      She surveyed the couch and looked up at him with genuine admiration.

      ‘Jewish people,’ she sighed. ‘Education.’

      Soon after his imaginary assault she ran off with a deserting soldier. He came alone for her clothes and Breavman watched with envy as he carried off her cardboard suitcase and unused ukulele. A week later Military Police visited Mrs. Breavman but she didn’t know anything.

      Where are you, Heather, why didn’t you stay to introduce me into the warm important rites? I might have gone straight. Poemless, a baron of industry, I might have been spared the soft-cover books on rejection-level stabilization by wealthy New York analysts. Didn’t you feel good when I brought you out?