I do not give him the acknowledgement even of a snort of exasperation, simply wrestle off my jacket, now soaked with rain, and throw it over a chair.
‘Igor had to leave,’ he says. ‘He had a big exterminating gig. Beetles.’
I go into the kitchen area, where cupboard doors have been flung open and the counter littered with tartine and cookie wrappers. ‘What is this?’
‘Oh, yeah, we got hungry, so we made a snack.’
‘And drank two bottles of Brouilly?’ I say, finding the empties upended in a bin.
‘Yeah, we were thirsty, also, it turned out.’
‘How did you drink two bottles of wine in twenty minutes?’
‘Well, we didn’t drink both of them, we —’
‘My rug!’
‘Yeah, see that’s most of bottle one there.’
Clenching my jaw, I slam the cupboards shut, bundle up the debris and wipe down the surfaces.
‘So I think we made some important headway there,’ he says.
‘We made some important headway in the wrong direction.’
‘Mmm,’ he says ambiguously, and then, ‘Look, I’ll be perfectly honest with you. That didn’t go 100 per cent according to plan.’
‘I know it didn’t go 100 per cent according to plan,’ I say. ‘I was very well placed to see it not going according to plan.’
‘Igor and I have been discussing it,’ he says. ‘We both feel we may have taken a slightly wrong turn with the whole virile, masterful thing.’
I stamp back into the living room, strew salt over the wine-stained rug. ‘Maybe this whole idea was a wrong turn.’
‘Don’t say that. It was just a dry run, remember? And at least she knows who you are now, right? You’ve put yourself on the map, so to speak.’
‘I have put myself on the map as a gibbering psychopath,’ I say.
‘You’re blowing it out of proportion. Try and see it from the perspective of a novel. When do these things ever work out the first time round? There have to be a few comic mishaps, right?’
I replace the salt in the cupboard and dust my hands.
‘And anyway, there was a positive outcome.’ Paul follows me back into the kitchen. ‘By listening to your conversation, I was able to work out something that you had in common: a shared love of modern art. That’s something we can build on.’
At the present moment I don’t want to build on anything; I am damp and hungry, and desire nothing more than to go back to the office, putting this misconceived episode behind me. But Paul, no doubt sensing a threat to his pay cheque, keeps buzzing about me. ‘Look, if you’re really feeling bad about it, we can start over.’
‘How can we start over? This is reality, not typing. We can’t just throw it in the bin.’
‘Ariadne’s not the only beautiful waitress in town. I’ve got a whole folder full of them, brunettes, blondes, redheads …’ He falls silent, realizing he has said too much.
‘You have a folder full of waitresses?’
‘Of course not. It’s a figure of speech, that’s all.’
‘A figure of speech meaning what?’
‘Nothing, forget I said it.’
Cogs begin to turn in my mind. ‘Has the folder of waitresses … has it got something to do with all this bizarre surveillance equipment?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with anything,’ he says impatiently. ‘Can we just drop the subject?’
‘Not if I’m being implicated in one of your scams.’
‘It’s not a scam, it’s a totally legitimate business venture, and anyway, it’s over, it’s all in the past … oh, for God’s sake.’ He rolls his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you, all right? But you have to promise to keep it secret.’
He glances over his shoulders; then, bringing his hands together and pulling them apart, as though unfurling an imaginary banner in the space over his head, says, ‘Hotwaitress.com.’
‘Hotwaitress.com?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What is Hotwaitress.com?’
‘Right now it isn’t anything.’
‘But it was a business venture? Some Internet thing?’
He sighs. ‘Well, really I should go back to the beginning. To seven years ago, when For Love of a Clown came out. I was young and naïve, I had the usual fantasies — everyone would stop what they were doing to read it, I’d become famous, it’d usher in a new era of peace and harmony, all that. Instead it got one terrible review and then vanished without a trace. Look, the world is full of books. Moaning because no one wants to read yours is like complaining that you’ve been standing on the street corner with your dick out for an hour and nobody’s stopped to give you a blowjob. Still, it hurt me. And when I sat down and tried to start book number two, I had problems.’
‘You were blocked?’
‘I was blocked, I’d lost faith — whatever the reason, nothing was happening. And meanwhile, of course, I’d got married, we’d taken out this huge mortgage to buy the apartment, Remington was on the way, I had no idea how I was going to pay for it all.
‘I didn’t tell Clizia because I didn’t want to worry her. I acted like the new book was coming along fine, and I kept heading out to work every morning. But at this stage I wasn’t even trying to write, I was just sitting in cafés, looking out the window, wondering if everyone would be better off if I just jumped off a bridge.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Clearly you’ve never been in debt, Claude. After a while it’s all you can see. And it’s a vicious circle, because the more I worried about it, the less chance there was that I’d ever come up with an idea for a book. Anyway, there I was, being depressed in various cafés. There were maybe three or four I’d go to at different times of the day. Over time I got to know a few of the waitresses quite well, and if it was quiet we’d have these long, philosophical talks. They were young, they had all these hopes and dreams, and though I couldn’t exactly share their optimism, still, it was a way out of this endless despairing conversation I was having with myself the rest of the time. In fact, I realized after a while that talking to the waitresses was actually the high point of my day. And then it hit me — that was the idea.’
‘What? Become a waiter?’
‘No, no, I mean that relationship. Waitress and customer.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You think you’re the first man to fall in love with a waitress, Claude? This is a growing phenomenon. And it’s no mystery. Think about how we live now, packed off in our digital eyries. Yes, we have phones, we have email, but we might not speak to an actual flesh-and-blood person all day. And then we go to a café, and suddenly in the midst of our fully networked isolation there’s a pretty girl who smiles at us and asks how we are. She’s actually there, not just a face on a screen. And she’s bringing us cake! Is it any wonder we form attachments?’
‘That sounds plausible,’ I say gruffly, embarrassed at having my own situation so unsparingly detailed. ‘But how does your business venture relate to it?’
‘Okay. So you’ve developed these feelings, which are very natural and human. What happens when you sit down in a café or restaurant only to find that your favourite waitress isn’t there? On the one hand, it doesn’t sound like a big deal. But seeing her was literally the only thing you had to look forward to all day! And it actually feels pretty crushing. That’s the kind of scenario Hotwaitress is designed to eliminate. What we proposed —’
‘ “We” — this means you and … ?’ I ask with a sinking feeling.
‘Me and Igor. What we proposed was a comprehensive guide to waitresses in cafés and restaurants all over the city. When they’re on, when they’re off, what sections they’re working, their likes, dislikes, hobbies and pastimes, the latest gossip as well as plenty of pic—’