Blood is Dirt. Robert Thomas Wilson

       8

      By the time I’d dropped Bagado at home and climbed the steps up to my own house it was 8 p.m., but the lights were on, which promised cold beer.

      I was about to open the door when I heard Heike and another woman, whose voice I didn’t recognize, talking. The other woman sounded English from the expressions she used but I could tell she’d spent some time in a foreign country. She was used to speaking to foreigners, choosing her words, even though Heike was completely bilingual. The woman was talking about a lover, or a husband maybe.

      ‘ … there always had to be this ritual,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t just go to bed together and get on with it. The bedroom door had to be locked, the lights positioned, the mirrors in place. He would say things, strange things like, “You and me,” which made me look around the room, you know, relieved. I wasn’t allowed to say anything. I had to be wearing the right things. Normally black, occasionally red, but always the whole bit, suspenders, stockings. He spent a fortune on my underwear and there was always the other things …’