Care of Wooden Floors. Will Wiles

listening to my music?’

      Variations was still on. There was no room for ‘no’ in Oskar’s question. ‘Yes. It’s very good.’

      ‘Hrm. Is everything OK in the apartment?’

      My eye strayed to the cats on the sofa and the stain on the floor. The stain was actually hidden from me by the coffee table, but I felt I could still see it; a flash burn on the retina, always in centre view until you tried to look at it, when it swam away.

      ‘Yes, yes, fine. I meant to ask …’

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘You mentioned a cleaner – when do they come?’

      ‘Does something need to be cleaned?’

      Yes, everything, always. ‘No, but I just thought I should know in case I’m naked or something.’

      A tram passed by, clunking into the distance, trailing with it my ability to take back what I had just said.

      ‘Are you naked now?’

      ‘No! But I don’t know if I have to be here to let them in or something.’

      ‘She has a key.’

      ‘OK.’ There was a cork on the kitchen table in front of me. My unoccupied hand picked it up and started to roll it back and forth between my fingers. Was this call really necessary? Was there some unasked question in the background, with the tinfoil shush of the line? Was Oskar waiting for some unknown reassurance from me?

      ‘You are having a good time?’ Oskar was in the habit of framing statements as questions – not in the infuriating Valley-speak manner of Californians, but in a more philosophical, European manner, as if preceding the quasi-query with the unspoken words We can of course both take it as read that … This, however, was a straightforward question.

      ‘Oh, yes. I went sightseeing yesterday – saw the National Museum …’

      ‘While you are there, you really should go to see the Philharmonic. You will go?’

      ‘Yes, maybe, if I have the time …’

      ‘Time? What else are you doing? The Philharmonic is in its summer season, and I helped set the programme. It is very good. Will you go tomorrow?’

      ‘Tomorrow?’ I wanted to say that I had made plans for tomorrow, but that would have been an obvious lie. While thinking of a better lie (I almost had one), I let too long a pause bleed into the conversation.

      ‘Tomorrow, then,’ Oskar said, decisive and clearly cheerful at the thought of inflicting classical music on me. ‘I will call them and make arrangements for a ticket in your name.’

      ‘Oskar, you don’t have to …’

      ‘Yes, I can always get free tickets, so I will call them. Seven-thirty. It is Schubert, “The Trout” and “Death and the Maiden”. Very good. Very popular. You will like it.’