Now, there are exposed brick walls and the place is decorated with slogans, inscribed on framed posters, around the borders of the new menus, on metal plates hung on the wall above the bar. There are motivational slogans, weird puns, fake antique advertising posters to replace the real antique advertising posters. The TV in the top corner above the bar has doubled in size and next to it is a list of live sports events that will be showing over the next few weeks.
It isn’t Lorenzo’s kind of place anymore. He stops outside and looks in through the window. There’s no sign of Sheila. She would usually be here, guarding the door, leaning against the cracked paint of the exterior walls. The cracked paint of the exterior walls is no longer cracked, or rather it is no longer there. It has been covered with a new color. It used to be a postbox red. It is now somewhere between gray and navy. It is stylish and joyless; elegant in a deliberately masculine sort of way.
He feels sad, kind of hollow. He has lived in this neighborhood his whole life and has been coming to the Aphra Behn since he was first able to pass for eighteen. He steps inside. The worn, stone step is still the same. It still has its little sunken pocket in the middle that is just the right size to accommodate his foot.
Lorenzo doesn’t recognize either of the bar staff but they seem broadly in keeping with those here before. He is about to order a pint of something cold and generic when he notices the taps have changed and, accordingly, the beers too.
Lorenzo thinks of Glenda. She moved back home to her parents’ house a couple of months ago, just before Christmas. She seems happier. She has sent him photos of dinners her mum has cooked and loaves of bread her dad has baked. Glenda’s mum is a notoriously good cook and Glenda’s dad is a notoriously good baker. Lorenzo hopes she has put on a bit of weight. He will be seeing her tonight. She is visiting and staying with her friend Bastian in his new flat. Bastian’s girlfriend, Laura, will be there too. They are all going out for dinner at a fashionable restaurant Lorenzo has chosen.
Lorenzo’s phone vibrates. It is lying face down on the table so he turns it over. He has received a text from Eddie Kettering, only when Eddie Kettering put his number in Lorenzo’s phone, he entered it under the name Dikie Detergent, which is an anagram of Eddie Kettering. This is what has flashed up.
Lorenzo opens the message.
Hey. You back in London yet?
Lorenzo ignores him and turns his phone back over. He doesn’t want to see Eddie but he realizes that if he has a couple more pints, he’ll probably end up replying anyway and meeting up with him and possibly having sex. In the last couple of months of filming, Lorenzo and Eddie had a casual thing going that neither of them, Lorenzo least of all, had any desire to give a name to. They simply sometimes went to each other’s dressing rooms and had fast, fumbled sex. There was no discussion or analysis, which is how Lorenzo wanted it to remain. Eddie is hot, but Lorenzo finds him irritating and juvenile and has no wish to form an emotional attachment. Besides, Eddie is engaged to a stylish socialite called Miranda Billing. Lorenzo concedes that there might be some kind of moral issue here that he might have to think about at some point, but it isn’t a pressing matter and much more Eddie’s problem than his.
On a more positive note, Eddie had actually given Lorenzo some good ideas. On one occasion, they were hanging out on set and Lorenzo made an idle comment about being disillusioned with acting, largely because of the parts he found himself being put forward for. Eddie suggested that he start writing his own material—plays or screenplays.
Lorenzo has brought a notebook with him to the pub. He gets it out of his satchel along with a couple of pens and a pair of headphones. He puts the headphones on and plugs the cable into his phone, then scrolls through his music until he arrives at some slow, soothing electronica. Next, Lorenzo opens the notebook. It is more expensive that it needs to be, but Lorenzo appreciates quality paper: he appreciates quality in most things. Details matter. He clicks his ballpoint pen and puts it to the page. He will write a play. He wants it to be subtle, sophisticated, cerebral. He doesn’t want it to be gaudy or melodramatic. Big ideas, big themes, but told through small, everyday interactions.
He begins. He sips lager and sits back in his chair to think. He pays closer attention to the music coming through his headphones. He watches the new pub patrons, and wonders about their lives. He feels irritated by how much the Behn has changed, and resolves never to come here again, although he knows he probably will, that he’ll learn to put up with the changes and then he will forget about them, and forget how the pub used to be and forget about the people who used to come here. He practices his signature a couple of times, then writes out all the letters of the alphabet in upper and lower case. He draws a series of concentric circles. He sips his lager. He fiddles with his phone. He admires his elegant stationery.
Later in the afternoon, he gets up and puts his writing materials back in his satchel. He notices that his ballpoint pen has gone through the page and left a cobweb of scratched graffiti on the veneer tabletop. Feeling quietly satisfied by this result, and not at all guilty for defacing the new furniture, Lorenzo leaves, and wanders slowly back to his
