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water, and programmes well removed from the present.
Maybe just whisky and water. Sometimes just whisky.
    While he was sitting with his drink on the sofa, Theo
recalled the drifting cry of the girl cyclist in the dusk, and
thought of his own Nadine: a woman with whom he'd
had a sudden and unfortunate affair that perhaps signalled
the failure of his marriage, though the essential causes
lay elsewhere. Nadine was a dental assistant, and there
was nothing romantic in their relationship there. On his
occasional visits she would sit close to his side, but only to
expedite the use of the small suction device that removed
excess saliva during the pauses in the dentist's use of the
drill. Theo hadn't known her name. They exchanged only a
few commonplace words, and his main impressions of her
appearance were the considerable bosom beneath the white
smock and a round face of blameless, schoolgirl innocence,
though she must have been in her late twenties. He felt no
particular interest in her, and she displayed towards him
no more than professional attention.
    They met in rather different circumstances at a BP
service station in Papanui. Theo was checking tyre pressures,
and Nadine was attaching a trailerload of firewood she'd
purchased there. He noticed that the trailer was still chained
to the fence, and jumped in front of her car just as she was
about to drive away. 'The guy's forgotten to unchain the
trailer,' he called, when her startled face appeared at the
driver's window. 'I'll get him over.'
    He knew he'd seen her somewhere before, but didn't
know where, and she gave no sign of having recognised
him. Perhaps she was accustomed to him only when he
was semi-prone and with his mouth stretched open.
    She thanked him and drove away apprehensively, with
the trailer bouncing noisily over the kerb. She drove a
Commodore, and Theo imagined it wasn't her choice, but
her partner's car.
    Theo went to the dentist not long afterwards because
a piece had broken off one of his lower left teeth. He
and Nadine recognised each other immediately, and
entertained the dentist with the story of a small disaster
averted. 'I didn't think you looked comfortable in that car
at all,' said Theo.
    'It's my husband's. By rights he should've been getting
the firewood anyway, but he kept putting off ringing up,
and then he was away and I needed some right then. My
car hasn't got a tow-bar.'
    'Always useful, a tow-bar,' said the dentist indulgently.
    'So what do you drive?' Theo asked her.
    'I've got a Corolla.'
    'Bloody good little cars,' said Theo.
    'Just keep on keeping on,' said the dentist, who had a
Saab.
    'I've been pleased with it,' said Nadine, and then all
three concentrated on Theo's tooth: in a dental surgery
time is money.
    It wasn't a conversation that foreshadowed intimacy, but
a few days later by one of those small coincidences which
litter everyday life, Theo met her again at a private gallery
exhibition of lithographs. Stella was to give the speech for
the opening, so was in a group closely connected with the
show. She and Theo were cooling from an argument in the
car on their way to the show: a disagreement concerning
Theo's interest in a job in Auckland.
    Theo was relieved to move away and look at some of
the work. He recognised Nadine close beside him. They
were surprised by the meeting, then tried to disguise this
lest it be taken as incredulity that the other had any cultural
inclination. 'I do mainly screenprinting,' said Nadine,
when Theo had explained why he was at the exhibition.
'I'm in a co-operative with several of the people exhibiting
here.'
    'Dentistry and screenprinting, now there's a combination,'
said Theo. He was close to the long table that
held ranks of glasses bottom up and carafes of wine, so he
filled a glass for Nadine, topped up his own. The availability
of reasonable wine was one of the few benefits of attending
art functions with his wife. He talked with Nadine of art
and the fashion dictates that seemed to rule