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now also departed, suspected that you had decided ages ago to get no closer to me than you do in my in-box, or across a brightly lit café table under the protective gaze of a dozen witnesses. Given all this, today’s conversation was pleasantly warm, affectionate, sincere, personal if not intimate, and it was even half an hour longer than we had planned. That’s what the second whisky thought. There’s a good chance that we could go on with this kind of Sunday-afternoon café meeting until we’re retirees, and play doubles solitaire together, or maybe a round of hearts, if our partners played too. (I’m sure “Pam” is a natural.)
    Now, the third whisky, which can be a little fruity, asked about your physical feelings. (The whisky called it “libido,” rather grandiloquently I thought. I told him that might be going a bit far.) He wanted to know whether I really believed that you only find me attractive with a blood-alcohol level of 3.8 parts per thousand. Because with coffee and water you seem to lack all interest in my physical appearance. I replied: “You’re definitely wrong there, Whisky. Leo is a man who can concentrate all of his feelings, however strong, and whatever they are, into a single point in the middle of his palm. It wouldn’t occur to a man like him to let a woman know if he found her attractive, and he certainly wouldn’t say to her face: ‘I like you!’ He’d find that far too crude.” And the third whisky said to me: “I bet he’s said stuff like that to Pamela a thousand times.” Do you know what I did with the third whisky after that, Leo dear? I annihilated it. And now I’m going to bed. Good morning!
    Later that morning
    Subject: Honestly, Emmi!
    What was it you wrote the day after our first meeting? Let me quote: “‘Thank you, Emmi’ was feeble. Very feeble. Well below your potential.”
    And what did you say last night about our second meeting? Let me quote: “Because with coffee and water you seem to lack all interest in my physical appearance.” That was feeble, Emmi. Very feeble. Well below your potential.
    Three hours later
    Re:
    Leo, I’m sorry. You’re right, that sentence sounded ridiculous. If you’d written it, I’d have laid into you. The whole email is embarrassing. Vain. Touchy. Smarmy. Bitchy. Yuck! But you’ve got to believe me: IT WASN’T ME, IT WAS THE THREE WHISKIES! I’ve got a headache. I’m going to go and lie down. Bye-bye!
    The following evening
    Subject: Bernhard
    Emmi, I’m sorry. I need to try to reevaluate what you (and your whiskies) have said. So I’m going to ask you, in all seriousness and without a trace of humor, as befits my personality: why should I have any “interest in your physical appearance”? Why should I say to your face, “I like you”? Why should I get any closer to you than across the table of a well-lit café? Surely you don’t want me to fall in love with you “physically” too (or libidinously, as the booze puts it)?! Where would that get you? I don’t understand, you’ll have to explain. In fact, there are a number of things that need an explanation, my dear. Over coffee you managed yet again to be elegantly evasive. You’ve been skirting around the issue for months—since Boston, in fact. But now I want to know. Yes, I really do want to know. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark.
    Here’s my first questionnaire: How’s your relationship? How are things with you and Bernhard? What are the children up to? What goes on in your life? Questionnaire two: Why did you resume contact with me after Boston? What do you now think about the circumstances that led to the break in our correspondence? How could you forgive Bernhard? How could you forgive me? Questionnaire three: What is missing from your life? What can I do for