ADVENTURES IN A DIFFICULT WORLD (CHAPTER FOURTEEN)

So, I'd done my stuff and I'm washing my hands, when Danny comes in. He stands in the doorway to the toilet . His thick set almost blocking it. I can tell by his face he isn't happy.
'Hi!' I say.
'Don't fucking hi me, Rig!'
'Why what's your problem, Danny?'
'I haven't got a problem – you've got a fucking problem! It's just not on, Rig...'
'If you're talking about Astrid and me, that's between us -- it's got nothing to do with you, Danny.'
It's not on, Rig!' He snarls.
'Well, I'm afraid it is.... very much on, Danny.' I finish drying my hands and turn to face him. But he doesn't move to let me pass. He takes his arm down from the door jamb, and I see his whole body tense up. I can feel my own adrenalin rising.
'Look Rig,' he spits, 'she is always pissing on Detlef, and you are supposed to be a fucking mate of his... And you were always trying to fucking shag her!'
You don't seem to get it! Which part of no don't you understand?' I snap, 'I'm not going to say fuck all to you about it, so just leave it, Danny...'
Now I'm getting it from his body language -- he is losing it – his face becomes set – he's running out of ways of dealing with it. His body is subconsciously preparing for confrontation -- lining me up. He isn't going to move -- he's going to make his stand right there in the doorway. My own body is also preparing for what I can feel is coming, and it could come at any second, he's reached boiling point. And I realise anything I might say could be the trigger.
There is a sizzling sound in the air; or in my head... Getting louder. The same sizzle I've known since I was a kid, that sizzle, which tells me instinctively that he is right-handed, that the one metre distance between us is too close for him to use his feet, that he would go for a surprise direct hit, or a grab, which I think would put me at a disadvantage -- he is younger and obviously stronger than me. I would like to step back to give myself more space, but I think any movement would bring him on. The sizzle intensifies -- the sizzle brings back the street. But back in the street, I would, well before this point, have struck the first blow...
Our eyes fix. It is as if we are connected by lines with hooks in our flesh – straining – taut – any move, or show of any kind of weakness on my part will give him the signal.
I know Danny's type -- this is how he gets what he wants. Danny sees everything in black and white, and he is now standing on that line between his black and white... I am his black, and behind him is where I want to go, and he isn't going to move.
I instinctively feign a look over his left shoulder, hoping to distract him, to break the deadlock of our eyes -- this would be my moment to strike.... And yes, he falls for it -- his eyes follow mine and he turns to glance over his shoulder... But I don't strike... would I have struck? Well... I don't -- for there, standing in the shadows behind him, is a smiling Mephistophelean Piper.
'Hey up, Danny, taking up marriage guidance now?' he laughingly asks, stepping forward. 'And here in the necessarium, too, now that is novel!'
'Piper...!' Danny says looking surprised, and turning around to face him. 'I was telling Rig it's not on.... him and Astrid...'
Piper's smile vanishes, and in an agitated voice he says, 'Look Danny, you are on a bootless errand, and you're out-of-order....' He waves his fingers to and fro. 'Really Danny, you know, you could bring darkness to a black night? And I'll tell you... you don't know the half... you should keep out of it... and you're blocking the toilet!'
Danny shuffles to one side to let him pass, and I step past him at the same time.
Danny talks to Piper's back standing at the urinal, 'No you're wrong, Piper – you know Detlef... he's a great guy, and he's been a good friend to me... I'm just watching his back. Don't you care?'
Piper's voice echoes a little as he talks down into the urinal. 'No, I don't care... and neither do you -- you only want to be somehow involved in something you were not invited to. And you are about as welcome, Danny boy, as a dose of rabies in a dog's home.'
I could see Piper has always had this kind of repertoire with him. I never did. It was too much involvement – I barely pass the time of day with Danny.
'No Piper... Detlef is a good mate -- I don't like this bastard' He gives me a glare, 'going behind his back, it's not on -- don't you see?'
'This isn't worth discussing, this is no one else's business but...' I try to resolve. But Piper insists, speaking over his shoulder
'Yes, Danny, I see -- I see all the way up your backside, where that minute clot resides, which you refer to as a brain, which once, maybe... had an idea, which, probably got lonely and died...'
Danny blows air into air and looks aggressive again, but Piper continues, 'If you are so concerned about Detlef's love life, Danny, tell me where did he go Friday night when he left Astrid...? Well...?
Danny says nothing.
Piper turns, nonchalantly doing up his flies. In a quieter voice he says, 'You should have asked him.... He might have thought it had something to do with you – he might have told you... Did he tell you, Danny?
'He told me he had to meet somebody...' Danny replies moodily.
'So he didn't see fit to inform you he has a second kitchen...?'
Danny just looks into space – he doesn't get it. His face is tortured ignorance, his brow corrugated. Piper continues:
'That he himself is up to ground and lofty tumblings, of a kind...'
Still the penny doesn't drop, Danny is waiting for more information, and Piper is soaking up Danny's suffering.
' That he's plumbing a bloody girl he works with...' He adds loudly and gleefully.
Now Danny gets it, and his face dives into his chest. He looks flustered – like a schoolboy caught doing some mischief -- he says nothing – what can he say?
Piper now speaks to us both.
'Before he left Friday night, Detlef, asked me to keep an eye on Astrid.... He said it was because she was getting too drunk on the absinthe.
'Everyone could tell she had a glad eye on you, Rig... So I told him.... that if he was so concerned, he should stay or take her with him... Then he told me about this girl... he's got it really bad for... So, Danny boy... are you now going to use your dog-logic and your wonderful moral persuasion on Detlef, too?
Danny looks confused. He looks smaller. His feet shuffle in a little dance. 'Fuck you both!' he mutters, and storms off.
We watch him stomp into the shadows of the corridor. Piper says, 'If he had a brain he would be dangerous.'
I am relieved the situation is over. 'I didn't expect that,' I say. 'I'm glad you came when you did.'
'Yeah, I'm sorry I brought him. I met him in the Oscar Wilde, and he... well, metaphorically limped along with me. I didn't know Astrid would be here with you. I saw him watching you as you left the table, and when he followed I knew he was on a mission.... when it comes to tact the guy would wrap sausages in silk.'
I laugh, though I was trembling. 'I've never got along with him' I said. 'He doesn't seem to have a curve in him. And I can't see what Detlef sees in him...'
Piper pulls out his silver flask from his inside breast pocket and gives it to me. I take a swig then hand it back. He takes a longer swig.
'Well, the story goes like this,' he says, he takes a deep breath, 'Danny boy, wet behind the ears, came from his Brummie home (first time out of Blighty!), and worked on a building-site for a month -- for one of these Dutch agents. And cliché, cliché, he was ripped off when pay day came around. So, the idiotic cod was having a raw go when he met Staint Detlef in the Oscar Wilde.... who rescued him -- just picked him up like some mongo object! He knocked him into shape a bit -- taught him how to pull beers, enough maths and German to take the bill, and how to throw his muscle about when needed. He gave him the job as bar-monkey in the Swerg keller. So, ever since, our Danny has been Detlef's catch-fart.
'Well, Astrid never grew to him, and as you know, she likes to express herself sometimes... So Danny didn't get an easy time from her, especially when she was in her altitudes.
'Does Astrid know about this girl?' I ask.
'I don't know, Rig... and you can't really ask her without telling her, eh?'
'Yeah, and maybe she doesn't want to talk about it... And what has it got to do with me anyway?' I add.
'I'm really thankful, though Piper! -- for your timely interruption. I think Danny was bent on mischief.'
'Yeah, I could see there was no air in his conversation.'
'I'm getting too old for that kind of stuff,' I say, 'he would have probably torn me apart.'
'You old! You're joking! you're a hipster Peter Pan, Rig! You don't look a day over forty. I think it's him who should have been worried – I saw that look in your eye! But you should just forget it,' he says passing me the flask again.
He asks me about Dirk -- and tells me he had had a heated debate with him on Friday night after we had left the King Kong Kulb – but, they had both been “commanding the clouds” as he put it.
I tell him bit about Dirk; that he's a great actor, and that you had to know how to handle him. That when his wit was cutting the secrete was to laugh with him – that it wasn't really ever personal.
Piper tells me a bit about his new paintings, He asks me if I would like to see them, and invites me to come around to the studio. Which I promise I will.

****
'Danny came from the toilet, took his coat and left,' Astrid says.
'Yeah, 'he said it's not his scene,' Piper lied.
'Well... it's not, is it?' Astrid laughs, asking no one.
Piper pulls a chair over and squeezes onto our table opposite me. I feel relieved Danny has gone. And I can see Astrid is, too.
Despite the Whisky, I still have the jitters, though I am slowly calming down. I can't help feeling better knowing Detlef is also involved with someone. And after that little escapade things can only get better.
The buffet opens and we all start stuffing ourselves. And it doesn't take Piper long to start winding-up the table with his philosophical spoon.
I'm a little distracted by what has happened, but Piper is on form, and is soon espousing his opinion to the subject on the table, which is whether money hinders or enables the artist. Susanne is saying, 'Should you really have to skip a meal for a picture.'
Piper tries to elevate the subject with one of his volleys of grand salute:
'That, which society eternally discards on this plate of life is, in fact, is the very essence of that which it has just devoured... and, which luckily, is precisely that, which the artist needs!' He raises his glass to the company, 'So, bon apetite!'
'Yeah, well,' said Dirk scowling, 'How very bunny you make it all sound -- this essence you seem to prize so highly is, in the end, just like everything else, nothing but dust.'
'Yes,' charmed Piper, 'to quote Bill the Quill:
Golden lads and girls all must,
as chimney-sweepers come to dust.
'But Dirk, don't you think there is much more to it than that? and 'Whitman wrote:All goes onward and outward, .and nothing collapses. And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier...
And who was it who said that, 'in this life we merely sip at the fountain of truth?'
'Yes, we merely sip and we merely muddy it with our dirty lying lips. You can put in any kind of metric you like, but it all still has an unmistakeable smell of cheese about it,' replied Dirk.'
I put my pennyworth in, I say, 'I agree with Piper. Was it Bergson who thought the brain was like a valve? He thought it filters out almost all the incoming information through our senses, from the universe. Because there is just too much for us to manage. So what passes in through our senses is restricted down to a trickle – and this we put in order and call consciousness.'
'You sound like the trash man who sweeps up in Theory Alley,' snaps Dirk. Everyone laughs.
The Puppet Meister says, 'But Dirk, behind his reason, doesn't man really believe what he feels?'
Dirk laughs, 'You should try to get out the cave a bit! Dust imagines dust!'
Astrid asks, 'Don't you I think life and art can transcend the literal?'
'Please!' Dirk growls in his cat'o'nine-tongue, 'can we now transcend all this shit and just eat?
Well, we eat, but what follows is a jousting match between mostly Piper and Dirk, which goes nowhere, and lasts for the rest of the evening.
Around eleven o'clock I walk Astrid to the Rosenthaler Platz Tube Station. We kiss passionately before the train comes. We exchange telephone numbers in our cellphones, and she tells me to ring her during the week, and that we can meet next Friday.
I float home high as Hyperion! I'm thinking of the night before – after we had made love Astrid had clung to me, and began whispering to me about how she had felt the first we had met in the Swerg Keller. It was like she had felt a sudden urgency to tell me. She clung so tight and her mouth was so close to my ear that it gave it a surreal feel.
I also remember that evening. I had been celebrating my selling of a large picture. And after the gallery had closed, it had been Piper who suggested, we and a few friends, go to the Swerg Keller. She whispered that she had wanted me immediately, and that was why she had joined us at our table for the rest of that evening, and had kissed me on the mouth before I left. Well, I tell her the feelings had been mutual. And that was why I had come there so often.
When I get home I just stand looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. That mug! her lipstick smudged on my mouth! -- it makes me look like a clown! – an old clown who has laughed a lot through his circus years. And as I stand there time seems to drip like blood.
'Will she? Won’t she?' These questions become: 'Am I? Aren’t I?'
They say Eskimos have over a hundred words for snow! Well, we need far more words for the idea of love -- just to make sure we understand and know what we are talking about. And time drips – trickles, dribbles, drip-drip– everything is in suspense. My thoughts ascend and descend in the elevator of my mind. Drip, drip. I wash my mouth and vanishes from the picture.