Weekend by William McIlvanney

over the bowl and waited for the urine to arrive. When it did eventually come, it fell sheer into the water of the lavatory pan in heavy droplets. It occurred to him again that those contests of projectile peeing he had witnessed as a boy (who can pee the highest?) hadn’t been as pointlessly silly as he had thought they were at the time. They had been an instinctive expression of growing virility. Young men can pee like stallions. Old men can’t. He wiped his penis with a small piece of toilet paper to avoid the dreaded residue, and flushed. It was then that he was aware of the heaviness of his penis, as if it were trying to tell him something (I’m not just here for this, you know).
    He crossed to the wash-basin and turned the hot water on quietly. He painstakingly tried to coax some lather out of an oblong of soap so small he found it difficult to locate it in his large cupped hands. He was taking his time, less out of commitment to hygiene than as a way to let him adjust to the strangeness of where he was. He dried his hands and peered into the bedroom, into which the open bathroom door threw a shaft of light that diffused gently through the rest of the room.
    She was still asleep, he was glad to see. He needed to be alone to work out what he felt. Looking at her, he couldn’t believe that someone so attractive was lying in his bed. He tiptoed through and put on his underpants, trying to draw inhis stomach as he pulled them up. She seemed fathoms down in sleep. Maybe the wine had helped with that. He looked for the bottle and saw that it was still half full. Not half empty. Was her presence teaching him optimism? He found his drained glass and refilled it. He sat down on the cushioned chair, took a sip of warm white wine and stared at her.
    He still couldn’t understand the sequence of events that had led to her being here. It was like spinning random numbers on a safe to which you had lost the combination long ago and suddenly it sprang open, and you couldn’t believe the forgotten wealth that was inside. He contemplated her as if she had been conjured out of some half-forgotten poem, say ‘The Eve of St Agnes’.
    If a careless mistake could yield such riches, maybe he should have cultivated more carelessness in his life. The half-bottle of whisky he had brought with him had been an ill-advised attempt to ration his consumption. When he had gone to his room on Friday night he had decided to celebrate completing his main responsibility, having delivered the only lecture he had. The celebration had got slightly out of hand. Shortly after midnight, the half-bottle was empty. He excused himself by remembering that he had taken a couple of drinks from it before dinner.
    He had thought of going to bed but decided he really needed one last nightcap. Perhaps the bar was still open. When he stepped out of his room into the corridor, the omens weren’t good. Nobody was celebrating Mardi Gras tonight. He walked through a silent hotel, meeting no one. Before he reached the bar downstairs, he noticed a dim light in the lounge. Glancing in, he saw Mickey Deans and Kate Foster sitting under a single light, talking with quiet intensity. The tableau they made went through him with such a pang of theunattainable, they might as well have been in the Garden of Eden. He turned away without making a sound.
    The dark silence of the bar had already told him it was closed but he went in anyway. He was wondering if they had shuttered it. Some of these country hotels didn’t. It was no good. Fort Knox with a gantry. He went to the end of the bar to see if he could get in that way. Everything was locked up. He wandered back across the bar and stood against the wall just inside the doorway, reluctant to accept the hopelessness of things. He had a vague idea that, if he could just reach one of the optics, he could fill a glass and pay in the morning. He was being silly, he knew, but his silliness was suddenly rewarded in an unforeseeable