I like to watch the sun on the water, rippling out in gold in thesesmall murmuring waves. The fish come to the surface too since I used to feed them, with my evening smoke, at this time. I see their bubbles from where I sit and watch at the flurry before they slowly shrink away.

I could see that he was athletic, as his boat emerged through the leaves of the trees that overhang the river. I watched him as he paddled to the shore and moored at the jetty.

He said his boat had run dry, and could he trouble us for some gasoline: a well-practiced thing.

My wife had told me to rest, specifically out there on the veranda.

When folk come through the trees this way, I like it for them to appreciate the craftsmanship. I expected this of him too; I am entitled to expectation.

My place is oak: felled, and planed, joined, everything by me. There is detail too like the hearts and diamonds etched in the portico and architrave, a little joke with my wife.

“It’s a beautiful place you have here, sir” he said, like he did not know it already.

“Screamed to me like Lorelei” he said, which was overkill or alittle joke with my wife.

He took his hat in the palm of his hand as he spoke. I had seen him before of course, but never this close.

I said: “come up here and get a drink.”

He looked up and past me, and in the doorway was my wife.

“Hi” she said.

We watched her walk across the veranda, take my glass and go.Only, I saw how she looked at him in the reflection of the screen door.

Soon the smell of Tri-tip found us out there. I told him to stay: they knew I would. He helped me up and we stepped through to the table – all of it, utterly contrived. I took my pills from the cabinet.

“What’s your trade?” he said

“Puppets” I said

God help him: he thought he had an old Geppetto.

We looked each other up and down, as we took our seats. The cabinet, the table: I had made all these things and there too –before me now – was carved of my own young loin.

My wife came through the door now. She had made up around the eyes and filled our glasses.

“Are you from here?” she said – she was convincing, that’s true.

He cleared his throat.

“Let the man eat,” I said. Do not patronise Me.

She started to offer us potatoes: I can make her nervous like that.

We ate in silence then but that was anticipated. What was not though, is that once he was done, he said:

“I knight you: Sir Loin”

Deference? reverence? filial piety? No, that was the wine.

He placed the napkin down on his plate.

“Now, can I offer anyone a smoke?” he said. My boy: I thought. I could have done with a smoke.

She looked to me, and then him and took the napkin from her lap. From my chair, I watched them pass through the kitchen: my Phaedra, my Oedipus, a chip off the old block.

I dropped a pill in the wine, which would do it, and whisked it silently with my fork, deliberate not to hit the edges of the glass. These things sink: then, like the fish, they slowly shrink away.