He wants to go back to his room for a nap, W. says. This is always his intention. An afternoon nap! A power-nap, as he calls it. He learned about it from a learned lecture at the university. Sleep for 20 minutes, and you fool the mind into thinking you've been asleep for much longer. 20 minutes! That's all he needs to regain his composure, W. says.
But I never let him nap, W. says. In fact I scorn his desire to nap and even the very notion of a nap. I keep him up all night with my inanities, W. says, and then I keep him awake all day with more inanities.
Of course, he's being unfair, W. agrees, as he is the night-owl in our friendship: he is the one who insists on staying up later than anyone, of following the night through all the way until dawn. How many nights have ended for us just as dawn was brightening the sky, and the first birds were starting to sing? How many nights with Satantango on the TV and The Star of Redemption open on the desk?
W. is a man who wants to see the night through he admits. But the afternoon … that's my time, W. concedes. That's when I come into my own. When everyone around me's tired and can put up no defence. When everyone's too tired to make me shut up, that's Lars-time, W. says. The afternoon: it's when I'm at my weakest and he's at his strongest, W. says. That's when I can really get going. It's when I wear everyone out.
I've always feared the afternoon, of course, that's what I've told him, W. says. He's always been struck by that: for him, the afternoon is a time of repose, of the gathering of strength, but for me, it's a time to fear.
It must be my years of unemployment, W. says. Didn't I say my afternoon sagged like a drooping washing-line? Didn't I complain of the eternullity of the afternoon, of its infinite wearing away? It was post-Neighbours time, the afternoon, that's what I told him. Post This Morning, post Vanessa Feltz, and deep into the time of Amercan cop-show repeats.
Colombo-time, W. says, I could never bear that, could I? Instead I go out for walk, that's what I told him. Instead, it was time for a cycle. Anything to be active! Anyting to have something to do! I'd head up to Tescos for a £1 box of sushi, wasn't that it? I'd head into the library for another video, all the time full of fear, all the time fearing – what? How did I put it?
It's no wonder I'm no night-owl, W. says. No wonder that I'm always worn out by dinnertime. Don't I have to revive myself, whenever I visit, with a fourpack of Stella and some pork scratchings? Isn't that always my pre-dinner snack?
W., meanwhile, would have been refreshed from his nap, if I'd allowed him to sleep. He would have come downstairs, a man refreshed, reborn, having had a power-nap, he says. But instead, I always insist on conversation, W. says. I always insist on wearing him out, he lying on the sofa, I sitting up at the table. I always insist we make some plan or another, W. says.
It's always planning-time, world-conquest-time, W. calls it. I have to pretend to some kind of hold on the future, W. has noticed. It's like a climber throwing up a grappling hook, or Spiderman swinging by his squirted webs. I'm never happy in the moment, W. says. I'm never happy in the belly of the afternoon.
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