1.

It was raining and it was almost 8pm.

The wind screen wipers on the black cab went at a frantic pace, but even they couldn't keep up. Large drops of rain hammered the windscreen, making it almost impossible to see through. It was like a tropical storm, only it was November in the city.

Jeremy sat looking out of the window at his shoulder sullenly, as if lost in some deep thought about ancient Egypt or crop circles. For a moment, a single flash of white flooded his face, that of either of lightning or headlight, but before he could acknowledge the origin, it was over.

He held his chin with the nib of his thumb and forefinger. Then he turned.

"We're going to be late," he said. "Fucking late and I'll tell you, it's not my fucking fault."

He had turned towards Angela. A striking young woman, straight brown hair, a fringe maybe just a tad too short, exposing a shiny, almost certainly Botoxed forehead. She had eyes slightly too wide apart, as they should be, and striking pursed red lips.

"Stop swearing," she said. "We're in a public place."

"We're in a fucking taxi cab," he said.

"Yes but, well," she said. "Same rules apply if you were stuck in an elevator."

He turned back towards his window, for it was a superior point, and one for which he had no retort.

"And anyway, what the fuck can we do at this point," she said to the back of the front passenger seat.

Then she crossed her legs.

2.

The bar was busy, crowded even. People, intoxicated, rowdy, not respectful of personal space. Those whom chose to sit at bar stools barged at with Oxford shirt clad backs and turning heads and glares and sharp elbows. Men, men mostly in groups of other men, being loud. Overly loud. Obnoxiously loud, especially when laughing.

At a small table in the corner of the room, a man and a woman sat in cascading light underneath a small brass ornamental wall lamp. Short cocktail drinks in stemmed glassware on red napkins, a small bowl of olive pits and twisted tooth picks sat centrally on the small circular table in front of them.

They both watched the room in a silence with history to it, until one of them spoke.

"What do you think," he said, not looking at her. "Getting busy in here now, Sam."

"Where are they?" Her voice was sharp in tone, not listening to what he said at all. "They're always late. We should do this to them one time, see how they like it. Being late. I think it's her, the being late thing."

"Calm down would you?"

"For goodness sake, Daniel, I told you they'd be late and we'd be waiting for them again," she said. "I told you, Didn't I? It's disrespectful, it happening this often. Too often. I bet it's her."

He adjusted his posture on the chair he was sat on and took a breath.

"I don't disagree," he replied defeatedly.

"This is three times, now." She paused to accentuate the point. "Three times in a row."

He picked up his drink and took a sip, then turned his head as far away from her as he could without it looking obvious as to what he was doing.

3.

They walked at pace down the pavement. Angela hid behind a black brolly, proceeding forwards with a sort of blind faith rather than being able to actually see anything. Jeremy, a few paces behind her, held his coat over his head, the rain still lashing downwards. There were very few other people around, but plenty of cars splashed by on potholes and diverts.

The sky looked troubled, rolling clouds close enough to touch, a strange colour. A rose tint to it that looked perverse, like a fork of lightning could drop at any time. Full of unnatural light which made everything look somewhat sinister, coating the streets and buildings with a strange hue, though nobody seemed to take the time to notice.

He hopped a little to catch up with her until he was at arm's length, then he put a reassuring hand on her back as his raincoat flopped forward and onto his already wet hair. She would at one time have found that humorous, but things had changed between them. Unspoken things.

"I'm sorry I lost my rag. We're almost there," he said, an optimism in his voice that sounded somewhat sarcastic, it was that rehearsed. "Won't be long now."

"This place they chose, it better be fucking good," was her only reply.

Jeremy stopped dead on the street in protest and let his shoulders sag. He knew what he was doing; it was a similar rigmarole they played out often and never did seem to tire of.

"Are you fucking serious?" He said, "Jesus fucking Christ."

After two further strides, each shorter than the other, Angela turned around, her face twisted in a frown, her nose turned up against the droplets of second-hand rain falling from her umbrella, her forehead remarkably smooth.

"Just hurry the fuck up. Come on, Jeremy, I'm soaking fucking wet," she howled.

"Now who's swearing?"

There were children nearby, two of them, within listening distance. She didn't care one bit. He seemed too however, if only a little bit, glancing over with a somewhat guilty expression at a mother who pushed the toddlers along with urgency, she did not look happy. Angela stood there, waiting for him like a child waiting for her forlorn puppy.

"You know I don't like this," she said. "Not with them. Not with her. Not now."

After a couple of moments, Jeremy, without saying a word more but shaking his head, paced towards her until they were side by side, then they both turned without acknowledgement and continued forward down the pavement together.

4.

Angela and Jeremy announced themselves into the room, banging the front door handle against the untreated brick wall as it swung open and they poured in. She shook her umbrella outside whilst he footed the bottom of the door to keep it open, him then shaking the excess rain from his now sodden coat. They muttered something in each others general direction but neither was intended to be heard, not really. She grabbed him by the arm, looked at him, but he pushed past her, insistent on getting inside.

A few people in that area of the dining room turned and acknowledged them, acknowledged the downpour outside, before returning to their meals and eyeballing their partners in silence or indiscernible low chatter.

"Buenas noches, mesa para dos, you two guys?"

Angela and Jeremy turned. Stood in front of them was a small olive-skinned man, balding at the dome, wearing a rather stiff black suit and a bright red apron that had one singular blob of something on it, something darker red.

"We've booked. We're with friends," Jeremy replied, "Under his name, I think. Daniel. Daniel Lockwood. Samantha is here, too."

The waiter took their coats over one arm and, in a single practised motion, handed them off to a second, younger man, he had a long crooked nose – white shirt, gaunt, mildly put-upon – who appeared from nowhere in particular directly behind him, accepted the coats without a word, and retreated into a cupboard with a desk on hinges.

"Ah yes," the waiter replied. "They've been waiting for you."

"They've been waiting for us," said Angela, eyeballing Jeremy.

"It's fine, we can't help being late in this dreadful weather," he replied in a hush with an angled head.

"Right this way please."

And with that he led them into the dining room.

5.

They walked up to a circular table in the middle of the dining room. By this point, Daniel and Sam had moved from the interconnected bar next door to the main restaurant area and to their table. A band was playing slow background jazz sullenly on a stage in front of them; nobody was paying much attention.

Jeremy noticed an already empty bottle of red wine on the table and two glasses that were only half full, a visual aid of how late they were, possibly done intentionally.

"I'm so sorry we're late, darlings," Angela said, she seemed to be performing. "This bloody awful weather, the traffic, and the driver dropped us off down the street. We had no earthly idea where we were going."

"Please, less of that, it's been no bother at all, we've just been enjoying the band," Daniel said. Sam looked over his way with pursed lips and then she looked at Jeremy.

"Oh, that's good then, isn't it," Angela replied. She reached over a chair and gave Sam a hug, pushing in at the shoulders, like playing a human accordion, kissing her on each cheekbone then backing off and taking a look.

Daniel and Jeremy shared a hearty handshake over the table and a prolonged moment of eye contact with teeth-less smiles.

"How are you doing, Jeremy."

"Fine, Daniel, how are you, buddy?"

"I can't complain."

"Good. Excellent."

Jeremy and Angela shuffled around backs of chairs somewhat with hushed muttering, deciding where to sit as Daniel and Sam sat back down, both taking a tight-lipped sip of their wine glasses in stereo. Then Daniel began pouring water for the table as Angela sat down next to Daniel and Jeremy parked down to the right of Sam.

6.

The waiters, the same two waiters who had welcomed Jeremy and Angela at the door, came in from the swing doors at the kitchen one-after-another, the older gentleman in front every time, the youngster with the nose behind. Plates stacked up their arms, showing impressive balance and technique. The patatas bravas went down first, hot enough to raise a blister on contact, two rehearsed thin lines of tomato sauce drawn across the top.

Then the jamón, laid out thin enough to see the light through, the kind of thin that takes a man a lifetime to learn at the expense of several finger nerve endings.

The younger waiter with the nose came in behind the first with the croquetas; hot, dark, a thick coat of breadcrumbs hiding something delicious and even hotter inside.

The pan con tomate arrived without ceremony; bread, tomato, oil, nothing else, set down quietly in the centre of the table. Nothing much to look at, certainly.

Then the gambas al ajillo came still spitting, garlic burnt gold, oil popping and spitting, making the heads of guests nearby turn and look, the waiter set it down fast and stepped back like it was a hand grenade.

Last was the pulpo a la gallega, octopus sliced thin over potatoes, paprika dusted on top like it was police evidence looking for fingerprints, and behind that then the tortilla española, cut in a handsome wedge, egg still soft in the middle, wobbling slightly how you hoped it would, looking almost translucent in the dim restaurant light.

Nobody touched anything yet. The plates just sat there, Daniel, Sam, Angela and Jeremy all looking at one another, red wine in hand, in expectation and delight.

7.

"We've been sold this whole entire thing, of how convenience is the only way to go and as a society we've completely bought it up," Daniel said, his elbows on the table either side of his half-eaten plate, in his right hand his glass of red, swirled slow enough that the tannins left legs down the inside of the glass as it settled. "But yet what we're starting to realise, well some of us at least, is that we've been costed out of the price of convenience already. We've burnt through all of our, by our I mean the world's, natural resources so rapidly that now the cost of what we perceive to be the normal expectations of our sordid little convenient lifestyle has become so much that resources in themselves are so stretched to bursting point, and yet we as a society don't have the wherewithal or the foresight or the, the care even – to say, no, let's slow this down, let's stop what we're doing here, even if it's at the inconvenience to ourselves. It's because we've gotten too self-centred, we've gotten too self-involved. It's all someone else's problem, until it's literally right at our doorstep."

Daniel took a momentary sip of his wine, with his other hand he drilled his index finger into the white table cloth with such force that it made a noise. Sam had her head resting in her open palm, her elbow too resting on the table. Angela and Jeremy sat looking at Daniel pensively yet attentive, giving occasionally encouraging nods and murmurings for him to continue.

"But that's the thing, you see." So he did continue. "It's going to be on our doorstep quicker than we think it is. It already is, in fact. The way things are going, I would argue that even our own generation and certainly our children's, I know none of us have any at the moment but, regardless, we will see the drastic consequences of the drilling and the mining and the pillaging of all of these natural resources in order to facilitate what we conceive of these perfect little convenient lives of ours."

Daniel stopped, took a breath, and looked at the three others sat at the table, giving each a second or so of eye contact. Then he picked up his fork, stabbed a potato lingering at the side of his plate – with something that looked almost like frustration – and closed his teeth around the prongs, letting the potato stay in his mouth.

"I think what you mean," Angela said, not looking up from her wine, "is that you feel guilty, and you'd like us to agree with you." She looked up and smiled at him when she'd finished speaking.

Daniel, chewing his potato, opened his mouth to respond, however Angela then carried on before he could make a noise.

"It's very easy to be against convenience when you've never actually had to live without it. You flew business class to Spain in June, didn't you both? I remember, because didn't you send us all a photograph of you in your bikini in the pool in our group chat, Sam?" She took a sip of her wine, unhurried, and looked at Sam, whom simply shrugged. "Nobody's stopping you from selling the house and going off glamping, Daniel."

"We like nice things," Angela went on, turning to Jeremy who dipped his wine glass and raised his eyebrows in recognition, "we all do, and I'm not going to apologise for it whilst we all have a nice dinner."

Sam leaned into the table, picked up the empty wine bottle which sat next to the water jug and looked at the others.

"Shall we get more wine," she said, placing the bottle back down carefully and then sitting back down, "if we're going to be doing this for a while."

8.

"Jeremy," Sam said, a little slurry, for there were now two more empty bottles sat on the table amongst an almost empty bread basket and an empty bottle of sparkling water. "You do not have three God damn kidneys."

Sam's comedic timing was impeccable; both Daniel and Angela blurted out with laughter, as Jeremy sat across from her, tight-lipped, one corner curled up to show half a handsome dimple.

The band had kicked into another gear in front of them and were banging out energetic jazz music at a higher rate of beats per minute, the way bands do when they've realised nobody's really listening and have decided to enjoy themselves regardless. Two older couples were dancing on the small dance floor, doing the sort of dancing that's really just rotating in a slow circle with conviction whilst holding hands.

"I do, apparently, I got told by my doctor when I was a child. You could ask my mother," Jeremy said, as straight-faced as he could. "If she wasn't dead."

"She's not even fucking dead!" Angela quipped spinning her head around so that her earrings whipped against her face.

"Dead to me, then." Jeremy snatched his wine glass by the stem and sunk back the remaining sedimenty slosh of red wine left in the bottom.

"You're a momma's boy," Angela said, getting up from her chair. She looked at Jeremy, and then at Sam, and looked sort of sad. Then she wobbled towards the exit doors.

Sam recoiled and leaned back with her head in her hands, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

"Three kidneys, you idiot."

Jeremy slammed his glass down and shrugged his lean shoulders, then he popped another button from his shirt revealing even more chest hair. Daniel noticed Sam looking.

"I distinctly remember being told I have three kidneys," Jeremy said, softly and matter-of-factly, not looking at anyone in particular.

Sam didn't say anything else. She just looked at him a moment too long, and then reached for a wine bottle that wasn't there.

Daniel noticed that, too.

9.

"You know, Jeremy once slept with one of my old girlfriends," said Daniel, as casually as anything. He had a negroni in one hand and his other hand was clenched shut and resting on the table.

"An ex girlfriend?"

"No, we were still together at the time."

Sam looked over at Jeremy, open-mouthed, gawping while still smiling, whilst Jeremy simply shrugged his shoulders, concealing a grin, casting a wicked stare back in Sam's direction.

"You didn't? How do I not know about this?" Sam said, still looking gobsmacked.

In the background, the live band had taken it up yet another notch and were playing something quick paced and swinging. A good portion of the tables around had now gotten up and were dancing on the bustling dance floor, leaving errant chairs in islands with suede or leather bags, small and large on the back rests and the occasional fur stole giving the impression of a stunned animal hanging limp.

"It was a long time ago," Jeremy said, brushing it off.

"How long?" Sam replied instantly.

"College," Jeremy replied.

"You dirty dog," Sam chirped back, but she was looking directly at Jeremy with slightly raised eyebrows which could easily pass for excitement. Daniel glanced over and saw them looking at each other.

"Yeah, he's a bastard, al'right," Daniel said, but Sam didn't hear him, or if she did, she chose not to respond.

"It was a long time ago, Daniel, I think it's time you dropped it."

"He is handsome, though," Sam said. She was drunk and it came out easy. She darted a look over at Daniel, who was already looking back at her with a stiff glare. She reached over and touched Daniel's leg under the table, but he moved it away, out of reach.

"And so are you, Daniel," she said. "I can share a table with two handsome men, can't I?"

"Of course you can," Jeremy said, looking over at Daniel. He lifted his glass and took a long sip of his old fashioned, pursing and then licking his lips, then looking at both Sam and then Daniel with somewhat squinted, inebriated eyes, one to the other and then back again.

There was a bubble which had formed around the table, as if the band and the other people in the room no longer existed if you were unfortunate enough to be contained inside of it.

Daniel's knee began to bob in time with the tapping of the ball of his right foot, it wasn't to the music, it was much quicker and mean spirited. Jeremy took another long sip of his old fashioned and continued to watch the other two keenly, before he put his glass down methodically and pulled his chair out.

"I'm going to see where Angela is," he said, looking again at Sam and then at Daniel.

Angela still hadn't returned to the table after stepping out for a cigarette some minutes ago. Nobody had mentioned her name or realised she had been gone that long, even though it was now approaching somewhat of an unusually long time for a cigarette break.

"Go for it," Daniel replied dryly. He didn't look back at Jeremy, rather letting his eyes fixate on something on the table.

"OK. Are you sure you're okay, Dan?"

Daniel didn't reply. He didn't look up. Indeed, he hardly acknowledged Jeremy at all, only giving a very brief nod of the head, which seemed to suffice.

"OK then."

Jeremy got up, hovered a little whilst he got his balance, and then stepped around his chair, doubling back around and towards the entrance doors, snaking around chairs and tables with his hips.

As soon as Jeremy was out of dodge, Sam turned towards Daniel and again reached over to put her hand on top of his shaking knee. He didn't pull away this time; she gripped his thigh close to the knee joint, which caused his rocking to subside, but it didn't stop it completely.

"I didn't mean anything by it," she said.

"I know. I know you didn't," he said.

There was a pause, they both looked elsewhere.

"Then why act like that, then?" she said.

When she said it, the rocking knee became more agitated again under her hand, causing her shoulders to shake and her head to nod unwillingly and rather comically, so she pulled away completely, instead picking up her glass of wine and taking a long gulp, finishing what was at the bottom. Daniel didn't say anything, instead just looking at the same point of the table in front of him.

They sat in silence for a while longer. The band played in the background, the vibrancy and dancing in the room continuing on, yet confined in this bubble was a complete silence and a deep, sorrowful toxicity that, when inside it, felt all-immersive and impenetrable.

Sam turned to face him again. She looked intently into the side of his face, and then reached out and let the top side of her fingers gently move down Daniel's features, from the wrinkles of his eye, his temple, downwards towards the arc of his jawline and the neck. She said something quietly about love, but he didn't hear her. Then she stood up and walked away, towards where the bathrooms were situated.

Daniel continued to look at the focus point on the table, his knee rocking erratically, his breathing close-mouthed, methodical and purposeful.

And then he got up.

10.

It was still raining, hard, and had been for what felt like hours. Angela stood under the awning of the restaurant smoking a cigarette, watching the water pool at the lip in the corners into heavier drops that gathered weight before they fell – and when they hit the pavement in front of her, they landed with a sound that didn't belong to rain. More dense and deliberate, almost like footsteps, so that the storm seemed to double in on itself right where she stood, like something was approaching.

She stared out, unblinking, though there was little to see. The street sat empty apart from the odd car passing, unhurried, and the wipers were often the only sound besides the hiss of wet tyres turning over the tarmac road. She stood some way in front from the security man – large, dressed head to toe in black, planted at the door – not close, but not quite a stranger's distance either. As if she needed him there, for reasons known only to her.

A bolt of lightning struck somewhere on the horizon, and for a split second the world turned to daylight before collapsing back into darkness. Angela drew on her cigarette, waiting for the thunder, and when it came, an earnest, rolling boom, beautiful and unsettling at once, she allowed herself a small, wry smile, and kept it all to herself.

11.

"What do you think you're doing mother fucker," Daniel said, adding plenty of extra emphasis on the M and the F, so much so that he spat a little bit.

"Relax," said Jeremy, "Take one breath in front of the other." He said it whilst catching his own breath, those deep forced breaths that are meant to intentionally slow your heart rate down, though, in fairness, they were doing very little for either of them.

"What do you mean by that?" Daniel's voice was higher than he wanted it to be.

"What do you mean what do I mean? I mean chill out a little, hear? It's not entirely what it looks like!"

"It's exactly what it looks like," Daniel said. "I have eyes, Jeremy. Two of them. Two working eyes."

Daniel simply looked blankly at them both silently; her bent over, her legs spread open in tripod formation, the skirt of her dress lifted over her and double backed so it was resting on her lower arched back, exposing her bare ass, the urinal puck in her face.

And him stood directly behind her with his trousers down by his ankles. At this point he'd at least been polite enough to take his penis out of her vagina, slowly, so that it rested on her butt cheek like a lever being slowly pulled down by an invisible worker man as he slowly lost his erection.

"Look. What I mean is, don't be so alarmed – if we're being honest this isn't the first time, buddy."

"Stop calling me buddy," Daniel screamed. "I think your buddy privileges have just been revoked, Jeremy." He paused, still processing the situation. "You're fucking my wife against a men's toilet urinal for Christ sake!? I can quite certainly say the buddy era is officially over!" It's like he had to say it out loud to be able to acknowledge what he was seeing was actually true.

"And we'd just had a nice meal," he continued. "She must be all full up of tortilla."

Sam suddenly shot up like she had an electric bolt pulsated from her coccyx which caused Jeremy to fall back a little like an awkward penguin with a human penis towards an unoccupied cubicle door.

"You never wanted sex after eating tortilla," Daniel continued, sympathetic in tone, with the tortilla thing, "You always said that after all the egg and the potato, that it made you all bloated. I remember specifically, the last time we came here. I was the one who suggested we skip tortilla because I remember specifically wanting sex afterwards."

The room momentarily fell silent.

"And look at you now."

Jeremy and Sam cast a very brief, very risky glance towards each other.

"Look, what Jeremy's trying to say is," Sam said, patting down her skirt in sections like she was playing her own personal game of unfaithful whack a mole, "Is that we love each other."

Daniel, without diverting his eyes anywhere but in front of him, silently moved his head east to west slightly until he and Jeremy were sharing direct eye contact.

"Love?" Daniel said.

Jeremy curled a lip upward so hard that his left nostril lifted up into his face giving him a distorted look, and then he gave another one of his trademark ambivalent shrugs.

"You love each other?" Daniel said again, so inexplicably and this time only to Jeremy. "My wife of thirteen years?"

Jeremy doubled down on his shrug so that his neck was basically lost into his shoulders at this point.

"I don't know?" He finally said. "I wouldn't say love, exactly? Love's a big word. Love's got a lot riding on it." He turned to Sam, "I don't know if i'd necessarily call it love, would you call it love?"

Sam had a look of absolute horror on her face.

"I thought we were just fooling around? You have a nice ass and you said I was good in bed. I don't know if there's any real love connection here, do you? I mean, you're sort of, well, not dull, but you're not the most intelligent cat."

Seeing the look of horror and disgust on his wife's face hearing what Jeremy was saying and then describing her as a domestic animal almost made Daniel angrier than he was seeing her get fucked by him.

He still had a staunch loyalty to her, despite her flagrant infidelity, manifested from years of ups and downs and the bond of getting through difficult years with an often silent gracefulness and so many nights sharing the same bed sheets together.

Jeremy had begun to start pulling up his trousers in a panic, struggling to pull and also raise whilst simultaneously not standing on the fabric of the trouser itself, it was proving somewhat difficult, in fact it was not going well. Sam just stood there, open mouthed, realising that she had been used and humiliated.

12.

The rain was still coming down, sideways now, the wind having worked itself up into something like a gale. The lightning had gotten regular about it too. There weren't any cars passing anymore, either – Angela realised she hadn't seen one in some time.

She got out another cigarette and lit it, which took her a couple of tries in the wind, but she stuck with it till the tip caught and the embers glowed that orange colour cigarettes do in the dark, and the slight crackling sound. She took a long drag and let it out slow, but the wind took the smoke from her almost before she'd finished exhaling.

"I didn't think it would thunderstorm tonight." She said it to nobody in particular.

"No, it wasn't forecasted." Said a deep low voice from behind her. It was the bouncer. He'd been standing there a while, silently, watching her go through her last three cigarettes.

"But who can predict it."

All of a sudden his radio beeped, and then buzzed. A tinny message mumbled through the device on his hip. He unhooked the radio and held it to his mouth.

"Nine-eight, say that again please."

Another jumbled message came through the radio in all sorts of cackles and cracks. Angela didn't look behind her, but listened intently.

"OK I'll come in. Two men you say? What the fuck."

Another bout of buzzed jargon.

"OK, OK. They're doing what? What the fuck," he continued to talk directly into the radio. "Bleeding profusely on the tablecloths? What the fu-uuck. That shit doesn’t come out, man. OK, I'll be there right away."

He clipped the radio back onto his belt, the kind of practised motion that didn't need him to look down to do it. For a split second he just stood there, like he was deciding on something, or maybe just working out the order he was going to do the things in.

"Fuck. You gonna be alright out here on your own?" he said. "We've got someone in there that's used a trombone from the band as a weapon on another guest. They were from the same table as well, apparently, can you believe that?"

Angela took a drag off her cigarette and didn't answer right away, which in a way was its own kind of answer.

Eventually she said, "I've become very good at being on my own."

He went in through the door, leaving her out there with the rain and the lightning and what was left of her cigarette.