The Dinner Game

by Stephen Eley

“Do I know you?” she says.

“I remember you,” he says, and she smiles. It’s another game. He has been a spy fleeing his country. She has been an adulterous First Lady. They have been psychiatrist and schizophrenic; vampire and victim; two blind people speculating on the world they cannot see. They will make love as themselves when they leave the Rose for a room upstairs, and tomorrow he will finish his business and leave her city. But first they dine as other people.