I loop the handles of the holdall over one thin shoulder. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be, darlink,’ I say in Irina’s husky voice, as Gia holds the door open to let me through into the hotel corridor.
5
As I teeter down the hallway after Gia, my eyes feel grainy and the ground seems wavy and distorted and way too far away.
I should have slept last night, but I couldn’t. Sometimes I forget that the human body — as miraculous and complex as it is — is not a machine and cannot be dictated to. Not in the ways that really matter.
We stalk down miles of lush royal blue and gold patterned carpet, beneath enormous hand-blown Murano glass chandeliers of breathtaking beauty, past hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of original art, statuary and antique demi-lune tables with delicately carved clawed feet, like the feet of predatory animals. As we move closer to the lifts, I see a man holding a lift door open for us with a hand the size of a dinner plate. His eyes seem to linger just a fraction too long upon my face.
He’s dressed like a suit, though he looks like a thug made good, with a heavy-set frame and a nose that’s slightly left of centre. He’s sporting a five o’clock shadow that must be pretty much around-the-clock, has scarred facial skin and a serious case of perma-tan. His long, thick, unnaturally black hair is pulled tight into a low ponytail and he’s wearing an earpiece. He’s taller than average, and it’s clear from a quick visual inspection that he enjoys a workout. Big head, big hands. Bull-necked. Neat, clipped nails. Expensive gold watch. Expensive shoes for someone in his line of work.
With a nod, the man indicates we should enter the lift. ‘Irina,’ he rasps, his Russian accent unmistakeable. ‘Zdravstvujte.’
Hello, he’s saying, and I don’t know how I know this, but it’s the formal way. The way an employee, say, would address his employer, even though this guy has thirty years and about two hundred pounds on Irina, at least, and looks like a wise guy, a hit man.
‘Vladimir,’ I reply, thinking back quickly to the names that Gia and Felipe had bandied around. That was the only Russian name they’d mentioned.
I don’t recall ever speaking a word of Russian, but it’s Irina’s first language and it seems to be making perfect sense to me so far. So to hell with it — what have I got to lose? It’s like how Carmen could sing, and Lela was good with people; and when I was them, I could somehow do those things, too. Because some things the body just remembers.
A fine sweat breaks out on my forehead as I close my eyes and channel myself inwards, chasing the words I’m looking for down the unreliable pathways of Irina’s brain. When I open my eyes again, it’s like I’ve always known them.
‘Kak … tvoyo zdorovie?’ I say — accents on all the wrong places, accents where there shouldn’t be any — testing the unfamiliar weight and feel of the words on my tongue. I think I’ve just said: How’s your health?
The man-mountain nods slowly, gratified that I seem to remember him. ‘Neplokho,’ he says, shrugging. Not bad.
I feel a surge of elation, a chemical rush. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the human body is a machine that may be harnessed, after all. If you just work out how.
Gia’s eyes are on me again as we take our positions at the back of the high-shine mirrored lift. Perhaps Irina’s voice sounded weird. Hell, maybe I forgot to conjugate a verb properly and Gia zeroed in on the error. But at least Vladimir understood what I was saying. I casually flip Irina’s unbound caramel-coloured hair back over her narrow shoulders, hitch her handbag higher and pretend not to notice Gia staring. The lift doors slide shut and we begin our descent.
Vladimir addresses something small and round pinned to the lapel of his killer suit. ‘I have them,’ he says, tilting his head to one side as he listens to an answering voice in his almost-invisible earpiece. I watch his small, pale blue eyes watching the numbered wall panel light up in descending order.
We sink down past the ground floor without stopping and on past the basement into the lower basement. The lift doesn’t even stop on the way; not a soul tries to get in. Clearly, being a world-class bitch can come in handy.
‘Coming up through the laundry in five,’ Vladimir mutters into his mic as the doors glide open.
Another of Irina’s hired security goons is standing there — the man’s colossal build, tiny earpiece and bespoke-tailored suit and expensive shoes are a dead giveaway, although I have no idea if it’s Carlo, Jurgen, Angelo or even Gianfranco himself that I’m looking at. The guy’s got a platinum-blond buzz cut and a face like hewn granite. When his cold, grey eyes meet mine, something seems to leap in them, even though the muscles of his face remain motionless.
Everyone wants you, everyone loves you, Gia said. And I see that it’s true.
I study the large space before me with fascination. It’s filled with steam, shouting and mechanical noises, the smell of soap powder mingled with disinfectant and wet wool. Everywhere I turn, there are laundry bags and open trolleys piled high with dirty linen or clean, folded linen. An automated drying and sorting system snakes its way around the perimeters of the cavernous room, and almost all the clips are filled. The space is packed with busy migrant workers in disposable headgear and identical hotel uniforms.
Vladimir leads the way through the vast, humming room at a brisk pace, the second guy falling in wordlessly behind Gia and me.
Much the same way the woman who served me breakfast did, every single person in the place turns to stare at me as if I’ve just descended from the sun on a golden chariot. Dazzled. That’s the way I’d describe the universal reaction to Irina’s presence; although they’ve all clearly been ordered not to approach or address her because when I try to meet anyone’s eyes, they look away immediately.
Still, there’s talk, talk, talk in at least a dozen different languages. And in every accent I hear the word Irina repeated and amplified until it seems to break in a wave against the heavy beams of the ceiling that separate this stifling underworld from the gracious apartments above.
One law for the lion and ox is oppression. The words come to me unexpectedly as I look around at all the busy worker bees in the room. It’s so true. And such a sad truth. I mean, I should know; who better than I? But still it bothers me that we can’t all be lions, or all be oxen; that equality was not one of the necessary pre- conditions of the closed system that we know as the universe. Because how is that fair? It’s just asking for trouble from the get-go.
Our tight, mismatched little group has almost made it to the exit across the room when a starstruck middle-aged woman spills a huge bag of dirty laundry straight onto Vladimir’s expensive shoes. We’re forced to stop as she gets down on her hands and knees in front of us, desperately trying to stuff an avalanche of wet towels back into the bag.
‘Jurgen!’ Vladimir snaps and the platinum-blond giant immediately scans the room for threats.
‘Didn’t I tell you you were bad luck?’ Gia murmurs out of the side of her mouth as Vladimir starts shouting at the woman in English to get out of our way.
‘Vladimir, dostatochno,’ I caution. Enough.
He glowers at me, growling into the mic on his lapel, ‘There’s a delay.’ He kicks out at the soiled laundry nearest his feet as he listens to the reply.
I stamp my own feet in my towering, alien heels. It feels as if my legs are dying from the soles upwards.
Gia shoots me a warning look. ‘Don’t get involved!’ she hisses.
Vladimir insists loudly, ‘No, no, I’m handling it.’
What he isn’t handling is the dirty laundry, and I can feel the worker’s mounting distress. It hangs about her like a detectable odour, like a cloud, as she scrabbles desperately at our feet. I wonder how it is that people like Irina and Gia could become so divorced from ordinary life. I catch everyone by surprise when I dump Irina’s oversized croc-skin holdall against Jurgen’s knife-pleated trouser leg and crouch down, reaching for the nearest towel.
Jurgen kicks the handbag out of his way with unnecessary force and a gold-plated mobile phone falls out
