'You Irish guys are all the same.'
'Scottish.' The brow beneath the smooth fringe pinched and I added, 'But my granddad was Irish if that helps.'
'I bet you’d say you were Klingon if it helped.'
'Assuming they don’t have national service.'
She laughed.
'You’re funnier off-stage.'
'So I’ve been told.' Somewhere beyond in the dark a tram hissed across the wires. She shook her head and I saw raindrops jewelling her dark helmet of hair. I waited for her to tell me what she wanted, then, when she didn’t speak, said, 'So what can I do for you?'
'Shall I tell you over a drink?'
'I thought you’d never ask.' I glanced at my suitcase. 'Do you mind if we swing by my hotel so I can check in and dump this bag?'
She smiled showing perfect American pearly whites.
'Maybe we could have a drink there?'
'Why not?'
I returned her smile, but kept my teeth hidden, thinking Casanova himself couldn’t have managed things better, forgetting that she hadn’t told me what she wanted.
In the hours since I’d arrived the district had changed. It was still busy, but the pace had slowed. We were at a crossroads of the night. The traffic of homeward-bound theatregoers and late-night diners was cut through with the young club crowd for whom the evening, like everything else, was still young. Sylvie led me along a street lined with bars and restaurants and I caught glimpses of couples and clusters of friends caught in the bright lights, smiling. I could almost have imagined myself in London and yet I was most definitely abroad. Maybe it was just post-show tiredness made worse by a slight sense of dislocation, but everything looked too good, too clean, too nice for me to relax. It felt like the scene in the movie just before the bad guys come blazing in.
We waited for a tram to clang its way around a corner then I stepped from the pavement and into the road.
'Hey, hasty.' Sylvie put her hand on my arm and nodded at the red pedestrian light.
'Sorry.' I grinned and stepped back onto the kerb. 'Where I come from traffic lights are for the aged, the infirm and homosexuals.'
The light switched to green, we crossed together and Sylvie asked where I was staying. I told her and she said, 'It’s pretty close, we can walk from here.'
'Any good?'
Sylvie shrugged her shoulders.
'I’ve never put in any time there.' She flashed me a smile, her heels brisk against the concrete. 'I love new hotel rooms, don’t you?'
'I’ve spent too much time in them.'
'I haven’t.'
We’d turned away from the bars and cafes into a side street dominated by the skeleton of a half-constructed building. Blue plastic flapped in the structure’s frame and I thought of a giant ghost ship travelling through the night, sails slapping against the squall. Sylvie stepped onto the kerb of the unfinished pavement, and our pace slowed as she teetered along its edge, pausing occasionally to steady her balance like a tightrope-walker on the highest of high wires. I walked beside her, my suitcase’s wheels grumbling against the roadway’s newly surfaced tarmac. Sylvie stretched out her arms, seesawing with exaggerated concentration, then placed the tips of her right fingers against my shoulder to steady herself.
'If I ever make it big I’ll live in a hotel. Clean sheets every day, a minibar full of cool drinks, room service, cable TV, a shower with fuck-off water pressure…'
We reached the end of the pavement. She wavered, swaying slightly like it was a long way down; I took her hand and she jumped lightly from the verge, landing in a small curtsey. I said, 'And a cooked breakfast every morning.'
'A cooked breakfast whenever you wanted. Midnight, if you felt like it, and…’ She hesitated making sure she’d got my full attention before adding her piece de resistance ‘…
free toiletries.'
We were back on a main street now. A young couple crossed our path and went into a bar, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist.
'See if you were in Glasgow at this time of night the streets would be full of drunks.'
'Yeah? Why?'
'I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.'
'Where I come from only big-time losers are drunks.'
I felt myself bridle.
'Is that right?'
'Yep, just the guys that are too fucked-up to score crystal meth. Getting drunk’s for pussies.'
