'Lucky pussies. Where is it you come from?'
'Let’s just say I come from here, now.'
'The here and now?'
'You better believe it.' The heels of her boots gave a final clack then she stopped before a doorway. 'Here we are, Hotel Bates. It doesn’t look very lively.'
I glanced at the shuttered windows, the fastened storm doors and sleeping neon sign.
'The guidebook said this was a twenty-four-hour city.'
'It is, but only where it pays to stay open late.'
I rang the bell and watched, straining my ears for the sound of a porter’s footfall, then pressed the bell again, unsure whether it was ringing somewhere deep within the house or if it had been disconnected sometime around the porter’s bedtime. I stopped and listened.
'Did you hear something?'
Sylvie shook her head. I started to bang my fist hard against the door. But my blows seemed to be absorbed by the thick wood; all I was going to end up with was a sore hand.
Behind me, three notes chimed like an incomplete scale on a cracked xylophone. I turned towards the sound and saw Sylvie switching on her mobile, her face illuminated by the phone’s green glow.
'Perhaps we should call them.'
I glanced at the address Ray had given me.
'I don’t have their number.'
But Sylvie was already keying the buttons on her mobile. She nodded towards a hand-painted sign above the porch. Somewhere beyond the bolted door a phone started to ring.
We waited twenty peals then Sylvie broke the connection, retapped the number and we waited twenty more. I swore under my breath. Then Sylvie said the words that every single man and many a married man who’s just met an attractive young woman longs to hear.
'I guess you’d better come back to my place.' Then she added the caveat we all hope is just for form’s sake. 'There’s a spare bed.'
I’d imagined Sylvie living somewhere compact and modern, an apartment as bright and uncluttered as the bars we had passed. But it was obvious when she opened the door that the years had been unkind to Sylvie’s flat.
The hallway’s unpolished lino and beige wallpaper could have dated from before Soviet times. There was a stack of unopened mail spewed across the hall table and an old slack-chained bicycle propped against the wall. The bicycle sported a man’s battered leather jacket on its handlebars. It looked triumphant, like a redneck truck with roadkill strapped to its bull bars. The apartment had the rundown temporary feel of a place that’s sheltered a succession of tenants and received no care in return. Sylvie gave the mail a quick uninterested glance.
'Well, here we are, home sweet home.'
'Great location.'
She laughed.
'We like it.'
I wondered if the other half of the ‘we’ had anything to do with the leather jacket. Sylvie started to take off her coat.
'Coffee?'
'I think I can do better than that.' I unzipped my suitcase and drew out the bottle of duty-free Glenfiddich I’d stashed there. 'I knew there was a reason I was dragging this bloody bag around with me.'
'Looks like good stuff.'
'I thought you said alcohol was for pussies?'
'I said in America alcohol is for pussies. We’re in Europe now.'
'Ah, America, that narrows it down.'
Sylvie gave me a look.
'Nosy boy.' She draped her coat over the mystery man’s jacket, then took my raincoat and hung it, snug, embracing hers on top of the pile. 'You go introduce yourself to Uncle Dix and I’ll fetch us some glasses.'
'To who?'
She walked through to the kitchen and I positioned myself in the doorway watching her peer into cupboards as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for.
'Uncle Dix.'
She looked up, giving me the benefit of those perfect teeth again and pointed across the lobby.
I muttered, 'Casanova my arse.' And walked into the dimly lit lounge hoping to discover that Uncle Dix was a cat or maybe a small dog of the non-yappy variety.
Whoever had decorated the room had been in a hurry, or perhaps they just hadn’t had enough paint to go round. The walls and ceiling were ransom-note red, the paint applied in uneven swathes, a choppy red sea, pink- foamed and unpredictable, or the interior of a burst blood vessel.
There was a small anglepoise lamp pointing up towards the ceiling, and a half dozen or so tea lights guttering towards extinction on an unused hearth. The walls sucked the light into them making the shadows in the room dark
