and crimson like arterial spatters at a murder scene.
The man I supposed must be Uncle Dix was sitting on a brown leatherette easy chair.
The chair had a rip in its arm that had been mended with gaffer tape. Whoever had mended it probably hadn’t expected the repair to last. They’d been right. Uncle Dix plucked gently at the tape’s edge, as if testing the sticking power of the glue, then, when the strip succumbed unfurling towards him, he smoothed it gently back over the rip, sealing it tight against his next mild assault. There was no TV flickering in the corner, no interrupted book or newspaper placed on his lap, just a deep ashtray half full of dead rollups on the coffee table beside him. Uncle Dix was either a man with something on his mind, or a man giving his mind a rest.
We age people on much more than their faces. We check out their clothes, the condition their body is in, the company they keep. We look at their hair, the way they talk, all of this in the first few seconds of meeting and without even knowing we’re doing it. I’m pretty good at calculating people’s ages. It’s part of the job. I coughed, the man on the chair moved his gaze from the torn arm towards me, and I decided he could be anywhere between thirty-nine and sixty. He gave me a long, uninterested stare. The kind of look a man gives his shopaholic wife’s latest purchase.
'Hi, I’m William.' I stuck my hand out. He waited a beat beyond politeness then shook it softly without rising from his seat.
'Dix.'
His voice had the rusty quality of old keys and broken locks. It was hard to make out the colour of his hair in the gory gloaming of the room, a steel-grey that might be black. His face was studded with stubble, which I guessed was two days’ growth drifting into the third night. He wore a pair of loose jogging trousers and a half-buttoned shirt beneath which I could glimpse tendrils of chest hair. Dix looked unkempt, unwashed and was carrying about half a stone too much weight, but I had a sneaking feeling he was the kind of man that women find attractive.
I lowered myself onto the couch, wishing Sylvie would hurry up.
'Sylvie’s just fetching some drinks.'
Uncle Dix kept his eyes on my face but his hand had gone back to its plucking. Once again there was a brief pause before he spoke, like the hesitation between the wires in a long-distance phone call.
'You’re back.'
Against Dix’s hoarse whisper Sylvie’s voice sounded like the clear chime of a Sunday morning church bell.
'Sure looks like it.'
Sylvie held three mismatched glasses pinched in one hand with my whisky swinging negligently by its neck from the other. She placed herself cross-legged on the floor between us, putting the bottle and glasses on the coffee table, keeping the overfull ashtray at the heart of the arrangement. I sensed some disagreement, past or maybe just postponed, between the two and it crossed my mind that I might yet find a hotel willing to take me in.
Sylvie said, 'William’s homeless.'
And shot me a dazzling smile. I unscrewed the bottle and started to pour three measures.
'Temporarily homeless.'
'His hotel locked him out.'
Uncle Dix turned his eyes towards me. They were puffed and bleary, but they could see OK. I wondered again how old he was and watched him take a sip of whisky. He made a grimace of approval, took another sip and said, 'Bad luck.'
It sounded like an ill-omened toast. I raised my glass.
'Prost.'
Sylvie lifted hers in response.
'Bottoms up.'
Dix’s hand left the gaffer tape, went into his pocket and re-emerged with his rolling papers. I took my own cigarettes out and offered them round. Sylvie shook her head, but Dix took one and put it behind his ear for later.
'Not a very auspicious start to my first night in Berlin.'
Maybe it was the whisky, maybe it was the cigarette, or the company, but Dix seemed to be coming out of his fugue. He snapped a couple of cigarette papers from their packet and asked, 'You just arrived?'
For the first time I noticed an American tinge to his German-accented English. I wondered if he’d spent time there or if the inflection came from living with Sylvie. For all I knew he’d picked it up from MTV. I wondered how long they’d been together and what they were to each other. The sound of my name broke me from my thoughts.
'Will was the star of the show I was at tonight.'
I took a sip of my drink and nodded the compliment back to her.
'You were the star.'
Dix put his hand back into his pocket rooting for something. He looked distractedly at Sylvie.
'They gave you a job?'
'Not yet.'
Dix started to feel behind the cushion at his back, he gave an annoyed growl and there seemed a danger he might shift from his seat, then Sylvie reached under the coffee table and pulled out a bag of grass. Dix gave as close as he would get that night to a genuine smile, took the bag from her and untied the knot in its neck. The odour of fresh skunk flooded the room. I asked Sylvie, 'What do you do?'
'I’m a dancer.'
