earrings.
“Pleased to meet you,” said Banks. “Likewise,” said Teresa.
“Can I get anyone another drink? I need one myself.”
Bob and Betsy declined, but Teresa handed him her glass and said, “Yes, I’ll have a sauvignon blanc, please.” The glass was warm from her palm, and Banks noticed a little semicircle of pink lipstick on the rim.
The hotel called it a wine tasting, but Banks thought it was more of an excuse to get a couple of glasses of alcohol under his belt before dinner, a bit of a social mixer and a cheap promotion for the wine-maker. It wasn’t that you actually had to discuss the wine’s forward leathery nose, or fill out a tasting card. It was definitely a nice gesture on the part of the hotel, as was the tarot reader, who sat poring over an arrangement of cards with a portly, bearded, anxious-looking man in baggy shorts sitting opposite her.
On the whole, Banks had decided, he liked America. Having spent plenty of time back in the pubs in England listening to his mates slag off the USA and its people, he found that while Americans were easy to ridicule and could often appear obnoxious abroad-which is something you could just as easily say about the British and the Germans-at home they were mostly a delight, from the family diners and roadside honky-tonks with local country bands to the city wine bars, hotels and fancy restaurants. And they understood the concept of a service industry. Like now. The woman at the bar collected his glasses, asked him what he wanted and handed him full fresh ones, smiling as she did so, saying she hoped he was enjoying the wine. Maybe she didn’t mean it, but Banks said he was. Sometimes a smile and a little politeness go a long way. Try that in your average English pub, he thought, where the concept of wine runs about as far as red or white and sweet or dry, and a grunt is the most likely response to a hello. He carried a pinot noir and the sauvignon blanc carefully back through the throng.
“Look,” said Bob, glancing at his watch. “I’m afraid we have to skip out now. The show starts in half an hour. You folks have a good time.” And with that, they were gone. Banks handed Teresa her glass, and the two of them stood in rather awkward silence as the conversations buzzed around them. She was wearing a sleeveless flower- print dress which curved in to accentuate her narrow waist and ended just above her knees, cut low enough to show a tantalizing glimpse of smooth cleavage. Around her neck she wore a string of colored glass beads and had fixed some sort of coral pink flower in her hair just above her right ear. Her complexion was flawless and smooth, her nose small and straight, her lips full, curved slightly upward at the edges.
Banks would hazard a guess that she had her origins in Thailand, or perhaps Vietnam, but he didn’t know enough about the differences in the physiognomy of the Far Eastern countries to be of any certainty. She looked as if she smiled a lot, but Banks sensed there was also a seriousness and sadness about her. He probably had an instinct for such things, he thought, given the way his life had been going lately. But it was definitely getting better.
“It’s a nice hotel, isn’t it?” said Teresa after a sip of wine.
“Yes,” Banks agreed, looking around at the Mediterranean-themed decor, with its warm terra cotta glow, shaded table lamps, ornate ceiling and cornices, paintings and gilt-framed mirrors. They were standing near a painting of Earth resting amid a cornucopia of fruit and foliage in what appeared to be a desert landscape. The Monaco was a nice hotel, Banks thought, and it also had the advantage of being in one of the most interesting cities he had visited so far on his two-and-a-half-week odyssey: San Francisco. Banks especially liked cities he could walk around, and San Francisco was one of the best, once you got used to the hills. He had already taken the cable car and strolled along the waterfront to Golden Gate Bridge and halfway across it, all on his first day, finishing the evening with a very expensive martini at the Top of the Mark, looking out on the Bay Area lights way in the distance. Tomorrow he planned to walk along Fisherman’s Wharf, and then perhaps go up Coit Tower for another view.
“How long are you staying?” he asked Teresa. “Just until Wednesday.”
“Me, too,” said Banks. “You’re English, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Banks said. “Thank you for not guessing Australia or New Zealand. Not that I have anything against those places, mind you, but I get it a lot.”
“Oh, I wasn’t guessing. My grandfather was English. From Hull.”
“Really? I know it. In fact, I don’t live all that far away from Hull. If you don’t mind my asking, how on earth did you…you know?”
Teresa laughed. “How does a girl who looks like me have relatives from Hull? Easy. Don’t laugh. They owned a Chinese restaurant.” Banks couldn’t think of anything to say.
“You should see your face,” she said, laughing at him. “I’m joking, of course. I’m not Chinese. My grandfather was a sailor, and somehow or other he found himself on a French merchant ship. He made many visits to the Far East and ended up settling in Vietnam. So, you see, I, too, have English blood in me. Hull blood.”
Banks lowered his voice and leaned closer to her. “It’s not something I’d boast about in public,” he said. “You know what they say about Hell, Hull and Halifax?” He caught of whiff of her perfume, delicate but a little sweet and heady, cut with a hint of jasmine.
“No. Tell me.”
“It was the thieves’ litany. ‘From Hell, Hull and Halifax may the Good Lord deliver us.’ Sixteenth century. There was a particularly nasty jail in Hull and the gallows at Halifax. I think Hell rather speaks for itself.”
Teresa laughed again. “You English people are so strange,” she said. “I’ve never been there, but I’d like to go sometime, just to see it.”
Banks couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go to see Hull-it wasn’t exactly a major tourist destination- though he enjoyed its rough charm, the docks and its down-to-earth people. Hull also had a Premier League football team, a big plus in the northeast these days. “Maybe one day you will,” he said. “Look, I know this probably sounds a bit forward, but are you here by yourself?”
He thought Teresa blushed before she averted her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I…I…” Then she made a dismissive gesture with her free hand. “I’m sorry. It’s a long story.”
“Maybe you’d like to have dinner with me tonight and tell me? I don’t have any plans, and I’m a good listener.”
Teresa put her hand to her chest. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean, I would, you know, really, but I can’t. I’ve already got…I have to be somewhere.”
“Of course,” said Banks, embarrassed that he had asked. “I understand.”
She rested her hand on his arm. “No, it’s nothing like that,” she said. “Really. I’m going to have dinner with my son and daughter-in-law and their kids. It’s one of the reasons I’m here. In fact, I must hurry. I just felt I needed another drink before facing the little terrors. My grandchildren, that is.”
Banks didn’t think she was old enough to have grandchildren, but he thought it would sound like a terrible come-on line if he told her that. “I see,” he said.
She widened her eyes. “Tomorrow? I mean, that’s if you’re not, you know, you don’t…”
“Tomorrow would be perfect,” said Banks. “My last night here.”
“Mine, too.” Teresa knocked back the rest of her drink, set the glass on a nearby table and took a packet of breath mints from her handbag, or purse, as they called them in America, Banks had learned. She caught Banks looking at her. “It’s all right. I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not in the habit of doing this. It’s just with the kids, you know, and my daughter-in-law is so disapproving. Religious. Her father’s a Baptist minister. Shall we meet here?”
“Fine,” said Banks. “Same time? Seven? Shall I make a reservation somewhere?”
“Let me do it,” said Teresa. “I know the city.”
“Okay,” said Banks. “See you tomorrow.”
Then Teresa hurried off and Banks was left alone. The tarot reader glanced over at him with a conspirational smile, and for a moment he considered having his fortune told. He quickly dismissed the idea. It would either depress him or give him false hope. He smiled back, finished his drink and headed out to see what the evening had to offer.
The first thing he saw, around the corner on Taylor, was an old street lady being sick in the gutter. After she had staggered away, three pigeons swooped down and started pecking at the chunks. Sadly, it wasn’t such an unusual sight in this area of the city. As Banks walked along Geary, a homeless black man in rags followed him for about half a block raging about how mean people were. It could have been London, Banks thought, until he got to Union Square and saw the cable car go by with people hanging off the sides laughing and whooping, heard the bell clanging, the underground cables thrumming. With no particular destination in mind, he crossed the square and started wandering the downtown streets. Sooner or later, he knew, he would find a friendly-looking bar or
