Julia had once been to a cardiothoracic conference in Rome. The Istanbul vista reminds her of that. The soft earthy hues. The way the golden light falls between the dips and rises of the hills. The profound historic nature of it, so unlike anything back home. But Julia reminds herself that as beautiful as it is, it’s also the place that has swallowed Toni whole.
The driver takes a sharp left and Julia and Leo slip along the leather seats until Leo’s thigh pushes against hers. She can smell his scent. Flinty and raw.
“How are you doing?” he says, shifting back a respectable distance.
Small. Insignificant. Completely out of her depth. “I’m fine,” she says. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
He glances out the window and she can tell he’s hurt.
“It’s just a lot to take in,” she says.
“We’ll call from the hotel. There’ll be a simple explanation for why this Fletcher lady couldn’t meet us at the airport.”
She pushes the fringe from her eyes. “I just wish people would keep their word. This entire thing is bad enough as it is.”
The driver’s phone rings. He flips it open and starts barking Turkish. Driving with one hand on the steering wheel, he continues the conversation, zipping in and out of lanes at an uncomfortable speed. Julia gets nervous. Speed and cell phones are not a good mix. She had firsthand experience of this when she was on ER rotation as an intern.
She glances at Leo, but he’s looking out the window at the flags lining the road; the red Turkish flag with its distinctive white star and crescent. There are political billboards, too. Faces of middle-aged men beam out. Clean-cut, respectable, trimmed moustaches, suits and ties. Julia wonders when the elections are and hopes to be well gone by then.
She’s on the verge of saying something about the driver’s speed when the traffic slows to a crawl. The driver ends his phone call and cranes his head out his window to take a look. He tuts impatiently and drums his fingers along the steering wheel.
A few minutes later, they see the reason for the holdup. A dirty white 1970s Vauxhall is blocking one of the lanes. Julia’s heart skips a beat. She’s thinking terrorism. A car bomb. An ambush lying in wait.
Holding her breath as they pass, she fixes her eyes on the Vauxhall. The rear wheel is propped up on a block. A flat tire. Julia exhales and winds down her window, letting the diesel-tinged air of the Bosporus blow on her face.
The Lexus takes a sharp left and veers uphill into a labyrinth of steep cobbled streets. A plaque fastened to a white rendered wall announces the area as Sultanahmet. Footpaths teem with foreigners snapping photos and ducking in and out of little shops overflowing with mosaic plates and wind chimes and Turkish rugs and hanging lamps. There are lots of Turkish men, too, standing in doorways, talking, smoking, and drinking tea from tiny glasses. It’s a bustling, noisy atmosphere, tinged with an exoticness that Julia has never encountered before. Beside her, Leo seems just as enthralled, and for a brief moment she wishes they were married again and that this was a pleasure trip, a vacation, where the two of them could just enjoy exploring and discovering the delights of a new country together.
The driver heads down an incline toward a high red-brick wall bordering a railway. A small hotel comes into view, wedged between a pokey laundromat and restaurant. A sad, faded strip of red carpet trails up to a plain front door propped open with a gray brick. Sadder still is the old, weather-beaten maroon canopy above the entranceway, which has a torn section flapping listlessly in the wind. Next to the hotel entrance, a dark-haired man in a porter’s uniform is leaning against a banister, texting.
The driver lurches to a stop and looks at Julia and Leo in the rearview.
“Here we arrive,” he says.
11
Julia and Leo stand looking at the cheerless hotel.
“It seemed better online,” says Julia.
In her rush to get to Istanbul, she hadn’t bothered to check reviews and had just booked the first hotel that looked half-decent on Tripadvisor.
“They always do,” says Leo.
His face drops suddenly. “Oh boy.”
Julia looks at him. “What is it?”
“I never thought about booking a hotel for myself.”
She feels a flash of irritation. Even when they were married, he had always left everything up to her.
She decides to let it go. “You should be okay. It doesn’t exactly look like they’re run off their feet.”
The hotel attendant takes their luggage and they follow him up the scruffy carpet through the entrance. Unfortunately, the inside isn’t any more inspiring than the outside. While the tired decor in the empty lobby hints at opulence, whatever splendor there might have once been is well and truly gone. The walnut parquet floor, for instance, is horrendously chipped and in bad need of repair. The maroon and cream curtains framing the large picture book window are sun-faded and fraying along the edges. Even the lone crystal chandelier hanging in the compact reception area, once clearly a glorious statement piece, is missing some of its pretty pear-shaped crystals. The only thing that looks fresh is the gold paint on the architraves accenting the alabaster ceiling.
Julia hears a cough, the hacking cough of a long-term smoker. It’s coming from a plump, older woman in a small seating area. She’s sitting at one of the two wingback chairs, hunched over an oval glass-topped coffee table with a deck of cards in her hand, utterly absorbed in a game of solitaire. Her choice of clothing is interesting to say the least. Blue sweater, gray skirt, knee-high sports socks, and aqua-colored Nikes.
“Cute,” says Leo.
“Shush. She’ll hear you.”
Julia tings the desk bell at the unmanned reception. The woman in the seating area casts a look over her shoulder. Julia’s about to apologize for disturbing her when the woman springs to her feet, hurries toward them, and slips in behind the counter.
“Merhaba, welcome to the Golden Horn Hotel,” she says, breathlessly. “I am Ada. Pleased to
