Resnick; her husband, facing them, sat beside Mollie.
'So how was the film?' Resnick asked, starting on his second beer.
Cathy Jordan speared a piece of bread, spread it lavishly with butter and took a generous bite.
'I had an aunt once, lived all her life in this town near Jackson, Wyoming. So small it didn't even rate a pimple on the map. You could turn up there any time, day or night, unannounced, nothing in her store cupboard to speak of, yet inside half an hour you'd find yourself sitting down to the tastiest snack you could ever have imagined.' She brushed a crumb from the side of her mouth and tried the wine.
'Well, Curtis's film was like that.
Considering what he had to work with, it was a small miracle. ' She lifted the menu towards the light.
'How d'you think this rack of lamb would be? I'm good and tired of steak and chicken.'
Across the city in his hotel, Peter Farleigh and the dark- haired woman were back in the bar. Michelle – she had told him that was her name, Michelle had developed a taste for blue cocktails afloat with tinned fruit and Farleigh had kept pace with her, drinking brandy now and talking in a voice that was just this side of loud. On and on about crop yields, fertilisers, EEC farming subsidies.
When Michelle's eyes began to glaze over he changed the topic to his family, his three kids the one at university, the one who was already an accountant, the one who had gone off with a bunch of travellers and sent them marigold teas and pictures from the I-ching.
The pianist had trawled his way from Cats to Carousel and eventually given way to piped music: bland arrangements of the Beatles for saxophone, six strings and a drum machine.
From behind the bar, a voice called last orders. Farleigh looked hard at Michelle and she looked away; he let his hand drift down towards her leg and with a look she stopped it well short of her knee.
'I hope, Peter, you're not going to make a move on me.'
'I'm sorry, no, look, I…' He could feel his face reddening and that only made it redden more. What was he doing sitting there, blushing like a schoolboy whose mother had chosen the wrong moment to come into the room?
'What was going to be the next step, Peter?' She was leaning towards him, almost touching her shoulder to his arm.
'Asking me up to your room?'
Look. '
'Well…?'
'Michelle, I…' Suddenly he became aware of his own sweat, sweet and rancid; the muscles of his stomach tightened and refused to let go.
'Was that it?' her voice rising.
'Because if it was, Peter, well, I have to say you'd have been disappointed.'
Farleigh was certain everyone else in the bar could hear.
'All right, look, it's been a nice evening, let's just forget it.'
Forget it? '
Yes. ' He pushed an almost empty packet of cigarettes down into his pocket, brushed the heel of his hand across the eyebrow of his right eye.
'I think that's best, don't you?'
'Best?'
'Yes.' Standing now, while she leaned back into the comfort of the chair and surveyed him with amused eyes.
Peter? '
'Mmm?'
'You know I'm teasing you, don't you?'
He could still smell himself, hear his own breath.
'I am teasing you.'
'Yes, well, like I say…' All the while, backing away.
'I would if you asked me1 mean, I would like to… go with you, you know, to your room.'
Farieigh looked clumsily round. A man with a shock of almost pure white hair was staring back at him from a stool at the corner of the bar. As Farieigh continued to look, the man smiled, more a simper than a smile, and Farieigh quickly looked away.
'Unless,' Michelle said, 'you've changed your mind. '
He sat back down. There was a mole, a small one he hadn't noticed before, just to the right of her cheek, and her eyes, what would you call that shade of brown?
She inclined her head towards him.
'Have you changed your mind?'
The answer, not instant.
'No.'
'Good. Let's not waste any more time, then, down here.' She was on her feet now, holding out her hand.
Peter took it, but as soon as he was standing she pulled it away.
'After you.'
As they were waiting for the lift, she slipped her arm through his.
Another couple stood waiting, a little behind them, younger, the woman fidgeting with the cuff-links on the man's right sleeve. They had been out to some formal occasion and were wearing evening dress.
The woman was pretty in an obvious kind of way and somehow reminded Farieigh of his daughter, not the one at university, the other one.
The one who sent him tea and blessings and whom he rarely saw. She was wearing a silver dress cut low and once they were in the lift, despite Michelle's proximity, he found it difficult not to stare at the tops of her breasts.
'A hundred and fifty,' Michelle said.
At first, Farleigh wasn't even sure she was talking to him.
'A hundred and fifty.'
'What about it?'
'That's what it'll cost' ' What? '
The. For the rest of the right A hundred and fifty pounds. '
Farleigh was still staring at the young woman, unable to look at Michelle. The young man, embarrassed, was staring at the buttons beside the lift door.
'Well?' Michelle said.
'Don't you think I'm worth it?'
Close to Farleigh, the young woman suddenly threw back her head and laughed. The lift stopped at the sixth floor and the couple Scrambled out. After a moment, the doors sighed shut and the lift continued its ascent 'I thought you knew,' Michelle said. Farleigh shook his head and she smiled.
'Knew that I was working.'
'No, how could I?'
The lift stopped again and they got out into the empty corridor.
'What did you think was going on then?'
'I don't know. I suppose I just thought, you know…'
'That I'd let you pick me up? That I fancied you?'
'Yes.'
'Marvellous, isn't it?' Michelle said.
'The way we deceive ourselves.'
Threading through the sounds of the restaurant, the voice of a woman singing
'Someone to Watch Over Me.' Resnick thought it might be Carmen McCrea, but he 110 couldn't be sure. Whoever had decided, ten years or so ago, that jazz was a good accompaniment to fashionable eating, he felt he owed them a vote of thanks.
Beside him, Cathy Jordan was tucking into an unhealthy portion of sticky toffee pudding, while Resnick, with
