message. How does it go again? “You have reached Alissa Layton, please leave a message after the beep.”’
I’ll admit it. I love the way he says the word ‘beep’. It’s almost a click, instead. It snaps out of him, oddly abrupt and oh, so interesting.
‘That does sound like me.’
‘Why do you think so?’
‘It’s straightforward.’ I hesitate, wanting to hold off on the final verdict. It’s just too damning. I want to claw my way out of the outfit it puts me into, and run newly bared down the nearest street. ‘And dull.’
‘So now we have dull to add to your collection. What were your other terms for yourself? Invisible, and insubstantial?’
‘I might have said something along those lines.’
‘So you don’t think there is anything beneath all of this? Nothing of interest?’
‘Certainly nothing as interesting as the life you lead.’
‘And what makes you think my life is so interesting?’
I see the entrance hall of The Harrington behind my eyes, glossy and glorious. The coil of the receptionist’s hair, the three neat items laid out on the bed like bowls of porridge in the Three Bears’ house.
Which one is just right?
‘You do those things at that hotel.’
It doesn’t come out the way I want it to. It comes out fumbled and childish, with a hint of judgement I didn’t realise I felt. I mean, just because I don’t understand sex doesn’t mean other people can’t, and in a second I’m sure he’ll tell me as much. ‘Shouldn’t people explore if they wish?’ he’ll say, though when this doesn’t happen I’m not grateful. His amusement is back, and it’s just as prickling as it was before.
‘Is that what you think happens there? “Doing things”?’
‘You know what I mean.’
How can he? I don’t even know what I mean.
‘I really don’t. Speak plainly.’
‘I thought I was,’ I say, because I’m a fucking liar. That laughing lilt to his voice just makes me want to lie and lie and lie – but that’s all right.
He tells the truth for me.
‘No, you were speaking in a vague way because you’re afraid to say the actual words.’
How does he do it? Years of reading people over the boardroom table, I suspect, though there are other options. Perhaps he operates in some shady, cut-throat world I can’t even fathom, where everything dances on a knife edge.
Or maybe I’m just really easy to read. I’m a neglected book that’s been left somewhere damp, swollen to twice its size and suddenly filled with enormous words. Most of them probably ask for help. Some might mention loneliness.
All of them must be hidden, immediately.
‘Maybe that’s just because you’re a stranger.’
‘My name is Janos Kovacs,’ he says, casually. He doesn’t know that I cradle those two names to my chest like rare and ready-to-fly birds. ‘There, now we are no longer strangers.’
Indeed we are not. He is Janos, pronounced with a curdled call for silence at the end. He is Hungarian, as I had guessed, and suddenly so large in my head I fear I’ll never get him out. I have to tear away the rest of him with claws I don’t have.
I’m not this fierce, I think.
I’m not this able to resist.
And yet I am.
‘I don’t think that’s enough.’
‘How about if I tell you I work in finance?’
‘Lots of people work in finance.’
‘I have a penthouse that overlooks the city.’
‘Doesn’t everyone, these days?’
I marvel at the boredom in my own voice. My palms are sweating so much I have to keep switching the receiver from one hand to the other, but somehow I keep up this charade. When it’s just our voices, I can do it.
‘My favourite opera is Madame Butterfly.’
‘You could be any anonymous millionaire suit.’
‘So if I was poor you might say what you mean?’
‘I might.’
‘Then I am penniless.’
The words themselves are not unusual. But, I confess, the sudden conviction in his voice gives me pause. There’s something steely about it, as though he’s carving each word into a tree with a knife.
It makes me shiver, but I pretend it doesn’t.
‘You can’t change the dynamics just by saying.’
‘Of course I can. That’s how the game is played.’
‘And is that what The Harrington is about? Playing games?’
‘If you say the real words I might tell you yes or no.’
Whatever this game is, he’s extremely good at it. I didn’t agree to dancing, and yet somehow I’m doing it anyway. I’m doing it right here in the middle of the work day, with Michaela to one side of me yakking away into her own phone and my boss over there by the water cooler.
He gives me a slight nod, like he thinks I’m fielding an important call – and I suppose that is how I must look. I’m hunched over, near-whispering, one fist clenched over my keyboard. The other clinging to the phone for dear life.
‘All right. All right,’ I hiss at him. ‘People meet there to have illicit liaisons.’
‘I’m not sure that’s quite real enough. It sounds like something from a tabloid newspaper, about the swinging the neighbours have been doing.’
‘People meet there to have sex, then.’
‘Sex is better, but I think you can do more.’
I glance across at my boss. He’s no longer looking, but that doesn’t matter. This conversation is definitely giving off a vibe, now, that people should be able to feel across long distances and without glancing at me. I can feel it pulsing at my core like some nuclear reactor, so it must be spreading outwards.
Soon everyone will be irradiated.
At the very least, they’ll know. Alissa is having an oddly sexual conversation with a complete stranger, and doesn’t want to stop. Look at her there, shamelessly not stopping.
‘They meet to touch, and
