Hot Breath

by Sarah Harrison

  I pressed the button and waited, the scent of Kostaki’s freesia in my nostrils. The lift was unmodernised, a giant of wrought iron and dangling chains like the spaceship in Alien, and it was a long time coming. But in retrospect I should have been grateful for the wait. For, when the lift gradually bumped down in front of me, there, behind the elaborate grille, like some mercifully rare primate in captivity, stood the GM of Era Books.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Mrs Blair,’ he remarked smarmily.

  ‘Good evening …’ I mumbled weakly. There was no escape. The GM had already opened the doors for me, but since I had failed to move from the spot they began to close again.

  ‘Allow me,’ said the GM and interposed his rolled-up copy of the Era catalogue between the doors. They snapped irritably for a moment, deprived of human flesh, and finally drew back once more.

  ‘Going down, are you?’ he enquired, unaware of the question’s ghastly aptness.

  ‘Yes,’ I mouthed.

  And now a strange thing happened. In those soundless, timeless, apparently motionless moments that we were suspended between floors, the GM and me, he spoke just three words, each one an unmistakable verbal ogle.

  ‘Love … that … suit,’ he said.

  I swear I have never heard three innocuous syllables imbued with such labia-withering lust. The word ‘ suit’ was given a grisly and pointed emphasis. I was reminded, in that fell instant, of his legendary predeliction for uniforms, but the reminder came too late. It was plain that my dashing, mannish outfit had stirred old fires. So not only was the old bugger here, large as life and twice as formidable, but I had succeeded, instantaneously and involuntarily, in taking his goatish fancy. It was a mercy we had only two floors to travel. I cast him the briefest of maidenly glances in acknowledgement of the compliment, but it was quite enough to remark his narrowed eyes fixed on me, and a distinct dew beading his brow and upper lip.

  We arrived, with a bounce, on the ground floor. I pulled back the grille and burst through like a rabbit flushed from a thicket. The vast marbled foyer of the Dynamik stretched away on all sides, dotted with smart people in nonchalant attitudes. I must have presented a striking contrast as I stood there staring wildly about me with my clutch bag grasped before me in both hands like a rounders bat. I had just established the whereabouts of the cocktail bar and was poised for flight, when the GM arrested me.

  ‘Mrs Blair … allow me to buy you a nice drink.’

  ‘A nice drink?’ I squealed, rounding on him as though he had suggested some act of unspeakable depravity.

  ‘Certainly, it would be a real pleasure.’

  He pursed his lips as if reading a tempting menu. I was appalled. Where, oh where were Tristan and Vanessa when I needed them? Roistering at the Rumpel, free from the loathly attentions of the GM, that was where. Had they deliberately misled me? This couldn’t be happening!

  ‘I’m meeting a friend!’ I squawked. ‘I’m late already!’

  ‘Then I’ll buy you both a drink,’ he replied, taking my arm and propelling me across the marble wastes. ‘I can’t bump into my star author and not buy her a drink, now, can I?’

  We entered the aptly named ‘Jaeger (or Huntsman’s) Bar’. It was done up in a quasi-Mayerling style, complete with glassy-eyed stags and boars fixed to the walls, guns in cases, and giant pike suspended among petrified weed. I thought wretchedly that perhaps Constantine and I could enter into the spirit of the thing and have our very own suicide pact, right here. We could impale ourselves on some tusks before I met a fate worse than death impaled on the GM’s well-travelled prick.

  At last!—there was Constantine, looking heart-stoppingly handsome in blazer, cotton trews and a crisp white shirt. His face was in profile to us, his elegant hands encircled a tall, frosty glass of lager.

  ‘There he is!’ I cried, literally wrenching free of the GM’s grasp.

  ‘CONSTANTINE!’

  Such was my agitation that at least a dozen heads turned, but Kostaki’s, thank God, was among them, and he smiled and rose to meet me, apparently not in the least put out by my swaggering escort.

  I scuttled to his side and turned to face the GM, feeling safer now that I was aligned with my inamorato.

  ‘Constantine, this is a very important person—’ I introduced the GM—‘ and this is Dr Constantine Ghikas, a friend of mine who just happens to be staying here—’ As soon as I’d spoken I felt that my choice of words gave me away, but the GM was far too vain to notice. He clasped Constantine’s hand in both of his.

  ‘Nice to meet you, doctor. Nothing to do with the book fair, are you?’

  ‘No, no, quite separate, apart from knowing Harriet.’

  ‘Lucky you! Now then, what will you have? Mrs Blair? Gin and tonic, barman. Doctor, what’s your poison? And a lager. Sure you won’t join me in a proper drink? Say no more.’

  Constantine offered me his stool and I perched on it, with the two men on either side, like the female element in some bizarre vocal group. A sudden, vivid and hysterical picture of the GM rendering Da-Doo-Ron-Ron forced a grunt of manic laughter from my lips.

  Both men turned to me at once. ‘I’m sorry, dear,’ rasped the GM, ‘I didn’t quite catch that …?’ He laid a hirsute beringed paw on my knee.

  ‘I was about to say—I didn’t realise you would be here,’ I replied, waggling my knee energetically from side to side. ‘Tristan said—’

  ‘Ah—’ said the GM with great satisfaction, taking his hand from my knee in order to tap the side of his nose with his finger, ‘you see I don’t always tell young Whirly Bird everything. It does them all good to be kept on their toes. But I’ll probably only stay over tonight and tomorrow. I got to be in Anchorage the day after.’

  ‘I see.’ I forebore to ask what dark byways of the book trade took him to Anchorage. Anchorage was basically good news. Except that if he had only one night at the Dynamik he might feel compelled to favour me with more, more immediately, than he would otherwise have done.

  While Constantine took up the Anchorage question I pondered my predicament. I was on an extremely sticky wicket. My favoured status with the Erans had till now depended on my idyllically happy married state, my stability and maturity, etc. So I could hardly repel the overtures of the GM by revealing that Constantine was my lover. On the other hand my respectable married status would not in itself be enough to deter the GM from his fell purpose, since canoodling with him would be regarded as a girl’s finest hour. How bitterly I regretted all the times I had signalled a special relationship, and made it plain that I considered myself on his wavelength while the others dithered and wavered! I had set myself up for this as surely as if I’d invited him to my room.

  ‘… my mother is a tremendous fan,’ Constantine was saying, ‘but I haven’t read any myself yet.’

  They had progressed from Anchorage to TLT in double-quick time.

  ‘You’re missing something,’ opined the GM, taking the opportunity to lay a far-from-avuncular hand on my shoulder. ‘Mrs. Blair is the mainstay of our fiction list.’ I wished he would stop referring to me as a mainstay, it suggested something stout, functional and unglamorous, like a corset. ‘ It’s pretty unusual, you know,’ he went on, ‘for authors to come along to book fairs.’

  ‘Now why is that?’ asked Constantine with polite interest.

  ‘They’re more of a hindrance than a help,’ explained the GM. ‘They get hysterical at the sight of all that competition. Not our Mrs Blair, though. She’s a game girl—a real thoroughbred.’

  He lifted his glass in my direction, his eyes surveying me over the rim as he did so like a couple of snipers focusing on their target. I couldn’t stand much more of this.

  I turned to Constantine, holding him with my glittering eye. ‘What time did you book the table for?’

  ‘Well, actually I hadn’t—’

  ‘Then I think we might as well go ahead if it’s okay with you, I really should get an early night.’

  ‘Don’t worry
,’ said Constantine, ‘it’s only—’

  I whipped round and addressed the GM. ‘It was so nice meeting you. Thank you so much for the drink. Goodbye.’

  I slid down off my stool and marched off, hoping Constantine would follow. He seemed to be taking his time, and I thought for one horrible moment that the GM might wind up having dinner with us, but in the foyer Constantine caught up with me.

  ‘Steady on,’ he said, taking my arm. ‘What got into you?’

  ‘He’s not supposed to be here!’ I hissed. ‘He said he wasn’t coming.’

  ‘So? He obviously thinks the world of you,’ said Constantine soothingly.

  ‘That’s just it!’ I darted a look over my shoulder and dragged Constantine behind a pillar. ‘I think he’s taken a fancy to me!’

  ‘It could be the making of you.’

  ‘I don’t want to be made! I don’t need to be made!’ I moaned, and laid my forehead on his shoulder. ‘Or at least, only by you.’

  ‘That’s my girl …’ I felt Constantine’s gratifyingly instantaneous response. But it occurred to me that while a hotel lobby might be Constantine’s idea of the perfect spot for making whoopee, the pitfalls inherent in such a site were legion, and I’d had all the anxiety I could take for one evening. Gently, I pushed him away.

  ‘Dinner,’ I said.

  As it was barely seven o’clock we were the first in the dining room, and the head waiter gave us a look of thinly veiled contempt, as if we might order fried bread and strong tea. But by the time Constantine had murmured God knows what bullshit in his ear about me, and my literary standing, and our relationship, he was all indulgence and obsequy, showing us to a table in the corner, admiring my freesia, and presenting us with vast morocco-bound menus, Constantine’s with prices, mine without.

  ‘Struth,’ said Constantine. ‘That’s several Deutschmarks per prawn.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay and we can put it on my bill for Era.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He looked quizzically at me over the top of the menus. ‘Won’t that jeopardise your status as the Perfect Author?’

  ‘I don’t much care if it does,’ I announced daringly. ‘I reckon I need danger money for staying in the same hotel as that old billygoat, anyway.’

  ‘You’ve persuaded me.’

  We ordered, and I began to relax. The dining room of the Dynamik was huge and opulent, with ten-foot swags of ruby velvet curtain, six satellite chandeliers surrounding one gigantic one, and the ceiling itself elaborately painted with obese deities dressed in wisps of tulle. Everything was thick, and heavy and rich, from the damask napkins to the dense pink carpeting. In the centre of each table stood an arrangement of waxy gardenias.

  ‘Nice here, innit?’ I sighed.

  In response, my escort removed one of his shoes and placed his stockinged foot on the seat of my chair, between my legs, feeling my crotch with his toes. The cream tablecloth reached to the ground on all sides so this manoeuvre was completely hidden from view.

  ‘I don’t like that suit,’ he said conversationally.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said in a voice that was especially clear and firm, to prevent it spiralling off into a squeak, ‘but he does. He’s got this thing about masterful women and uniforms and so on.’

  ‘Hmmm …’ mused Constantine, digging as deep as the cream linen would allow. ‘I wouldn’t mind a uniform, but with legs like yours you should put them on show. You’d look good in one of those sexy hussar outfits the girls wear in American high school bands. Gold braid and stilettos.’

  ‘You think so?’ I said, my knuckles whitening on the arms of my chair, ‘Well, I could hardly wear that at the Buchfest. Whereas this is … um … eminently suitable …’

  ‘It is, of course,’ agreed Constantine soothingly. ‘And anyway, we’ll be taking it off soon.’

  The wine waiter, tall and glacial like a Norse warrior, arrived at our table, and Constantine perused the list at leisure, meanwhile stepping up his foot activity. As I tried to suppress what must have looked like a savage nervous tic I became seriously worried lest the constant friction of nylon on linen should cause a spark, and give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘flaming desire’.

  The first course arrived, and we ate. All the food, to my fevered gaze, had the look of engorged private parts, which might at any moment rise off the plate and plunge into one or another of my bodily orifices, to make me the first woman ravished by a king prawn in the dining room of the Dynamik.

  All through the meal we scarcely spoke, but concentrated on our activities above and below the plimsoll line.

  ‘Look,’ I croaked, over a passion fruit sorbet which swivelled lubriciously in its dish whenever I put the spoon to it. ‘I have this awful feeling he’s after me.’

  ‘You forget,’ said Constantine, ‘you’re with me. I shall protect you.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not officially with me, you’re just a friend from home who happens to be staying here, remember? And I’m the mainstay of his perishing fiction list …’

  Constantine sat back in his seat, ostensibly to give me an appraising look, but actually to get more of his foot on to my seat.

  ‘I see no mainstay,’ he said. ‘I see an absolutely gorgeous woman with a fevered imagination and a husband in Riyadh.’

  We got to coffee. Or at least, he got to his, and I twice slopped mine between saucer and lips, and finally abandoned the enterprise altogether.

  ‘Liqueur?’ he enquired.

  ‘You must be joking. Let’s get out of here!’

  Constantine put his shoe back on and rose from the table. I allowed him to come round and move my chair for the simple reason that I doubted my ability to stand unaided. The Norse warrior strode over and asked if we had enjoyed our dinner and Constantine, gripping me firmly round the waist, said that it had been excellent, and would they please put it on my bill. I felt that I might just as well have been consuming sawdust and iron filings for the past hour for all the gastronomic pleasure the meal had afforded me, though there had been compensations.

  We strolled lopsidedly to the door, only to encounter the GM, coming the other way. Constantine at once managed to make his encircling arm seem chivalrous and polite, rather than the indispensable support it undoubtedly was. He really was frightfully good at these subtle, self-protective changes in coloration.

  ‘Hallo again,’ said the GM. ‘Good meal? They generally do you very well here.’

  ‘It was first-rate,’ said Constantine.

  ‘Mrs Blair?’ I was not to be let off. ‘Everything to your taste, my dear?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ I had the impression that if I’d expressed any reservations the GM would personally have stir-fried the chef over a brisk flame.

  ‘I hope you enjoy yours,’ said Constantine. ‘Good night.’

  The GM’s ‘Good night’ was still in our ears when Constantine said in a perfectly normal voice: ‘Your room or mine?’

  ‘Ssssh!’ I glanced over my shoulder, the very embodiment of guilt.

  ‘Yours then,’ he said.

  Contrary to plan he eschewed the lift, for which there was a queue, and we went up the stairs which were broad, shallow, and gently spiralling. The walls were hung with sepia photographs of Old Fartenwald. Heavily moustachioed city fathers and their cruiser-class fraus gazed implacably down at us as we tottered and groped our way to the second-floor landing. Here, the groups of corpulent burghers gave way to massive oil paintings of the countryside around Fartenwald which, if the artist was to be believed, consisted of crepuscular pine forests and the occasional crumbling Schloss whose owners, I imagined, would be martyrs to lycanthropy. There was no one about. Constantine grasped my bottom urgently.

  ‘Which way?’ he asked.

  ‘Number 106.’

  As soon as we entered my suite we collapsed on the floor, and Constantine once again demonstrated his prestidigitation with women’s clothing. He brushed aside the cream trouser suit with almost disd
ainful ease, and such was our mutual readiness and enthusiasm that the only problem was ensuring that neither of us pre-empted the fun by popping our corks early. My head thudded rhythmically against the door, and I pictured, inconsequentially, the shiny plastic DO NOT DISTURB sign swinging on the handle just inches away.

  Some time later we had made it—literally—to the bedroom, via the bathroom, the goose-pimply chintz sofa, and several metres of Persian carpet. As a lover Constantine was ardent, rough, rapid and expert, but making love with him, though thrilling, was about as lyrical as taking part in a three-legged race and presented roughly the same problems—those of synchronisation. The trick—which I was mostly too far gone to master—was to anticipate those moments when we were likely to peak together, and make the most of them. I wondered if the other women who had graced his life had had this turbulent sensation of being assorted ladies’ garments in a front-loading washing machine.

  Eventually, we slowed to a halt. Our respective top halves were shunted beneath the four-poster, so that anyone coming upon us might reasonably have taken us for a couple of car mechanics unable to unwind. Constantine was, of course, the first to regain his composure.

  ‘Shall I get us some drinks?’ he enquired, his urbanity untarnished by our bizarre and cramped circumstances.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He grabbed the edge of the bed and shot himself out and on to his feet in one enviably athletic movement. When I could hear him at the minibar in the sitting room I wriggled forth rather less gracefully, removed what remained of my clothing and put on my dressing-gown. Naively, I had been into Barford and bought two svelte and slippery nightdresses for my stay in Fartenwald, which I knew now, beyond a shadow of doubt, that I should never wear. I had omitted, however, to bring the rest of my night attire into line with the nighties and was in consequence stuck with the stained towelling. If I were ever to need proof that I was not a habitual cuckolder, the dressing-gown would provide it. It had been recently washed, but this had only the effect of reducing the spots of hair dye and greasy water to a uniform grey. Also, every time it was washed the sheer weight of the garment caused serious droopage in the cuffs and hem, so that I looked like an overgrown female version of Walt Disney’s Dopey.