Page 10 of 56 Days
“Is he here?”
“He lives in Perth now. Has done for a while. Got the whole setup out there: mortgage, kids, pensionable job.” A pause. “I can’t see him ever coming back. He loves the weather.”
They cross the road to Baggot Street Bridge.
“Favorite movie?” she asks.
“I think his is the secondGodfather.”
She laughs. “And yours?”
“JurassicPark.”
“I don’t have one,” she says, “before you ask. I just don’t know how people can narrow it down.”
“I feel that way about food.”
“Well, there, I can do categories. Favorite cocktail, favorite pizza, favorite sandwich—but that’s as far as I go.”
“Go on then.”
“Sandwich is toasted cheese,” she says. “Toasted with mayonnaise on the outside.Hasto be mayonnaise. Not butter. That’s the best way to get it golden. Pizza is roast chicken strips and red onion. Can’t beat it if the ratio is right. Cocktail... Well, I’m not a big drinker, really, but I do like a French 75.”
“What’s that?”
“Gin and lemon juice, little bit of sugar syrup, topped with prosecco. Or champagne, depending on how much it costs. It’s basically adult lemonade.”
“Where does a good one?”
“Oh,” she says, “I’m nowhereneardiscerning enough to know that. If it comes in a flute and tastes a bit fizzy, it’ll do me. And to be honest, the flute isn’t a deal breaker.”
“And you’ve only been here a week...”
“AndI’ve only been here a week.”
“Well,” he says, stopping to bow slightly and roll his hand toward her like the maître d’ of a posh restaurant, “I’ve been heresixweeks, so I’m practically a Dubliner now—”
“Certifiable, surely.”
“—and so I know where we can get a nice cocktail. It’s even near the cinema.” He holds out an elbow so she can curl her arm around his. “Shall we?”
They talk about work and TV shows and whether or not more things will be canceled because of this faraway flu and stroll through a city that feels quiet even for a Monday night. He tells her that a lot of the multinationals have their people working from home already. She says she knows and then he rolls his eyes at his forgetting that she works for one of them. She says she’ll be shocked if she’s still in the office at the end of the week, that they’re all just waiting for an official announcement. A few departments have already made the move. She thinks she can do her job just as well at home. She explains that the problem is they have thousands of workers sitting within feet of one another in a confined space, breathing recirculated air and using the same bathrooms, teaspoons, etc., and every day of the week dozens of them are coming into work fresh from trips to other facilities and offices abroad, having traveled through airports and squeezed themselves into crowded airplanes. It’s the potential threat they’re acting on, not the reality. At least for now. Someone got the measles last year and it was the same sort of thing—not because the overlords are humanitarians, but because workers being home sick affects the bottom line. Better to have them home working for a while, even if it ends up being a total overreaction.
“Here we are,” he announces.
While she was nattering on, he’s steered her off Grafton Street and now they are standing in front of a fancy hotel. The smooth, dark gloss of itsfirst-floorbay windows promise low, warm light inside. Lush green foliage drips from the portico. Throughgold-edgeddouble glass doors, she can see an imposing staircase covered in plush carpeting. A uniformed doorman in gloves and a hat stands sentry just outside. International flags blow gently in the breeze above polished gold lettering that spells out the hotel’s name: The Westbury.
She’s heard of it but didn’t know it was here, didn’t know it was down this street, in this building that’s only ever been in her peripheral vision as she walked past.
“The bar does amazing cocktails,” he says.
“Great.”
She tries to sound like she means it, like thisisgreat, but her eyes are on the doorman. He’s just a bouncer in better shoes. She is hyperaware of the scuffed toes of her fake leather boots, the thin fabric of her dress and the bobbles of wool on the sleeves of her winter coat. The coat that was sold at a price that suggested you should be happy to get a month of wear out of it, the same one she’s wearing for the third winter in a row. If she had known this was where they’d be going, she would’ve worn something else. She might have even tried to stretch to buying something new.
She should have known. OfcourseOliver is a man who goes to places like this, who assumes he is welcome in them—because he is. The face, the suit, the cool confidence. He strides right up to the door as if the doorman isn’t even there and this is, apparently, the way to do it. The doorman not only opens the door for them but greets them both with a wide smile.
Having disentangled their linked arms to walk inside, Oliver puts a hand against the small of her back as they ascend the stairs. He’s not steering her or claiming her, but reassuring her. She wonders if he can sense how uncomfortable she is.
