Page 37 of 56 Days
“I can wait?”
He can’t. He feels shivery and feverish and a little bit sick.
He has let this evening get away from him.
“I can wait longer,” she says, waving a hand. “Go on.”
He hurries down the carpeted stairs, keeping one hand on the gold railing. The steps feel soft and unsteady beneath his feet, like they’re unmoored and floating. The main doors are directly opposite the last one, but so are the doorman and a couple pulling suitcases out of a cab. Oliver makes an abrupt left turn into a tunnel of polished marble and heads for the automatic sliding glass doors at the far end, slipping down a couple of the marble steps, willing the electronic sensor to hurry up, to let him out—
The doors separate with an excruciating slowness and he turns sideways to push through them and out onto a dark, deserted street.
It has the look of a place mostly made up of the worst sides of other places: loading bays, back doors, trash cans. Directly opposite is a tanning salon squeezed in between a gym and a medical supply shop, the kinds of stores that cover up their windows instead of using them for display. The only person he can see anywhere nearby is a Deliveroo cyclist stopped at a distant corner, her face lit by the blue light of her phone.
The night air feels cold and sharp as he leans against a wall and gulps it down.
He’s so sick of all this, ofbeingthis. He wishes he could just settle for his lot in life, make some kind of peace with it. Because every time he’s tried to build a sarcophagus over the past, it’s cracked before he’s even finished it.
So why does he keep torturing himself by trying?
He freezes at thewhooshof the automatic doors sliding open for a second time, thinking Ciara has followed him outside, but it’s a different woman who emerges into the dark.
She’s older, and skinny in that tight, severe way, with a long blond ponytail swishing halfway down her back. She’s wearing very thin, very high heels and carrying a leather purse like a large envelope under one arm.
It occurs to him that he is asix-footsweaty man standing in the shadows on a dark deserted street at the exact same moment she turns and sees him and her features jerk with fright.
“Sorry,” he says, holding up a hand, stepping forward into what he hopes is the light from inside. “Sorry.”
She standsstock-still, blinking at him.
The deep V of her dress and the bright light above the door conspire to showcase a thin, pale,three-inchscar at the base of her throat, neat enough to suggest she got it during somelong-agosurgery.
It makes him think of his own scar and the various lies he’s told to explain it.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he says.
The woman’s features soften and she makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and an exhale.
“Jesus,” she says, “I think I just actually had a heart attack.” She pulls the bag from underneath her arm and begins to root in it. “Okay, I get it, Universe. Smoking is bad for my health.”
“Sorry,” Oliver says again.
She takes a box of cigarettes from the bag. It’s had a time of it: the lid has been ripped off and the remaining cardboard is creased and misshapen. She takes two limp cigarettes from it and holds them up, offering him one.
“I don’t really smoke,” he says, eyeing it.
She shrugs. “Neither do I.”
He takes the cigarette and lights it with the matches she offers: a small black matchbook branded with the name of the hotel.
The actual act of smoking is never anywhere near as good as the anticipation of doing it but even so, the first drag makes him feel better. So much better that he decides not to worry about Ciara smelling it on him when he goes back upstairs. He’ll make something up, say he got a phone call and went outside to take it, and some guy came and stood right next to him and smoked.
“Having a good night?” the woman asks.
He can’t even begin to establish the real answer to that question. He exhales, blowing the smoke away from her, into the night.
He says, “It’s all right.”
“Drinking or dining?”
