It makes me think of horror movies, when you know the killer’s calling. The startled heroine, that lonely drilling tinkle, the wide-eyed stare in the phone’s direction … it’s all there. I actually catch myself with my mouth open. I have to compose myself and close it, before I pick up the receiver. And it’s a close call, even then.
I almost go get myself a drink of water.
But I’m glad I decide otherwise.
‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says, and for one mad second I know how Lois Lane feels. I threw up the signal and he came calling, right on cue. ‘Are you ready to finish our conversation now?’
I’m amazed he even remembers our conversation, in-between million-pound meetings and making himself so slick and flawless. The suit alone must take a thousand years to put on, with all of its buttons and extra bits and the always imminent threat of ruining something so expensive. I bet he has to lever it on with tweezers. I bet geishas roll it onto his body using their breasts.
And yet here he is, just waiting to finish something so pale and slight.
It makes me think it wasn’t pale and slight at all. Somehow I’ve stumbled into a Very Serious Discussion about important things, and now I have to finish it. How do I finish it? What were we even saying?
‘Describe your face to me.’
I definitely don’t think we were discussing that.
‘Why? Don’t you know what it looks like?’ I ask, confused. He saw me in the lobby, didn’t he? Though when I think back … how would he have known I was the same person, hiding in the wardrobe? He couldn’t have, not for sure.
And I don’t feel like explaining. Everything might end, if I do.
‘How would I?’ he says, and I can almost hear his shrug through the phone. Just one big shoulder, as lazy and casual as a basking lion.
‘Well, you know where I work. You must have found things out about me.’
‘So you think I’m some obsessive stalker. From invisible to so sure of yourself in under a day. Very impressive.’
‘No, I don’t think … that’s not what I meant,’ I say, but I flounder over what I did actually mean. In the end I have to settle for the truth, even though doing so makes me picture that lion, suddenly baring all of its teeth. ‘It’s just that … well … you seem like a stalker. And also a mind-reader.’
‘You think I found out where you work because of mind-reading?’
He sounds so amused I almost take the words back. But in the end I think it’s better that I stand my ground. If he is a maniac, he’ll know I have him pegged now. He’ll picture me with my thumb on speed dial to the police, and never put me in a box beneath his stairs.
I’m not fooled by you, I think at him – though my actual words sound weak.
‘Possibly.’
‘Ah, possibly again. Not sure, can’t decide, don’t want to commit.’
‘Why would I want to commit something to someone I barely know? You haven’t even told me your name,’ I say. He doesn’t have to know that I’ve invented hundreds for him, in my head. Stanislav, Arvikov, Amritza, my mind murmurs, even though I’m sure none of those are actually words. ‘And I have no idea how you know mine.’
He laughs, low and dark. I swear the sound rattles my bones.
‘You keep calling me, remember?’ he says, and I want to smack my hand over my face to see my own silliness spelled out like that. Of course, of course, I keep calling him and hanging up. I really am sending out a signal. ‘If you hadn’t, I would have surely bothered you no longer. But seeing your work number in neon was too tempting, so I simply called you back and listened to your delightful answering machine 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