The Bullet Trick

'I bet you’d say you were Klingon if it helped.'

'Assuming they don’t have national service.'

She laughed.

'You’re funnier off-stage.'

'So I’ve been told.' Somewhere beyond in the dark a tram hissed across the wires. She shook her head and I saw raindrops jewelling her dark helmet of hair. I waited for her to tell me what she wanted, then, when she didn’t speak, said, 'So what can I do for you?'

'Shall I tell you over a drink?'

'I thought you’d never ask.' I glanced at my suitcase. 'Do you mind if we swing by my hotel so I can check in and dump this bag?'

She smiled showing perfect American pearly whites.

'Maybe we could have a drink there?'

'Why not?'

I returned her smile, but kept my teeth hidden, thinking Casanova himself couldn’t have managed things better, forgetting that she hadn’t told me what she wanted.

In the hours since I’d arrived the district had changed. It was still busy, but the pace had slowed. We were at a crossroads of the night. The traffic of homeward-bound theatregoers and late-night diners was cut through with the young club crowd for whom the evening, like everything else, was still young. Sylvie led me along a street lined with bars and restaurants and I caught glimpses of couples and clusters of friends caught in the bright lights, smiling. I could almost have imagined myself in London and yet I was most definitely abroad. Maybe it was just post-show tiredness made worse by a slight sense of dislocation, but everything looked too good, too clean, too nice for me to relax. It felt like the scene in the movie just before the bad guys come blazing in.

We waited for a tram to clang its way around a corner then I stepped from the pavement and into the road.

'Hey, hasty.' Sylvie put her hand on my arm and nodded at the red pedestrian light.

'Sorry.' I grinned and stepped back onto the kerb. 'Where I come from traffic lights are for the aged, the infirm and homosexuals.'

The light switched to green, we crossed together and Sylvie asked where I was staying. I told her and she said, 'It’s pretty close, we can walk from here.'

'Any good?'

Sylvie shrugged her shoulders.

'I’ve never put in any time there.' She flashed me a smile, her heels brisk against the concrete. 'I love new hotel rooms, don’t you?'

'I’ve spent too much time in them.'

'I haven’t.'

We’d turned away from the bars and cafés into a side street dominated by the skeleton of a half-constructed building. Blue plastic flapped in the structure’s frame and I thought of a giant ghost ship travelling through the night, sails slapping against the squall. Sylvie stepped onto the kerb of the unfinished pavement, and our pace slowed as she teetered along its edge, pausing occasionally to steady her balance like a tightrope-walker on the highest of high wires. I walked beside her, my suitcase’s wheels grumbling against the roadway’s newly surfaced tarmac. Sylvie stretched out her arms, seesawing with exaggerated concentration, then placed the tips of her right fingers against my shoulder to steady herself.

'If I ever make it big I’ll live in a hotel. Clean sheets every day, a minibar full of cool drinks, room service, cable TV, a shower with fuck-off water pressure…'

We reached the end of the pavement. She wavered, swaying slightly like it was a long way down; I took her hand and she jumped lightly from the verge, landing in a small curtsey. I said, 'And a cooked breakfast every morning.'

'A cooked breakfast whenever you wanted. Midnight, if you felt like it, and…’ She hesitated making sure she’d got my full attention before adding her pièce de résistance ‘…

free toiletries.'

We were back on a main street now. A young couple crossed our path and went into a bar, his arm around her shoulder, hers around his waist.

'See if you were in Glasgow at this time of night the streets would be full of drunks.'

'Yeah? Why?'

'I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.'

'Where I come from only big-time losers are drunks.'

I felt myself bridle.

'Is that right?'

'Yep, just the guys that are too fucked-up to score crystal meth. Getting drunk’s for pussies.'

'Lucky pussies. Where is it you come from?'

'Let’s just say I come from here, now.'

'The here and now?'

'You better believe it.' The heels of her boots gave a final clack then she stopped before a doorway. 'Here we are, Hotel Bates. It doesn’t look very lively.'

I glanced at the shuttered windows, the fastened storm doors and sleeping neon sign.

'The guidebook said this was a twenty-four-hour city.'

'It is, but only where it pays to stay open late.'

I rang the bell and watched, straining my ears for the sound of a porter’s footfall, then pressed the bell again, unsure whether it was ringing somewhere deep within the house or if it had been disconnected sometime around the porter’s bedtime. I stopped and listened.

'Did you hear something?'

Sylvie shook her head. I started to bang my fist hard against the door. But my blows seemed to be absorbed by the thick wood; all I was going to end up with was a sore hand.

Behind me, three notes chimed like an incomplete scale on a cracked xylophone. I turned towards the sound and saw Sylvie switching on her mobile, her face illuminated by the phone’s green glow.

'Perhaps we should call them.'

I glanced at the address Ray had given me.

'I don’t have their number.'

But Sylvie was already keying the buttons on her mobile. She nodded towards a hand-painted sign above the porch. Somewhere beyond the bolted door a phone started to ring.

We waited twenty peals then Sylvie broke the connection, retapped the number and we waited twenty more. I swore under my breath. Then Sylvie said the words that every single man and many a married man who’s just met an attractive young woman longs to hear.

'I guess you’d better come back to my place.' Then she added the caveat we all hope is just for form’s sake. 'There’s a spare bed.'

I’d imagined Sylvie living somewhere compact and modern, an apartment as bright and uncluttered as the bars we had passed. But it was obvious when she opened the door that the years had been unkind to Sylvie’s flat.

The hallway’s unpolished lino and beige wallpaper could have dated from before Soviet times. There was a stack of unopened mail spewed across the hall table and an old slack-chained bicycle propped against the wall. The bicycle sported a man’s battered leather jacket on its handlebars. It looked triumphant, like a redneck truck with roadkill strapped to its bull bars. The apartment had the rundown temporary feel of a place that’s sheltered a succession of tenants and received no care in return. Sylvie gave the mail a quick uninterested glance.

'Well, here we are, home sweet home.'

'Great location.'

She laughed.

'We like it.'

I wondered if the other half of the ‘we’ had anything to do with the leather jacket. Sylvie started to take off her coat.

'Coffee?'

'I think I can do better than that.' I unzipped my suitcase and drew out the bottle of duty-free Glenfiddich I’d stashed there. 'I knew there was a reason I was dragging this bloody bag around with me.'

'Looks like good stuff.'

'I thought you said alcohol was for pussies?'

'I said in America alcohol is for pussies. We’re in Europe now.'

'Ah, America, that narrows it down.'

Sylvie gave me a look.

'Nosy boy.' She draped her coat over the mystery man’s jacket, then took my raincoat and hung it, snug, embracing hers on top of the pile. 'You go introduce yourself to Uncle Dix and I’ll fetch us some glasses.'

'To who?'

She walked through to the kitchen and I positioned myself in the doorway watching her peer into cupboards as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for.

'Uncle Dix.'