I clicked the torch off. My feet felt down to the bottom of the bed and touched the cork-stoppered china hot-water bottle.. It was still warm. I hooked it with one foot and brought it up towards my bum as I curled up again and closed my eyes.
Why had I been dreaming of Berlin and Hazleton?
Because I'd been talking to Hazleton the day before, I supposed. Because that dinner was the first time we'd exchanged more than a few words. Obvious, really. Except that it wasn't. Some bit of my brain didn't like this explanation and kept insisting there was more to it. I put it down to lack of oxygen. Hazleton had felt my knee beneath the table later, and insisted he would see me back to my room that evening. I'd run away.
Why couldn't I dream of Stephen?
Stephen, married to Emma. Emma who went Oh, oh, oh, in total silence. Emma who was having an affair with Frank Erickson, a corporate lawyer for Hergiere Corp, who lived in Alexandria, Va, with his wife Rochelle and three children, Blake, Tia and Robyn. He and Emma had met in various hotels within the DC Beltway, usually around lunchtime, and had managed two weekends together, one in New Orleans when he was attending a convention and she had claimed to be visiting an old schoolfriend, and one at the Fearington House, an elegant country inn tucked away in the woods near Pittsboro, North Carolina.
I had the zip code and the telephone number for the inn; I even knew what they'd had to eat for dinner on the Friday and Saturday night and which wines they'd chosen to accompany their meals; I could have called the place up and asked them to reserve the same suite and put a bottle of the same champagne on ice. There were no videos of their tryst there, but I had a scanned copy of the bill. The DVD Poudenhaut had given me contained photographs of that bill, various restaurant cheques — all matched to still photos or other short pieces of video of the adulterous couple in those restaurants — receipts for flowers to be delivered to Mrs Buzetski's office in the graphic-design company she worked for, a receipt for a five-hundred dollar négligée in Mr Erickson's name, which I suspected his wife had never worn, and a whole variety of other bits and pieces of film and documentation that chronicled their affair in excruciating detail.
The film of them fornicating in the DC hotel room (the Hamptons Hotel, Bethesda, room 204, to be precise) was just the cherry on the cake. Somebody had gone to a huge amount of trouble over a considerable period of time to gather that evidence, and the more I thought about it, the less I believed Hazleton that the disc had just fallen into his hands.
How much of this sort of stuff went on? Was it just Hazleton, or were the rest at it as well? Did they have anything similar on me? Unlike Stephen, I'd never taken any vows, never made any promises, legal or otherwise, but what about the people I'd slept with? I tried to review the list of sexual partners I'd had over the years, looking for any that could be blackmailed or otherwise compromised.
As far as I could remember there shouldn't be a problem: I'd always tried to avoid married men just as a matter of course, and on the few occasions when I'd ended up in bed with one it had been because the bastard had lied (well, once or twice I might have suspected, but never mind). Come to think of it, Stephen ought to be grateful and flattered I was prepared to make an exception for him.
Maybe this had all been done for me, I thought. Maybe Hazleton really didn't make a habit of this sort of thing, but had set up this particular surveillance operation because he knew how I felt about Stephen, knew how Stephen felt about adultery and had seen a way, perhaps, to give my beloved to me and so leave me for ever in his debt.
I was too hot. The air outside the bed was still sharply chilly, but underneath the Himalayan pile of bedclothes it had suddenly become sweaty. I pulled off my jumper and thick socks. I kept them in the bed with me, in case I needed to put them on again later.
What the hell was I going to do?
Should I tell Stephen about his wife? Shit, it wasn't just the dishonesty or any advantage I might gain, it was safety: Emma and Frank hadn't used any protection that I could see.
I could phone Stephen right now. I could tell him the truth, that I had the evidence and Hazleton had given it to me. That was the most honest course, the sort of thing you could imagine justifying in court. But if I did? Maybe he would blame me, maybe he'd stick by her, maybe he'd think I was just trying to wreck his marriage. No win.
Or I could — even more easily, because it would take a single sentence with no angst, no trauma involved — ring Hazleton and say okay, do it. Let it happen. Let Stephen find out the truth and see what he did next, hoping that he'd turn to me, sooner or later. Maybe even arrange to be nearby when he heard the news, and so be the most obvious shoulder for him to cry on; up my chances at some little risk.
Or do nothing. Maybe he'd find out anyway. Maybe Mrs B would be discovered some other way, or Mrs Erickson would find out and tell Stephen, or Mrs B would grow tired of living a lie and announce she loved somebody else and wanted a divorce — hell, she knew a good lawyer. That was the best outcome: doing nothing and still coming out ahead; a low reading on the guilt-o-meter. But that still left me knowing and not doing anything.
I tossed and turned in the bed, still too warm despite the chilly air. I slipped off my loose cotton pants and rolled them up. I had my PJs on underneath.
The Palace of a Thousand Rooms. With sixty-one rooms. Ha: Blysecrag had more than that in one wing.
That would be the other reason I'd recalled my first proper meeting with Hazleton and the thing about counting to a thousand on your fingers. The Palace of a Thousand Rooms was called that because whoever had first built it had counted in base four, not base ten, so that — if you chose to translate it that way, and they had — their sixteen was our hundred and their sixty-four was our thousand. So the palace had been built with sixty-four rooms. Except that three rooms had dropped off during an earthquake in the nineteen fifties and they hadn't got round to replacing them yet. Different bases. That must be the explanation. That was why I'd had that dream-memory of dinner in Berlin, the week the Wall came down.
Only it still wasn't. In all my billions of neurons and synaptic connections, it seemed like it only took a few determined troublemakers to distract me from the sort of things I ought to be thinking about, like whether to tell my beloved he was being cuckolded, or whether I should abandon my brilliant career and move to Thulahn (What? Was I mad?).
Think around the problem. Don't call Stephen. Call his missus. Call Mrs B. Tell her you know.
No, call her — or have somebody else call her — anonymously and let her know only that somebody knows. Bring things to a head that way. Maybe she'd confess all (yes, and then Stephen — just, gee, a big soft galloot — forgives her and, heck, if their relationship doesn't, like, gather strength from the experience).
I could see that.
Or maybe she'd leave him. I could see that, too. Maybe she'd leave him and take the children. Maybe she'd leave him and take the children and leave the poor, gorgeous sap with nobody to turn to… (but wait! Who's that in the background? Yes, her, the attractive thirty-eight-year-old blonde — oh, but looks younger — with the Scottish/Bay Area accent?).