I understood immediately. The poor girl was terrified. She must have found me unconscious in the street, or even seen me fall, and had rushed to help only to have me manhandle her in my confusion. A thought hit me. Maybe she had seen Hans as well…
“OK, listen,” I said. “You are Japanese, yes?”
I racked my brains for something to say to make my question clearer. The absurdity of it didn’t even occur to me. It didn’t matter a shit if she was Japanese or Norwegian as I couldn’t speak either.
“Yaponais?” I asked. She seemed to understand and nodded her head vigorously.
“Hai! Nihongo! Zhapanese!” she blurted.
“And you don’t speak, uh, eat English, yes?”
“Hai, no English, sorry,” she said, and bowed her head in a show of shame. My heart instantly went out to her. I resolved then and there to protect her no matter what, like she were my own daughter.
“That’s OK,” I said, gently laying my hand on her shoulder and attempting to give her a smile. “Please don’t be sorry. No sorry! I no eat Japanese either. Uh, Nihongo no…”
She smiled back, so far the one way we could indicate understanding of what the other was saying.
“OK,” I said. “Sorry no. Good!” I gave her a thumbs up, which she returned with glee. “But listen, this is serious…” I continued. “Did you see another man here?”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion, and I clenched my fists in frustration. How could I make her understand?!
“Uh, you…”
I pointed at her.
“See…”
I raised my finger to her eye and moved my head side to side in an exaggerated searching motion.
“Another man here?”
I didn’t know how to communicate this last part. Panic overcame me as survival mode kicked in, and I realised that instead of trying to find out if she had seen Hans we should get to safety somewhere first and then try to iron out the international relations.
I grabbed her by the hand a little too suddenly and she winced again, but I was too concerned about my insane Kiwi doppelganger rounding the corner with a pick axe or something that I pulled her along the pavement, searching desperately for somewhere safe to hide.
She complied, well, she didn’t really have a choice, but she didn’t try and pull her hand back from mine. We began to run towards the east end of Avenida Fred Olsen, towards the Gran Hotel. My plan was to get her there and hole up in a different room than the Penthouse, where Hans would surely be checking if he was still trying to find me.
I jerked my head around in paranoia, glancing behind us to see if anyone was following. But the coast seemed clear. The possibilities ran through my brain as we hot footed it across the baking concrete pavement.
Where the heck was he?
He couldn’t have been more than ten or twenty paces behind me, and I was sure he would have seen me jump. Or fall. If so he could have either made the jump himself, or gone back down through the fruit store to ground level and round the back of the buildings again to catch up with me. But that would have taken time, and even if he had seen me fall there was no way he could have known how I’d land. Was he now watching from a vantage point, simply waiting to see where we went before picking up the trail again and surprising us just when we thought the coast was clear?
Or was he gone all together? He was me, after all. A darker, psychotic, metaphysical manifestation of me albeit, but had the fall and my period of oblivion simply erased him from existence? I sincerely hoped it was the latter.
We reached the roundabout at the end of the avenue and I glanced behind us again. Still no sign of the errant double. The girl to her credit had not resisted me at all, and was still clutching my hand, waiting for my signal for what to do. I pointed at the Gran Hotel and gestured for us to run in its direction.
Once in the lobby she seemed to understand my thought process, and gestured towards the elevator. I strongly shook my head and pointed to the stairwell instead, and she looked at me strangely. The last thing I wanted was a repeat of the earlier incident, and for a split second I had a dreadful vision of a crowd of Hans’ pouring out of the lift and descending on us to rip us apart.
The girl seemed to sense my trepidation and nodded enthusiastically, pulling me towards the stairwell instead of the other way round.
I had no idea what we were going to do once we began ascending the emergency stairs. We got to maybe the fourth or fifth floor until I stopped, wheezing, and pointed to the entrance doors to the floor. On the other side, the floor was a mixture of conference rooms and suite accommodation. I kicked open the door of the nearest conference room. It was empty of course, with a long wooden table set out with fresh note pads and bottles of mineral water, and a whiteboard at one end for presentations. It looked safe enough, but I preferred a door with a lock and so we ran further down the corridor to where the rooms turned into guest accommodation and I tried the nearest door again. It was locked, but I had stolen a master ‘key’ from the reception area upon my arrival, which had allowed for my recent sojourn in the Penthouse Suite and all its luxurious trappings. I fished around in my beach shorts and found it, a credit card sized piece of plastic with a magnetic strip. I closed my eyes in a silent prayer, to whom I didn’t care, and slid it into the card slot on the door. It pinged and the door opened to my relief. I pulled the girl inside and quickly shut the door behind us, relaxing ever so slightly as I heard the door automatically lock itself.
The girl was looking at me strangely, with a mixture of curiosity and mild alarm. She obviously had no idea why I was seeking refuge so desperately for us both, and I realised at that moment that it was extremely unlikely she had seen Hans. She was just going along with my madcap antics and hoping I would come to my senses and we could have a decent discussion about the extraordinary circumstances we were in.
First things first, I was parched and in dire need of a stiff drink. I scanned the room for a minibar, and located it in the small kitchenette area off the main bedroom. Inside was a chilled bottle of Cava, a couple of mini whiskeys and gins, and some ice-cold bottles of water. I downed both the whiskey and the gin, grabbed the water and the fizz and headed back into the living room where the girl was standing at the window, staring out across the sea to the mountains in the distance.
I handed her a bottle of water and she nodded deferentially and said something like “Doumo.”
I sat down on the bed and opened the Cava, resting for a moment and trying to catch my breath. I tried also to collect my thoughts and work out a plan of what to do. I was still terrified that at any moment Hans would burst through the door.
I suddenly felt woozy, and had to lie down on my back on the bed. The girl was still looking out the window, presumably waiting for me to do or say something. The alcohol started to have its effect, and I couldn’t help closing my eyes. Within seconds I was asleep.
28%
When I awoke it was cool and almost dark, and the girl was curled up next to me in the foetal position on the bed. My head was spinning. I supposed it was a mini hangover after the spirits I had sunk so rapidly. I pulled myself up off the bed, listening to the girl’s breathing, trying not to wake her, and headed over to the panoramic window. The sun was just coming up over the horizon, and I realised it wasn’t the evening but dawn. Inconceivably I had slept through the entire night. I presumed the girl didn’t want to wake me and must have got bored and gone to sleep herself. I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all.