Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
‘Walk for a while, or head back to our rooms?’ He poses it like a tantalising invitation.
‘Eighteen thousand steps.’ I peer at my phone’s Health app. ‘And if you could measure talking in steps, I’d probably triple that. So I think that might be enough walking for one day.’
‘Funny, I’m not tired.’ He nudges me again. ‘Come on… Let’s wander dark streets and stumble upon floodlit ancient ruins until morning.’
I find myself indulging that pleasing picture of us for a while. My life taking on a scene from a movie, and me granting myself permission to be the main character in my own story.
‘Think about it,’ he says, when I have fallen silent, the precipice sort of silent. ‘We’ve come all this way. We might never be here again like this. You can’t just quit and go to bed.’
A part of me is egging the other part on to do it. But, untimely as it is, melancholy has wrapped its cloak around me again, this strange tug between opposing forces that always seems to be going on inside of me, without my ever really knowing what those forces are. Except that one is probably Rupert. I look up at a smattering of stars crowning the floodlit Acropolis, wishing that if the universe had a flow right this second, it would kick in and I could attempt to glide with it. ‘It’s possible I’m actually insanely envious of my daughter, you know,’ I say, apropos of nothing. If you’ve never experienced it, one way to deal with that is to deny it exists. Maybe that is why I was so down on her love story in the beginning. Ugh! What a weird confession. Freud would have a field-day.
‘Explain,’ he says.
I settle for saying, ‘The absence of complications that she clearly must feel.’
‘That’s just called being young.’
‘She’s prepared to change everything about her life for love.’
‘And that’s a good thing how?’
‘Never said it’s a good thing. Just saying, for Harriet, it’s that epic thing you once talked about that we’re supposedly all chasing down.’
‘Is it,’ he says quietly and rhetorically, like something I’ve said has just moved him.
I link him again. Need to. For stability. Don’t want to twist an ankle. ‘Do you have, like, any idea where our hotel is?’ I am suddenly insanely tired and don’t want to talk about love and all that crap any more.
‘If I say yes, then we’re destined to go back to our separate rooms. If I say no, then we have to wander dark streets and stumble upon floodlit ancient ruins until morning.’
It hangs there. The invitation. Possibilities dancing. Mine for the taking. Quickly evaporating.
‘I do know where our hotel is,’ he says, when I am silent for too long. ‘As well as God granting me the serenity to write the world’s most crapped-on romantic novel, I also have the most finely tuned sense of direction.’
‘Well, that makes one of us.’
You should have walked all night through Athens with him. The thought just blindsides me, makes me catch my breath. But we keep on walking. Moving farther away from the tantalising prospect of that with each step we take.
We arrive back at the hotel. Shuffle into the same slice of moving door. Did the space get smaller? He is so close behind me that I can feel the infrared radiation of his body; there is no air. ‘Er… I don’t think we’re moving,’ I tell him, standing painfully still again.
‘Oh yes. Right. You forgot to push.’ He reaches an arm around me, gives the door a little start. I could not be more conscious of what it would feel like if he touched me, than if he just did. We do the silly shuffle again. Then we arrive in the lobby. The pretty girl behind the desk wishes us kalispera and coyly keeps track of us crossing the marble floor.
Inside the lift, we are offered the inevitability of the sliding door. ‘Which floor are you on?’ My voice is so giddy I hardly recognise it as my own.
‘Same as you. That’s why I only pressed one button.’
‘Oh. Right.’ I might be blushing. ‘Good to know I can safely go to the moon with you in charge of the rocket.’
‘It might make for an interesting adventure.’ His body is too angled towards mine now. Everything about him is angled towards me too much.
The door slides open. ‘Here we are.’ My voice quivers.
‘One small step for mankind.’ He gestures for me to step out ahead of him.
‘Gentleman.’
‘Not really. Just wanted one last glimpse of your ass.’
We come to a halt in front of a wall. ‘I’m this way.’ I indicate right.
‘The funny thing about having rooms next door is… Me, too.’
We start walking down the narrow hallway, which seems to go on for forty minutes. I have never been so conscious of the practice of placing one foot in front of the other, and of having no idea where it’s leading. I point to a door, a flurry of nerves loose in me. ‘I think this one’s mine… 606. Almost the antichrist.’
He smiles. ‘I like your mnemonic technique.’
‘All that wine brings out your advanced vocabulary.’
‘I could say something about what else it brings out, but I’m not going to.’
I turn to face my door. He is so close to me that I can feel the draught of his breath on the nape of my neck again, like a contactless kiss. I am back on that chaise, the short, sharp shock of how in tempo we were, of how he managed to turn something arguably quick and dirty into some sort of extravagantly close communion that could easily become a compulsion to me.
I dig in my pocket for the key card which doesn’t seem to be there. Shit. Damn. Where the hell is it? I pivot, wave the piece of plastic. ‘Found it!’
‘Pity.’ His gaze hooks, hardcore, onto mine.
Heat rushes to my face, and a very different heat rushes somewhere else. ‘Got yours at the ready, have you?’
‘If you mean my key…’ He brandishes his piece of plastic.
‘Perfect.’ I purse my lips, let out a surreptitious breath. ‘We have the necessary tools to access our own rooms.’ I turn my back to him and aim mine at the keypad – twice. Both times, it flashes red.
‘Maybe you just need to…’ His arm is reaching around my body again.
‘Green!’ My hand is poised on the handle. ‘Well, then… Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ he replies, but he doesn’t move. Not one inch.
I stare into the door, wondering why I haven’t yet gone inside. You’re not allowed to kiss him again, no matter how critical to your existence this feels right now. You are still married, even if that feels like an improbability right now. Plus, you do not need more complications. Frank = more complications.
I turn, slowly, try to resist my own momentum, almost as though my will and my body have different ideas. His eyes bore into mine again; then they buzz around my face like he’s attempting to communicate complicated thoughts. I try to read him, but I can barely read myself.
‘It’s possible I may be suffering from a case of analysis paralysis,’ he finally says. He looks a little cowed by his own admission.
‘What do you mean?’ My eyes drop involuntarily to his mouth, my brain launching into a tumble of over-thinking. But I want to know. I want to know what he means.
He looks like he’s on the brink of explaining, like the words are poised there if he can just give them one small nudge over this awkward hump. But then he says a rather rueful, ‘Explanation for another day, Moira Fitzgerald.’
I feel it like a tiny puncture wound. More than tiny. Instead of opening up, he has shut us right down. ‘Why do you always call me by my full name?’ I try to sound upbeat to mask my crashing disappointment.
‘So I can keep you straight from all the other Moiras I know.’
‘I thought that might be why.’
I need him to go. Badly. I need him to go like my life depends on it. But still he stands there. And still I find myself waiting. And then he does something I’m totally not expecting. He lowers his forehead to mine, just presses it there, warm skin to warm skin, mutters a quiet, ‘Damn.’
When he looks up, I save us both from ourselves. I say, ‘Goodnight, Frank.’
And he says, ‘Goodnight, Moira.’