Читать книгу Pretty Lethal - Joe Schreiber - Страница 13

‘Never Let Me Down Again’ – Depeche Mode

We crossed a dark bridge to the Centurion Palace Hotel. It was a sleek slice of L.A.-style architecture built inside what looked like a five-hundred-year-old palace on the opposite side of the canal, and to get inside we had to cross a wide courtyard of perfectly oval stones that crunched under our feet as we walked over them. She led me into a high-domed lobby with a chandelier made of curved glass tubes and long sofas arranged across the wide marble floor. From the concierge desk I saw a pair of high-cheekboned faces, incurious and androgynous, peering back at us from a liquid cloud of blue light.

‘Lift is this way,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

I stepped into the brushed chrome elevator, feeling it rise smoothly upward, transporting us to some upper floor. There, Gobi kept me walking forward down the silent corridor. She swiped her keycard and we entered her suite, a series of rooms, one flowing into the next, opening out toward a balcony overlooking the canal. I saw a bottle of champagne on ice in front of the flat-screen TV, the counter scattered with her BlackBerry, jewelry, a jumbled pile of euros and foreign coins, her passport and lipstick.

‘Take off your clothes.’

‘What?’

‘You are freezing with the cold.’

‘Look, I should probably tell you something.’ I managed to get the windbreaker off, turning one of the sleeves inside out as I pulled my arm free, then reached down to unbutton my pants. ‘Do you mind looking the other way?’

She cocked one eyebrow, then turned to face the wall as I peeled off my jeans, then my socks, and finally my T-shirt. ‘I’m involved with somebody. She’s back in the States.’

Gobi didn’t say anything, just pointed in the opposite direction. ‘Shower is through there.’

The bathroom was a green marble grotto. My reflection stared back at me from a full-length mirror, a skinny, pale American kid with a face that looked like two pounds of Genoa sausage. I kicked off my boxers and stepped into the shower. By now my teeth were chattering and it took me a moment to figure out the faucets, but once I did, the shower head rewarded me with an oscillating spray of hot needles that made my whole body realize that it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe things weren’t as bad as I thought. I breathed in steam, scrubbed myself twice, and stood there until the hot water started to go cold. After what felt like a long time, I stepped out and found a fluffy hotel bathrobe waiting on the back of the door. I was actually starting to feel human again.

‘This is a really nice place,’ I said, stepping out of the steam. ‘How can you afford a place like this?’ No answer. ‘Gobi?’

A flicker of motion in one of the mirrors. ‘Over here.’

‘I – oh.’

When she stepped out from behind the closet door, I saw that she’d slipped off the leather jacket. The top underneath it was lacy and black, with shiny thin straps that stretched across her clavicles.

‘What are you looking at?’

‘Just – your clavicles. You have really nice ones.’

‘How are you with zippers?’

‘Excuse me?’

She turned her back to me, tilted her head forward, and lifted up her hair from the back of her neck. ‘It’s stuck.’

‘I told you I had a girlfriend, right?’

‘I am only asking you to do my zipper.’

‘Right.’ The zipper slipped down easily. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’m doing in Venice?’

‘No.’

‘I’m touring with Inchworm, and – ’

She turned around and kissed me, mouth open, tongue flicking up and in as her hands slipped into the bathrobe. I could taste the dry fruity flavor of the champagne she’d just been drinking, and something almost bitter, like dark espresso beans or black licorice. From outside I could hear music and faint laughter down the canal. I drew back, catching my breath.

‘Her name’s Paula,’ I said. ‘She’s really cool. You’d like her.’

A smoky chuckle and she muttered something in Lithuanian.

‘What?’

‘I called you a stupid ass.’

‘Why?’

‘Is what you call a man who has a girl in his bed and still makes small talk.’

‘We’re not in b– ’

She pressed her palms against my chest and pushed me backwards onto the mattress, knocking the pillows aside, rolling over the blankets and up against the headboard, where I was pinned as she straddled me.

‘Okay, look, this isn’t cool.’ The harder I tried to sit up, the harder she pushed back. ‘I don’t remember you being so – ’ I tried to think of another word for aggressive, but all of a sudden my word-finding ability seemed to have taken a serious hit to the word-place, whatever it was called. Randomly I noticed a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk in the corner of the room that looked like it cost about a million dollars, and then Gobi shifted her hips slightly on top of me and I forgot all about the steamer trunk and the million dollars it must have cost.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine . . . ?’ My voice went up at the end, sounding like one of the Chipmunks. I put my hands behind me and tried to pull myself free, but her knees had pinned the bathrobe to the mattress. ‘I’m just kinda naked under this thing?’

‘Perry.’

‘What?’

‘I need your help.’

I looked into her eyes. ‘You need me?’

‘I am not joking.’

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘whatever I can do.’

And then the Louis Vuitton trunk started to move.