Calendar Girl by Stella Duffy

Author:Stella Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 1994-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Tightrope walking

Saz waited until most of the customers had left. It was 3am, she walked out on to the balcony at the back of the building and collected her thoughts. In another hour the whole place would be hers, she could get the information she needed and leave New York the next day. She breathed in a cold blast of air from the night and walked back into the lounge.

“What are you doing hiding out there, September?”

Saz was startled to find Simon James a few feet behind her. He hadn’t been in all night and it was unusual for him to turn up so late. In the five minutes she’d been out on the balcony, the room had cleared of the last clients and they were alone.

“Oh, Mr James, you startled me.”

“Why September, what have you got to hide?”

“Nothing, it’s just that I thought there wasn’t anyone here, and well … this is New York after all.”

“Yes, of course, New York, how silly of me to forget. The city of sin and muggers and a murder every three minutes – that’s what you English think isn’t it?”

“Something like that Mr James.”

James moved across to Saz and sat on the chair beside her.

“Well, perhaps we’re not quite as bad as the movies paint us. I’d like you to call me Simon, September. Would you join me for a drink?”

“Ah, well … Simon, I really should be getting back, it’s very late.”

“One little drink?”

Now that he was closer, Saz could see that James was actually very drunk, the thin lines of red veins standing out on his fine chiselled cheekbones and the tart smell of whisky on his breath. He reached out and took her hand.

“I really do like English girls, you know September.”

Saz decided to play along, reasoning that James couldn’t be any more forceful or arrogant than the men she’d been dealing with nightly for the past week.

“And I like American men, Simon. Let me fix you that drink.”

Saz crossed to the bar, where she mixed herself a gin and tonic, containing about as much gin as one ripe juniper berry and a very large whisky for James.

“Ice?”

“Yes please.”

He slurred a smile across at her and Saz added the ice to his whisky.

“Here’s hoping you crash on the rocks any minute now,” she thought.

Saz sat with Simon James for the next hour, in which time he had three more large whiskys and told her most of his life story – poor kid, violent father, loving mother, too many in the family, older sister died in a nasty car accident, brother stayed in small town, worked hard, achieved nothing, whereas he worked hard, made a few “wise investments” and was now “comfortably off”. Saz, looking at his Rolex and Cartier cufflinks couldn’t help comparing his idea of comfortably off to her dream of a new answerphone. She also knew that she believed his story about “wise investments” almost as much as she believed the one he was starting to tell her now about how his wife didn’t understand him.

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