Seductive Viennese Whirl (13 page)

"What a bunch of assholes," I say, while the Count and the Marquis whisper behind me. "Was the equipment insured?"

Ravi shakes his head dolefully.

"Now listen to me, I'm going to give you the address of a place where you can hire new equipment," says the Marquis, scribbling on a piece of paper and handing it to Ravi. "Thank you sir, but ..." says Ravi, staring down at his feet, encased in the green flip flops.

"You idiot," the Count snaps at the Marquis. "What use is an address when they have no money to pay for the stuff?" He pulls a wad of notes from his wallet and offers them to Ravi, while the crew, the Armani's and the Donna Karan's let out a collective sigh of amazement.

"No sir, that is too generous," says Ravi, eyes bulging as he stares at the cash.

"Take it," the Count says brusquely. "You can't let these people defeat you."

"All right sir, if you insist," he says, pushing the wad into his pocket. "What is your name?"

"Count von Pappenberg."

"Well Count, it will be known everywhere in my country of the generosity of the Austrian people. I shall put your name at the end of the film. Making no mistake sir, we will send you the money as soon as –" He laughs, "I cannot promise you when sir, but when we have the money, we will send it."

"That won't be necessary," says the Count, turning his back on Ravi. Once we get back to the table Eva puts her arm through the Count's but he shakes her off. "This is one of the things," he says, picking up a fork and pressing its tines into the palm of his hand, "one of many things I despise about my beloved country. The right wing thugs who must trample on anyone who is a little different. Can't they see that Ravi's film will bring their country more prestige and more tourism to boot? But no, they don't think, they just lash out." Throwing down his fork he takes a gulp of wine.

"Calm down darling," says Eva. Well well. It's only taken her a day to get on ‘darling' terms. It must be love. Although he's going slightly over the top about all of this, I can't help admiring the way he just doled out the cash without a second thought. Maybe he really is one of the good guys, like Eva keeps telling me.

"Let us not think of it any more," says the Count, abruptly snapping out of his fug and tucking into his baked sea-devil which has just arrived. "Let's dwell instead about how we can enjoy the rest of the evening." He's looking at Eva as he's saying this, and almost drooling with desire.

Judging by the amount of footsie that's played during the meal I expect Eva and the Count to hastily slip off after dessert to consummate their burning passion for eachother. But instead, after I've polished up a divine meal, followed by a crème brûlée and two Irish coffees I end up accompanying them to a casino in the Kärntnerstrasse.

As he enters the casino, the Marquis takes on a different persona. With shoulders slightly hunched and one hand stuck in his pocket, his walk is part shuffle, part strut, as he goes over to the roulette table. And from the way people nod to him from around the room he's clearly a regular.

I look round for Eva and the Count, but they've disappeared, so I join the Marquis. There is a jangling of necklaces as all the women at the table look over. My hand goes up to my own unadorned neck, which feels as vulnerable and exposed as the underside of a slug. When he asks me if I want some chips I shake my head. I'm too self-conscious. Taking sips from my cocktail I watch him play. But his attention isn't on the game. His eyes are circling the room like he's looking for someone.

Lights shine up from the table, creating an illuminated island in the dark room. In the green tinged light the gamblers look like ghouls, with shadow sockets for eyes. The ghouls move back and forth, from the shadows into the island of light. Over and over, the roulette wheel spins. There's a murmur whenever it comes to a hault. Hands jut out of the darkness to claw back their winning chips.

I had always imagined a casino would be full of laughing, happy people, which is how Simon and I envisaged it when we thought of the latest idea for the McManus campaign to go with the slogan:
We take our game seriously
. The people in our ad, glamorous hedonists, are laughing and joking about while spinning a roulette wheel. They don't take life seriously. The only thing they are serious about is McManus' pies (the ‘game' they're made from, geddit?)

"What are you thinking?" asks the Marquis.

"That it's not the way I expected it to be."

"Which was?"

"No one's having fun. Are you?"

He guides me over to a booth and clicks his fingers for the waitress and orders more drinks before answering.

"It's like anything. At the beginning you get a kick out of it, and when you stop you change your game. First I was crazy about Craps, then Black Jack. Recently I began to get a buzz out of the unpredictability of roulette. But in the end all games lose their charm. Although if I may say so," he says, leaning forward and whispering in my ear, so that all the tiny hairs along my neck stand to attention, "you haven't yet lost your charm. Quite the opposite."

"Hmm," I sip at my cocktail, syrupy and red. I swill the liquid around my mouth. My limbs feel heavy with drunkenness. I see Eva in the crowd, but she disappears again. "I'm not sure I like being compared to a roulette wheel."

"Always so defensive. I meant it as a compliment."

I start to say something but then his hand lands on my knee and slips under the hem of my dress, causing me to lose my train of thought. I know that if his hand moves an inch higher there's a strong possibility I'll lose my mind and go home with him.

"You wanted to say something?" He smiles.

"Look. I don't really know anything about you. I mean, what kind of work do you do?" I move my leg away from his hand, and feel frustrated, because what my body really wanted was to feel his fingers caressing the soft flesh of my inner thigh.

"It's really quite boring. Far nicer not to know anything about me. People are so boring once you get to know them, don't you think?"

I nod. He has a point. "But this can't be all there is in your life. Games?"

"You'd be surprised at how many games there are. I never tire of them." His fingers brush the back of my hand. Lust throbs through me. Any second now I'll just give in.

I grab for my glass, but as I'm lifting it to my lips the stem slips in my sweaty palm and red liquid spills onto my dress. He grabs a napkin, starts dabbing at my chest. He's making the stain worse, rubbing it into the cloth. But I don't really care, I'm just pleased his mouth is so close, and that his breath is tickling the inside of my ear as he says, "What a pity. This dress is quite ruined. The liquid has soaked through to the skin. Once I have taken off the dress I will need to lick it all off, until you are quite clean." And just as I'm imagining what it would feel like to have his tongue flicking over my nipples he jerks away.

"I won't be a moment," he says, getting up. "Some business I need to attend to." He goes over to a middle aged man, in dark glasses, with a cropped beard. The man slips him an envelope, and then I lose sight of them in the gloom.

The waitress brings me one cocktail after another. I keep thinking I really should go to the toilet and clean off the stain with water, but my legs feel heavy as lead, and besides, the Marquis said he'd be back, so I stay put. I notice that a woman at the next table is pointing at my chest. She leans across and says sternly, "
Da sitzt eine Wespe, auf ihrem Kleid
", while continuing to stare at my breasts. So I shrug at her, thinking she's admonishing me for having a stained dress.

And then the Marquis does come back and I'm very pleased to see him, so I jump up and reach out to give him a hug, but he just pushes me gently away. He's looking down at my bust, so I look down too. I see a red stain in the shape of the British Isles. Then I see a wasp marking out the position of Liverpool on the map. I scream.

A face swims above me. I'm in the casino. No, that's impossible, it's too light in here, I think, bringing my hand up to shield my eyes. I peer out between my fingers, head fuzzy with sleep and fighting to shake off this sense of disorientation. No I'm in an airplane, that must be it. And here's the air hostess, handing me a green tennis ball.

"Wakey wakey." Eva's voice. I open my eyes a crack more. She's in my hotel room, dressed and groomed, and the orb she's waving isn't a tennis ball, but an apple. She sits down beside me on the bed and scrutinizes a bit of paper she's holding in her other hand.

Feeling as dehydrated as a dried apricot I attempt to sit up. I gulp down a glass of water on the table beside me before muttering, "What time is it?"

"I don't know. Late, very late. The Count kept me up all night."

"You lucky bitch."

"You could have had the Marquis. He was yours for the taking, if it wasn't for that damn wasp phobia of yours. I mean, you do remember passing out, don't you?" She looks down at the bit of paper, then starts to chew at the corner of her fingernail.

"What? I don't usually faint at the sight of a wasp. Maybe I was bitten." I run my hand over one bare arm, then the other, my fingertips searching for the swollen bump.

"You weren't bitten anywhere. The wasp flew away. But that's not important right now." She gets up and starts pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed.

It is bloody embarrassing to have fainted because of a wasp, but on the other hand, if I had succumbed to the Marquis, wouldn't I be lying here right now, feeling cheap and used?

"Any good was he, your Count?"

"Yes, he was actually," she says, looking as if she's about to cry. "I had more orgasms last night than I've had in eight months with McManus."

"Then I don't understand. Why the glum face? Condom split on you?"

Her eyebrows shoot up. "If you must know, one of them did break, but that's not what I'm pissed about. He's cleared off, without so much as a …"

"Well, I'm glad you're taking it so well, because I would certainly be fed up, if a Count infected me with some nasty strain of VD before disappearing into the night."

"Shut up, just shut up. I don't have time for this nonsense. He does want to see me again. He's left me this typed note." She holds up the piece of paper. "It was on a silver salver outside my door along with an apple with a bite taken out of it."

"What does he say?"

"That if I follow the clues I'll see him again. Then there's a riddle which I can't make head or tail out of." She thrusts the paper into my hand.

"Before I read anything I need an Alka-Seltzer."

"Get up Kate, this is serious. This could be the man I'm going to marry." I yawn. Only two days ago McManus was The One. Call me cynical, but I have a hard time believing anyone can swap their affections that quickly.

For some unknown reason she's started bouncing up and down on the bed. Grinning with excitement she says, "What do you make of it?"

"If you don't stop bouncing I'm gonna throw up." She stops and I read:

A garden creature starts this mystery,

Corruptor of the human race.

A specimen of natural history

Kept locked inside a big glass case

"What's it saying to you?" Eva asks expectantly.

Nada. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. I decide there's nothing for it but to stall her a bit.

"Look, I know you're in a hurry, but my brain is in a fog. I need a shower to jolt it awake."

Once I've had my shower and my brain's slowly stirring into life I go in to Eva, who's still on the bed, flipping through my guidebook, brow furrowed in concentration.

"A creature in a glass case," says Eva. "I reckon we need to get to a zoo. Says here there's a big one in Schönbrunn."

"All right, all right, keep your knickers on. I need to get a coffee from room service before we go."

"There isn't time." And so, with lurching stomach and parched mouth I exit the hotel into the dry heat of a Viennese afternoon. A man is walking past carrying a cappuccino and my nostrils dilate at the heavenly aroma.

"I'm going to go ahead and hail a cab to this Schönbrunn zoo. That okay with you?" says Eva, heading for the kerb, but I pull her back.

"Hold your horses. Let's try and narrow this down. We're looking for a garden creature who corrupted the human race, right? What kind of animal is that?"

"The kind of creature that eats apples?" suggests Eva.

Actually, the suggestion isn't as dumb as it sounds. In fact she might even have hit the nail right on the head. "You're a genius."

"Really?"

"The snake didn't eat the apple, but Eve did, after the snake corrupted her. In the Garden of Eden."

"So? There's bound to be a shit load of snakes at the zoo. Come on."

"Wait a minute. There's got to be a reason he mentions natural history. Specimen in a glass case. It sounds more like a museum."

"But what museum?" she whines. She's really beginning to get on my nerves.

Think Kate. Think! The sooner this is over the sooner she can go off with lover boy and you can have a serious caffeine fix. I'm still a bit drunk and very drowsy, as I stare across the road, my eyes trailing each car as it zooms past, in a bloated state, feeling like a worm at the bottom of a tequila bottle.

And then an image comes back to me to me, from the day before when we came across Ravi shooting his film. How Shamila and Anil had danced around the lamppost, against a backdrop of a museum …

"The Museum of Natural History!" I blurt, feeling very smug. "Now can I go back into the hotel and have a coffee?"

"No," Eva says firmly. So we start walking towards the Natural History Museum, which thankfully isn't that far. We walk up to a tour guide who happens to speak English and ask if there are any snakes to be found. Once she tells us there are some on the first floor Eva leaps up the stone steps like a possessed thing with me trailing behind her. She's standing before a glass case of wriggling snakes, pulling off a note stuck to its side. As she hands it to me I read,