Lost in Hotels (28 page)

The Arts Club is David embodied in every way, from the distinguished first impression of the entrance foyer. Its classic black and white marble floors and swooped iron baluster stands almost to attention while tracing the strong, tempered spine of the building. It tangents out into various floors that I explore from the basement dj lounge to the mannered dining room and studied library that has hosted patrons dating back to its original founders including Charles Dickens. I don’t feel as out of place as I expected among the contrasting white Greek revival columns of the otherwise formal English space where I bide time at a bar once more.

“Let It Be” plays on a house track to the handful of guests in the lounge as my nerves alas relent, and the words sit down with me lingering in my mind to just continue this path to its ultimate outcome. The bartender pours my martini over ice in front of me without uttering more than the obliged word. My eyes struggle to take in all that is around me; an otherworldly place of the elite that’s usually off limits even to me. I would rather be nowhere else than right here waiting for him.

“So embarrassed, I’m there already in heart. Fifteen-minutes max. In the car,” David texts. My heart drops, and I sell myself on just a few minutes more of waiting. My thoughts turn to what life would really be like with David: long workdays that turn into weeks of him being gone, that insatiable appetite for sex, and always that wandering eye beyond the grasp of my watch or control. How scary life would be at this point in my life, giving up a sure thing for a maybe with someone so unpredictable. As I begin to drop in spirit and expectations, someone taps my shoulder. A turn of my head queues that rush of passion and adrenaline as his grinning eyes meet mine. I lean in for a kiss that begins this entire cycle again. My arms wrap around his silky-soft blazer, and my face finds that exposed skin just above his sweater where I’m able to grab his scent that is unlike any other I have smelled.

“Look at you. You’re going to make the chaps here seethe with jealousy. You look sensational, Catherine.”

My name even sounds better when he says it. I stand in stillness, unable to look away from him, the way his forehead wrinkles when he laughs and his eyes squint at the light above. I feel more beautiful with him here next to me, by my side, and it feels as if I am something altogether more, better, and complete. My life was supposed to be like this; this was the person meant for me, to be with and evolve as a person by his side.

“I apologize for leaving you here waiting. I hope it wasn’t terribly uncomfortable,” he says, nose to nose as the bartender hovers next to us waiting to tend to David’s order.

When David is near, it’s like everything else that was before or that is to come, is a blur, as if it doesn’t matter or exist at this moment.

“I love this place. It’s so pretty, and I had no idea what a literary haunt it was.”

“I didn’t really think about it, but it’s really perfect for you as a writer.”

“Although Charles Dickens wasn’t really the struggling artist; he was one of the few writers of his time to have tremendous financial success during his lifetime.”

“Are you saying he was an elitist bastard?”

“No, just that not all writers were able to afford such an extravagant lifestyle,” I say.

“Would you prefer to go somewhere else?”

“No, no, not at all. That’s not what I meant. Forget it, I love it, and I love it even more now that you are here.”

“Shall we go into the dining room,” he says with a mere look at the bartender who lingers on him without initiating verbal dialogue.

“Sure, yes, let’s. Can I close my tab?” I say to the bartender.

“It’s already taken care of, Miss Klein,” he replies.

Klein is my last name, but I had never given it personally.

“Darby, we are going to go have dinner, but good seeing you, mate.”

“As you, Mr. Summers,” he replies as David leads me away from the bar with a gliding push of my lower back.

David seems tired or distracted as we walk silent between the rooms of the club and into the dining room that’s brighter than I imagined. Its white cornice ceiling and veiny marble floors take some gentle steps to walk on. He chats to the maître d’ as if he’s there on a daily basis, but without introducing me. I stand attentive to the conversation, but the two men completely exclude me. Then the regal man with silvery-gray hair leads us past a group of packed tables to a large silvery-blue banquette that could easily seat six, but with just two place settings cozily arranged next to each other. I thought that even if the mood isn’t perfectly romantic so far this evening, the backdrop couldn’t be lovelier.

“So, I’m still a little cross that you wouldn’t stay at my flat.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I’m just a little disappointed you didn’t choose to stay with me,” he says with a whispered restraint.

“You know I would love to; it’s just I am here for work, and they tend to call and fax directly to my hotel. It would appear as though I was goofing off to not actually be staying in the room.”

“There’s also another version of the story that goes, ‘this incredibly lovely guy who never invites women to his flat finally found someone who he actually wanted to stay the night, and she shot him down.’”

“David, I didn’t shoot you down. We have the whole weekend in front of us. You could just as easily stay with me at the hotel.”

“Except for the one pesky word … job,” he says in reply. “I have a seven o’clock meeting tomorrow morning, and the office is a good hour commute from your hotel in Covent Garden.”

“Well, then, you understand my situation exactly,” I say, taking his hand and holding it in my lap.

“It’s just this is my hometown and that’s my home, but I get it.”

My heart stops at the thought of staying in David’s home, but I also realize Matt would be calling me in the room. If I didn’t answer and there was an emergency with Billy, I would never be able to forgive myself.

“So tell me about your assignment again. Are you interviewing someone here?”

“Yes, a US TV celebrity who’s in a West End show.” I make up a story on the quick, not wanting to tell him about the low-level travel assignment I’ve sought out just to be here with him again.

“What show?” he asks.

“Oh, just a US TV comedy actress on the rise.”

“No, I mean, what West End show?”

“It’s a new version of
West Side Story
,” I blurt out, hoping it will satiate his inquisitiveness, which it does.

“So, what were you so busy working on the last few days?” I ask before sipping the iced water poured out of a hefty-looking glass bottle.

“It’s one of the most intense jobs I’ve ever worked on, and without boring you too terribly much, it’s a regional British bank acquiring a small German lender, but it’s marred in all these subsidiary businesses that we are trying to risk access.”

Three waiters bring a series of appetizers in three consecutive unveilings that reveal a full caviar spread and a fish carpaccio of some sort. They place the dishes in front of David. I hesitate to tell him I’m mostly vegetarian, especially if he doesn’t remember by now, until I look closer and see the caviar is actually some sort of milled vegetable. I smear some on the endive leaf and attempt to eat it without displacing my lip liner.

David continues with the nuances of the deal; his intensity keeps me intrigued as he gestures with his thick hands, catching my eye in between delicate forks of the carpaccio and precise wipes of his mouth with the heavily starched white linen napkin in his lap. His manners are impeccable. He holds the fork in one hand while gently using the knife to smear the remaining pieces in one small heaping that enters his mouth without fail.

At moments, listening to David reminds me of Matt, from the way he gets frustrated at people of unlike mind, to the way he tries to appease me by passing the water before I ask or inquiring if my food is just right. I try to block the comparison from my head, as if it’s some sort of Freudian undertone that we simply repeat all things from our past. It’s neither comforting nor annoying but an awkward similarity of two men who have so little else in common.

“But let’s forget about work and think about something more convivial. Tomorrow, you’ll come over to my house, and we can leave together for Somerset?” he asks as he subtly makes obvious that we will not be spending the night together.

“Yes, of course,” I say as I grab the stem of my orbed red wine glass. I bring it to my lips in a slow sip of the wine that I try to drink without having it touch my teeth.

“I’m going to drive, so we should probably leave by afternoon in order to avoid traffic,” he says, “assuming you’re done with your work by that time. Otherwise, we can always grab the train, but that’s a bit grim, I’d say.”

Dinner passes in a faster pace than I expect. David declines dessert or espresso, and I do the same. I glance at his thin gold dial Patek Philippe and its shiny black leather strap that alludes we completed dinner in little more than sixty minutes, which seems rather rushed for two people so desperate to be with each other. I think of ordering another drink, but resign myself to the evening ending. I hope to find better footing with David with a little sleep.

“So, my flat is very near here. Why don’t we take a walk, and then I’ll call my driver to give you a lift back to the West End later?” David says, grabbing my right hand and spreading my fingers to rub our palms together before getting up from the table. He helps me up from the booth as I contemplate a long walk in my now-ridiculous-feeling dress and heels. But it doesn’t matter when with David as he leads me out of the restaurant and up the street, past galleries, closed cafés, and designer shops that line this part of Mayfair. It’s no more than a few blocks where the narrow brick buildings open to the dramatic archways dotted in bold point lights that look like an old theater marquee along the entrance of the Ritz.

The streets are still crowded, and I try not to fall behind David’s speedier pace. London beats with a racing heart even in the late evening. Taxis zoom past and busier commercial streets with posh brasseries and packed bars succumb to pockets of cozy residential buildings trimmed in glossy black frontages with wrought iron gates and women ready for bed in the windows cut out of the red and white brick on the upper floors.

“When I first moved to London after university, I didn’t know how to get anywhere. I spent every moment in the back of a car to the point where I really didn’t get to know the nuances of the city,” David says.

“How old were you?”

“Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. I’d come here all my life. But since then, I try to walk home every night from dinner as long as it’s not terribly far or the weather isn’t too bad. Seeing the people in the windows and on the street are my version of having dinner with the family every night.”

I realize this is my time to tell him, to tell him the truth, in this moment of vulnerability when the night is still young and we have the weekend before us to work through the anger and deceit and come out the other side.

“You know, there is so much we really don’t know about each other, things we might have missed in the process of this new relationship given the distance between us,” I ease into the conversation.

“But I’ve had distance between the people I love all my life, from my parents sending me away to school and then with work that separates me from almost everyone I know.”

“Do you want your life always to be on the road and away from the ones you love?” I ask softly, not wanting to come off as a woman who says she insists her husband not travel for work or otherwise.

“I love what I do, always meeting new people and seeing places that keep my mind and interests expanding. And that’s what I love about you. You’re not bogged down with conventional expectations and have found fulfillment as a person, a complete person, one who doesn’t need a man or a child to have a full life.”

“But I don’t know if that’s the exact case for me,” I say.

“Of course it is. Normally, I’d be having fights at this point in the relationship about my lack of availability and endless travels, but with you, it works. It’s the best relationship I’ve had with a woman, and I think that’s because you know who you are and you know what you want.”

The adulation stalls my advances as he holds my hand tighter, and the neighborhood around us becomes even more storybook-like. The perfectly green square lined in parked Mercedes sedans, encircled by rows of pure white Victorian houses and their proud Doric columns, varying striped window coverings and national flags of the respective Spanish and Finnish embassies, pass by us.

“This is my road,” he says as I take a second look at the name Eaton Street. I savor this moment tracing the steps that he takes night after night. The sidewalk widens and the diplomatic houses yield to facades that are more residential and then his; it comes with a four-story white and brick face with an ebonized single door entry that opens to a narrow hallway. An iron staircase rises extravagantly above our heads. He opens his mailbox with a key from his pocket in a sort of coming-home routine that I couldn’t find more captivating.

A small elevator opens and we both step inside. He presses the third-floor button and the door shuts. He leans in for a kiss without looking up from his fingering of envelopes and letters in large envelopes likely too important to be folded. I can’t believe I’m here. The elevator stops and opens to a simple long corridor with doors spaced unevenly. His is the last one on the left, which he approaches with a key in hand and opens.