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Chapter 21

MAKSIM

Room 101

Ihad rehearsed several speeches.

I want that recorded, for the sake of my dignity, and for the sake of those who come after me and are also fools. On the walk from the guest house, and again in the lobby of the Ambassador, and once more while standing at the window of Room 101 with my hands clasped behind my back, I had prepared the following: an apology, a brief and reasoned account of my conduct at the media event, and a short statement of my intentions, clear and unsentimental, containing no more than four sentences.

He walked through the door, and I forgot all of it.

He stood on the threshold in a black shirt with the top two buttons undone. His hair was a mess from dancing. His cheeks were flushed, his mouth a little swollen where he had been biting it, and at the hollow of his throat, on its fine pale chain, lay a garnet the color of my mother’s wine.

He was wearing it.

I had not known, until that moment, how much I had feared he would not.

“Hi,” said Lex.

“Hello.”

“That was a lot of stairs.”

“There is a lift.”

“I don’t trust the lift.”

“That is wise. It is Swiss and unhappy.” I heard my own voice, unsteady and ridiculous. “Come in. Please. Close the door.”

He closed it. He leaned on it, as he had leaned on the door of 214, and we looked at each other across a room that held a bed, a lamp, a chair, a window, and about a thousand unsaid things.

“So,” he said. “Room 101.”

“I took it for the night. I asked for the top floor. There was none. This is the last on the second.”

“Very romantic.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got, like, a Dickens novel going on in here.”

“It is a hotel,” I said with dignity. “Not a novel.”

He laughed. It was unsteady. His eyes were very bright. He stared at the floor and then up at me, and I saw him gather himself, the way he does before a fight.

“Who was she?” I asked, before I could stop myself.

His head jerked up.

“The woman. On the dance floor. In the pink.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Her name’s Bree. She’s marrying a guy who owns a Subway. She’s got a tiara.”

“I see.”

“You’re asking me who she was.”

“Yes.”