Page 29 of The White Octopus Hotel
“Please be so good as to remove yourself,” he said tersely. “No decent woman would wish to be present at this hour.”
But I am no decent woman,Eve thought.Can’t you tell? My sins would make you shudder.
The octopus tattoo on her thigh burned as the tentacles stretched down towards her ankle, like a muscle suddenly flexing.
“All guests are welcome at the Palm Bar, sir,” Luca replied politely. “Nikolas Roth insisted on it.”
The man looked affronted and there were grumbling noises from the other guests too. “What? What? What kind of place is this? One simply cannot have unescorted females wandering in.”
“May I ask why not?” Luca asked.
“Don’t you cheek me, boy! You know perfectly well why not. It’s not proper! It despoils the barroom atmosphere. It—”
“The only person despoiling the atmosphere at the moment isyourself, old fellow,” someone said from the bar. “Please be so good as to stop talking. I’ll gladly escort the lady if it will put a stop to your jabbering.”
Eve turned around and noticed for the first time that Max Everly sat on a bar stool. One elbow rested on the bar beside his fedora and he was looking at Eve with a glint of amusement in his dark eyes. But as she met his gaze, the look vanished, to be replaced with one of absolute shock, before he gave a slight shake of his head, and his expression became neutral once again.
“Well, how about it, miss?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “I can recommend the Aviation.”
Eve nodded, even though she would have preferred a neat whiskey. “Why not? I haven’t tried one before.”
“I won’t stay,” the older man announced. “Not under these circumstances. Not for anyone.”
He heaved himself up from his chair and the other men at his table did the same. One by one, all the male guests got up and walked out the door. Nobody tried to stop them. Max Everly reached forwards to pull out a bar stool for Eve. She could hardly believe it as she sat down beside him. He reallywas right there,the man whose music had meant so much to her over the years.
He glanced at her as she took her seat. “So,” he said conversationally. “Are you real?”
“Excuse me?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. I apologise. It’s only that I get faces muddled up sometimes. Have done ever since the war. You remind me of someone I used to know. Have we met?”
Yes,Eve wanted to say.I have known you for years….
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But I was hoping to meet you properly, Mr. Everly.”
“Ah.” He looked suddenly dubious. “Now, don’t tell me. I insulted a friend of yours at a party, or I owe money to your brother, or I made an improper suggestion to your—”
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “I only wanted to say that I love your music.”
The words were inadequate, feeble, and she felt a wave of frustration at herself for wasting this opportunity, for being so vanilla and ordinary and dull, when she was really none of those things. All of a sudden, she hoped that her octopus would take this moment to appear, to move its tentacles over her skin in a lazy caress—something she had never wished for before in her life. Normally, she was at pains to blend in, but she desperately wanted to stand out to Max Everly. In front of him, she wanted to be nothing more or less than who she truly was.
He reached into his inner jacket pocket and brought out a box of Player’s cigarettes. “You’re too kind.”
“I owe you a thanks as well,” she pushed on, trying again. “Your music got me through a…difficult time.”
Max gestured with the cigarettes. “Do you object?”
She shook her head. He took one from the box, lit the end, and took a drag. “Music will do that,” he said, breathing out smoke. He reached into the box to slip out the cigarette card. Eve saw that it was Zorah from the Gilbert and Sullivan collection. Max regarded it for a moment before slipping it into his shirt pocket. She longed for a smoke herself and realised she should have packed more cigarettes.
She couldn’t prevent her eyes from straying to his fedora, right there on the bar beside her. Her fingers burned to snatch it up and turn it over to inspect the label inside. Would it have those monogrammed initials with the musical note? Could it be possible?
“Your Aviation, madam.”
The bartender—a tall, muscular man in his late thirties, whose name badge readHarry—set a lilac-coloured drink in front of her in a martini glass frosted with ice. It was garnished with a brandied cherry so dark it was almost black. A scent of sharp lemon and Parma violets floated up from the glass. As Eve reached for thedrink, she deliberately wobbled slightly on her stool so that her elbow knocked Max’s hat to the floor.
“Sorry,” she said, quickly hopping down to retrieve the hat before Max could do so.
She scooped it up and flipped it over and there it was, the label she knew well—a monogrammedMandE,along with a single musical note. Her whole body tingled as she stared down at it. It was the same hat that she currently had in her wardrobe in her flat at home—the very same one. She recalled the moment when the elderly man had shuffled in, the flash of recognition in his eyes when he looked at her, the way his hand had tightened around hers. He’d recognised her because they had already met many decades before, in the White Octopus Hotel.
