Page 30 of The White Octopus Hotel
Sometimes the end is also the beginning….
Wordlessly, Eve handed him the hat. Max set it back on the bar and gave her a close look, the neglected cigarette dangling between his fingers. “Tell me,” he said. “Did you have relatives here at the hotel? During the war, I mean? An aunt, perhaps?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t believe so.” She quickly reached for her drink, eager to give her hands something to do and her eyes something to focus on other than Max Everly. He was still staring at her in a strangely intense fashion.
“This seems an odd place for them to put the bar,” she said, keen to say something.
“How so?”
“It’s one of the only rooms with no windows at all. I would have thought they’d have chosen a room with a view of the lake.”
Max shrugged. “Sometimes in life you want champagne and sunshine, and at other times you want darkness and books. Or darkness and martinis, as the case may be.”
“Huh.”
They both looked up at this grunt from the barman.
“You disagree?” Max asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, sir. It’s only that my father used to say the same thing. Sometimes darkness is more comforting than sunlight.”
“Sensible fellow,” Max replied. He nodded at Eve’s cocktail. “Verdict?”
“It’s delicious,” Eve replied. It might not have been whiskey, but she relished the cold bite of the alcohol and the unusual taste of flowers and citrus.
He gave a small half smile. “It was invented by a friend of mine.”
“Oh? Back in London?”
Slowly he shook his head. “Hugo tended the bar at a hotel in New York. German fellow, but we won’t hold that against him since he fought on our side. We met in the trenches, actually.”
“Are you still in touch?” Eve asked.
“No.” Max exhaled a cloud of smoke. “He shot himself. A few years back.”
“Oh. I’m very sorry.” Eve felt that sense of frustration again. Her words were too bland, she might as well have been reading a script, yet what else was there to say? What else was there to do? There were so many ways that a life could go wrong.
Max shrugged. “The good times don’t last. That’s what Hugo always said. He was very proud of that cocktail, though—until prohibition came along, anyway, and he lost his job and then his wife died. There’s only so much misfortune one fellow can take. Perhaps if he’d never married, then he might have stood a chance.”
“You don’t think it better to have loved and lost and all that?”
“Certainly not. It opens you up to too much misery. And I don’t believe in marriage anyway. It isn’t logical.”
Eve wasn’t surprised to hear him say so. She knew of his reputation as a womaniser, had seen a different woman on his arm in almost every one of the old photos. He clearly had a type; they were always platinum blondes.
“I mean, you marry some woman,” he went on, “and you vow to honour and love her for the rest of your days, but she won’t stay thesame person and nor will you, so how can you possibly promise to love a person you haven’t yet met?”
“True enough,” Eve replied. “People do not remain the same.”
Personally, she agreed with his position. The only thing worse than what Max was describing was the alternative. Suppose two peopledidcontinue to love each other through the decades, that those feelings somehow survived over the years, only to creep ever closer to the moment when they must part ways forever? How could anyone survive such a thing? Far better to remain forever alone.
“Still,” Max said, “it always makes me happy to see an Aviation on the menu somewhere. And I know Hugo would have been especially glad to see a beautiful woman enjoying it.”
Eve almost—almost—felt beautiful in this incredible dress, with this lipstick, in this extraordinary place. But she knew that she wasn’t. Beautiful women were softer. Beautiful women smiled. They did not have blood on their hands. And they did not have octopuses drifting around their skin.
“I’m not beautiful,” she said, stating the fact bluntly.
Max glanced at her. “Perhaps not,” he acknowledged. “But you’re interesting. And that’s infinitely preferable.”
