The Way It Breaks Page 6

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  What did Aristos Ioannidou know about his mother that nobody else had known? When had they spoken? He’d used words not typically associated with Orestis’ mother: knowledgeable. Interesting. Polite. Yet all Orestis could think was that she and the hotel owner must have known each other because, as his real family always said, the woman was a whore.

  Eight

  Just after New Year’s, one of the night-shifters had to take emergency leave. Elias’ brother had been killed in a crash with one of their cousins off the highway. It so happened that Orestis had seen Elias earlier that day, in the changeover from the late to early shifts, and felt an inexplicable shiver. By that point, the brother’s corpse had already been collected by an ambulance, his motorbike a crumpled scrap on the side of the road. Elias had been none the wiser.

  The hotel had responded with generous compassion, allowing the bereaved all the time off he required. For now, there was the issue of cover, which had to start at once. There was no shortage of daytime staff, but the dark hours required only two receptionists at a time, and the part-timers were unavailable. Orestis stepped forward, which made Yiorgos, both surprised and not, slap his shoulder in thanks. ‘That’s it, son,’ he said. Svetlana leant in to whisper, ‘I’m so happy it’s not me,’ and squeezed his arm. ‘Tomorrow I buy you tashinopita.’

  Yiorgos spoke with Thanos, who was equally relieved. They sent Orestis home to nap, and to return at ten pm. The other receptionist would talk him through the night routine, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. No surprises.

  Orestis rode home on a wave of euphoria. The sky held a promise, he could feel it. Yiorgos and Thanos liked him, valued him. He reached for the radio dials in celebration, then stopped himself. A man had died. Instead of music, he listened only to the noise of traffic, the rustle of the wind in the opened windows. It was nothing, he told himself, he was only being superstitious, but not a single red light stopped him on the way.

  By ten pm he was back at the Harmonia, exhausted, having failed to sleep a single minute. Not only was there his father’s constant clanking in the garage, and his loud politics with Andros and Andrikos, and the neighbours’ TV blaring from their veranda, but there was also the drumming in Orestis’ body. Lying in bed, shutters drawn with only pinpricks of sunlight dotting the room, he’d felt intensely aware of himself. A vague sense of power had consumed him. Muscles expanding in his biceps. A firmness in his thighs and pecs. There was still some way to go, but he’d felt, for the first time in a long while, attractive. He shut his eyes, to lie alone in his dark private cinema. Images came on the screen, and among them was Thanos. That well-dressed physique. The crisp shirt. The fitted trousers.

  These weren’t the thoughts of normal men. But they had kept him from sleeping, the idiot.

  The second night-shifter was a guy called Dino, one of those international-school kids whose English was better than his Greek. As usual with his type, their chit-chat ended up Greenglish. They’d seen each other on the crossover, but never really spoken. Shame, Orestis was drawn to him. Here was this lean, sun-deprived character who slumped and slunk about, at odds with the hotel’s image. He seemed more out of place in the hotel than Orestis had ever felt. But what Dino lacked in presentation he made up for with charisma. Guests, whether back from a long day or on their way out for the night, greeted him as if he was a friend. He recalled names, no need to fake it, prior requests, itineraries. Some of them asked after Elias and were saddened by his absence. ‘Family emergency,’ Dino explained. Assuaged, the guests moved on.

  ‘Elias and I were a bit of a double-act,’ he said to Orestis in English, which Orestis didn’t quite understand but accepted with a nod all the same.

  When activity in the lobby slowed, Dino talked him through the ‘super-late’ shift, a phrase he pronounced in exaggerated Cypriot-accented English which made Orestis laugh.

  A little after midnight, a middle-aged man with ruffled hair scrambled to the Front Desk to ask if they had condoms. Dino put his hand on Orestis’ shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ he said in Greek, ‘just go to the petrol station down the road.’

  The guest slapped a twenty-euro note in Orestis’ hand. ‘Neither of you has a condom in his pocket? I only need one, for God’s sake.’

  Dino shrugged. ‘We’re not allowed to get that intimate with guests.’

  The man squinted at him as if reading a number plate from afar.

  Out in the light of street-lamps, Orestis made his way through clusters of tourists, joggers and screaming teens to the Petrolina not two hundred metres away. The only packs of condoms he could see hung behind the counter, photos of women baring their tits, leaning on trees or reclining on sand dunes. He requested a pack through a ludicrous display of non-verbal indicating. But what did discretion matter, he told himself as he handed over the twenty, the cashier winking him a good night, when there was nothing discreet about any of this? He power-walked back to the hotel, the plastic carrier bag wrapped tightly in his fist.

  The guest snatched the condoms from his hand. His brow creased at the packaging. ‘Oh, leave the change,’ he said with a distracted air and headed for the lifts, still gawking at the condoms.

  ‘What do I do with this?’ Orestis asked Dino, showing the change in his palm.

  ‘What do you mean? Keep it.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  Dino laughed.

  The next hour gave way to all the things that occupied them during the day shifts. Couples calling from their rooms to slur requests for extra wine, kids trying pranks. The late hour made them even more annoying.

  Out of nowhere, sitting on a sofa beneath the chandelier, was a man in a smart suit. Same age as Orestis, give or take a year. Handsome, with his curve of waxed hair, all shades of brown like layers of rock. Bright green eyes, deep tan. It was the latter that clicked a switch: the swimmer. The man Orestis had watched on his breaks, but here in the lobby at night instead of in the sea at noon. The sight of clothes on his body was more of a shock than the sight of him at all. That suit – tailored, tastefully neutral – would’ve cost Orestis’ monthly wage. Had he been a guest all this time? Impossible. He’d been at that beach, doing laps and sunbathing, for months. There was something Middle-Eastern about him; those startling eyes, those long fingers. Maybe Turk. Syrian or Lebanese. One of those Arab playboys you heard about. He could wear out money like the sun could skin.

  A woman in her forties joined him on the sofa. Their exchange looked friendly enough, if a little hesitant on her part. Barely a couple of minutes had passed before she and the swimmer got up and moved towards the doors, then out towards the swimming pool.

  ‘Wait for the best part,’ Dino said.

  Orestis’ heart leapt. He’d been caught. But everyone else was free to stare, so why not him too? He played it cool: ‘Why? What’s going on?’

  ‘For now, they’re having a chat. But in a moment she’ll give him her room number. Then she’ll come back inside on her own and go up to her suite. A few minutes later he’ll also come back in, then he’ll go to the lift and join her upstairs. And he won’t be asking us for condoms.’

  Dino was grinning.

  Did Thanos know about this?

  The night-shifter laughed, startling as a popped balloon. ‘Re! You look terrified.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Orestis realised he had stammered.

  ‘You’ve gone white like an Englishman.’ Dino’s inflexion made the comment ironic.

  ‘I just wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t think Thanos would allow this sort of wankery.’

  There was a silence, in which Dino’s face darkened. ‘Oh, is that what you thought?’ he said, still smiling, but with the same knotted brow and gravel voice of Orestis’ father when there were Communists on TV.

  For a while there was barely any talk, the night shift punctuated only by Dino’s mouse-clicks as he browsed the Internet for trainers.

  Outside it was cool, but not cool enough to send him back t
o the uninspiring staffroom. Figuring the beach would be too dark, Orestis sat by the pool to eat his dinner. With no tourists or sunlight, the water was odd, a mere vacancy. He rubbed his eyes: two am. He shouldn’t have sat down; how would he ever stand up again? Sandwiches were a bad idea, too. Costlier than pasta and twice as stodgy. He grabbed his bloated stomach, sickened himself with it, then tossed the rest of his dinner in a bin and vowed to quit bread. A dreadful habit, encouraged by his father and, God rest her soul, his grandma.

  No, forget God. Let Him die with her. The old girl was sunk in the earth, alone. Both her corpse and coffin were decomposing to nothingness. Tendons and fibres were melting away. For forty days after her death, her soul had wandered along the beach, searching for the peace that had been denied her. A liberated Cyprus, a reunited homeland; even that dream was buried and vanishing with her.

  That woman in the lobby, with the swimmer – was she unfulfilled? Or was that giving her too much sympathy? Was there a cuckold somewhere, maybe even in a different suite? Or waiting in bed for her and the swimmer? These things happened, he’d seen them in porn. Or was she on the shelf, a lost cause in the middle of her life with an appetite for nameless flesh? All that kinkiness bubbling under. The nerve of her, whoring herself out in this five-star hotel.

  For a moment, Orestis cast himself in the swimmer’s life. Exchanges in the lobby, seductions on the veranda. Following a client in the next lift, to an unfamiliar room; taking off a stranger’s clothes; feeling a foreign touch. A fleeting, expensive liaison.

  The water licked at the pool tiles. How unreal it looked. How exhilarating it would be to take off his clothes and fall into it. Someone might come outside, catch him in the act. A colleague. A stranger.

  A moth beat its wings against a light. Orestis focused on it to lose his hardon. What a tool, sucked into a fantasy that was foolish and dangerous and wrong. Regardless, it wouldn’t let him go. He’d spend the rest of the night with Dino at the Front Desk imagining goings-on in rooms on floors above them, those high-up suites where the curtains were thick and the bedsheets soft as foam. Where the remnants of the night were cleared away by young East Asian chambermaids with fantasies of their own; whose job it was to enable this loud silence.

  The transaction in the lobby had been a blessing. Before his break, Orestis couldn’t fathom how he’d last the rest of the night shift, but now his mind was spinning, his eyes wide open. A whole new side of the Harmonia had been exposed, as if Dino had unlocked a secret wing of infinite rooms.

  He could never speak of this to his father, the old man would never shut up about it. He’d call the whole thing vile, un-Christian. Something a Greek might indulge in, maybe, but never a Cypriot. This was the sort of thing that was spoiling the island, this debauchery. These foreigners with their modern ideas, their affairs and scandals and ménages a trois, soiling the beaches where St Paul himself once walked. Orestis tried to agree with that voice, to feel revulsion or at least conflict.

  As the end of the shift came into view he kept an eye on the lobby.

  ‘Is he back yet?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ said Dino, turning from the screen.

  ‘Nothing.’

  The swimmer must have left while they were occupied, if not during Orestis’ break. Not that it mattered; what further details could he draw from wrinkles on a shirt or lipstick on a neck? Future nights rolled ahead of him, a corridor of mirrors teasing glimpses of another life. Patience. He would learn more in time. He would see the swimmer, if not the swimmer’s client, again.

  When the early-morning crew strolled in slurping Chinos, Orestis realised the night shift was over. It was bright outside, he was wide awake. ‘Go home,’ Svetlana said, beaming. ‘Go away; don’t come back.’

  He laughed, but then she clarified: ‘Thanos say you go home now and tomorrow you do morning shift. They get someone from agency to cover until Elias comes back.’

  Orestis’ heart fell.

  ‘Goodnight!’ said Svetlana in Greek. ‘Bye!’

  But Orestis couldn’t move. ‘I don’t have to do it again?’

  ‘No, thanks to God!’

  ‘You wanker,’ Dino said with a grin and squeezed his shoulder. ‘God’s looking out for you.’

  Orestis’ stomach growled. He went to get his bag from the staffroom and headed out, waving back at Svetlana as he passed through the revolving doors. Outside the hotel, he looked about him: the car park and shrubbery, jasmine and hibiscus. Something told him not to go, not yet. He turned to walk back into the hotel, greeting his colleagues again. ‘I need to eat,’ he said with a shrug, only half-pretending. He waltzed to the café on the terrace and ordered a subsidised coffee with an apricot danish. The Filipino at the counter smiled at him and dismissed his money. ‘Next time,’ she said. Thank God. He spent the next few minutes sitting on his own and staring out at the sparkling sea below, the handful of morning swimmers. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt such intense freedom. That all could stop right then, with no expectation of more. Even the guilt of eating pastry, now that he was meant to be dieting, fluttered away. He was a vital being, a man of flesh and want.

  Having finished his breakfast, he left the building a second time. But now, in the car park, the baked seat of his Honda warming him, his hand lingered on the key in the ignition. If the swimmer stepped out of the hotel before Orestis set off, everything would be fine.

  He turned the key. The car started up. He released the handbrake, got into gear, checked his mirrors, indicated. He headed out, no-one stepping through the hotel’s doors. And soon his car was on the main road, pulling him away from the Harmonia.

  Nine

  The hotel was a hub for parties. More often than not these were birthday dos for international-school kids, jelly, gateau and American pop, hosted by stay-at-home mums with husbands abroad. But there were also engagement parties, retirement parties, company functions, christenings, Christmas soirées, fundraisers, end-of-school balls; every branch on the tree of life cultivated by the Events team. Prices are up, customers are down, his uncle had said on repeat as if money was an endangered species hunted by Angela Merkel. But the Harmonia proved money was alive and breeding. Quality and expense begot their equals.

  For the most part, Orestis’ shifts would end before a party was in full swing, splitting him in three: one part was nostalgic for childhood birthdays. Another felt the hollowness of missing out. Both were trumped by the third, the relief of having nothing to do with it. No serving brats, no responsibility for drunkards, no duty to clean up after anyone.

  But during the hours where his shift overlapped with an event, he would scan the lobby. He’d patrol the quieter corridors, check the corners between windows and potted plants. Svetlana noticed his distraction and had her fun. ‘Dreaming of naked ladies?’ she would say, or, ‘What’s wrong? You sad you don’t get cake?’ He would laugh out of politeness, but he resented being spied on. And every day he would sit at the beach, waiting.

  The sightings were unexpected. The swimmer would appear at the entrance mid-morning, ready to escort a woman to a waiting tourist coach outside. Or he’d be sitting on a stool at the pool bar, face darkened by the shadows of palm fronds. On the last of their encounters, Orestis thought he caught a knowing look in the swimmer’s eyes.

  For the first time at the Harmonia, the days dragged. Request and response, greeting and platitude. Daily routine became a flavourless puree. That single night shift was as distant as the oil tankers on the horizon. During silent dinners with his father, Orestis’ mind would drift from the sitcoms on-screen to card-keys and blackout curtains in his head, coach trips and shopping sprees.

  Then, a Russian billionaire acquainted with Mr Ioannidou booked the ballroom for his sixtieth birthday. There was the usual whirlwind of planning. The Russian’s wife, a Frenchwoman, became a daily headache for the team, switching decisions on linen, cutlery and menu. One minute she wanted balloons, the next not. Balloons made a comeback, but the colo
ur palette changed. She demanded musicians who were already booked elsewhere. She wanted the cake flown in from Paris. Orestis heard all about it from an increasingly pale colleague. At last, the party was in sight. Yuri and Svetlana gave impromptu Russian lessons. Eagle-eyes unblinking, Mr Ioannidou greeted every employee to congratulate them in advance for a job well done.

  ‘I will speak with him,’ Svetlana said to Orestis, ‘so that he will fall in love with me and I become Mrs Ioannidou. Then I will have house in Ayios Athanassis with swimming pool.’

  ‘Then you will adopt me,’ Yiorgos said, making her explode with laughter.

  Orestis was due to leave before the guests arrived. It only made sense to have the Russian speakers on this shift. But there was a feeling in his gut, a reluctance to leave. A face and body made of angles approached the desk. Shoulders like a coat hanger, thin blonde hair down to her waist, she set her Oakleys down on the counter. She introduced herself as the cellist, while a cab driver staggered in beneath a huge black case. The woman had expressive hands, careful posture, direct speech. She caught Orestis looking and, cheeks flushing, he turned his eyes to the PC.

  He brought up her reservation and handed her the room key. She hesitated before she spoke. ‘There is a parcel coming for me,’ she said. ‘It was confiscated at the airport, but my sister is sending it by courier.’

  ‘We will bring it to your room,’ he replied.

  ‘But she forgot what hotel I was staying in,’ the woman went on, voice raised. ‘She sent it to the wrong hotel.’

  The one she named was a smaller place, not far along the seafront. Orestis assured her he would sort it out. The cellist only stared. She read his name badge and his collar, the cuffs of his shirt, his watch.

  Then she raised her eyes to his. ‘You will bring it yourself?’

  For a second he forgot the word. ‘Yes.’