An overnight with an escort does not lend itself to practical advice, so we have handed the pen to an imaginary man, in Vienna for a long night in the company of a high class escort. His account runs from the first glass to the last button, well past noon.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.John Donne, "The Sun Rising"
A warm hand was climbing from the small of my back to the nape of my neck. I did not yet know whether it belonged to the dream or to the day. The evening before, at eight o'clock, I was waiting in the hotel bar.
"The Viennese way"
It had been raining on the Ring since lunch, a fine rain that could not make up its mind. The pianist was playing waltzes nobody listened to. I was early, for once. I saw her before she saw me. She was crossing the bar without hurry, a pale coat over her arm, her hair loose and beaded with a few drops. At the counter, someone forgot to finish his sentence. A scent of rain sat down opposite me. It hid another, softer, a note of fig that owed nothing to the weather.
She greeted me with one cheek, then the other, then the first again. "The Viennese way," she said. I learnt later that in Vienna one kisses twice. The third was her own invention. My guest took a sip from my glass, nodded, and ordered one of her own, in a German whose accent I could not place. The next glass was only an excuse to watch her drink. The lines I had rehearsed in the lift stayed in my pocket.
Three days earlier, from an airport lounge, I had written the agency a clumsy note about the evening I hoped for. They had answered with two first names. I had chosen hers on the strength of a photograph that showed nothing but a bare shoulder and the nape of a neck beneath loose hair. The shoulder was there, and the nape. No photograph had promised me the voice, slightly husky, holding back a laugh.
Her name was Livia, at least for me. I never wished for another.
"Who taught you to love music?"
The restaurant was a few streets away. Walking was her idea, under an umbrella made for one. Her cold fingers found the pocket of my coat, where mine were waiting. A Fiaker overtook us at a trot on the cobbles. We both jumped. Her laugh kept me warm for the rest of the walk.
The wine was from the Wachau, a Grüner Veltliner from a village whose slopes she knew. I approved her choice, knowing nothing of wine. Her appetite pleased me. The way she watched me eat pleased me more. We had got as far as Mahler, with perfect gravity, when she set down her fork. "Who taught you to love music?" I told her about my father, who played the piano on Sundays behind a closed door, forbidden even to his children. She listened to the end, then stole a forkful from my plate, while her knee found mine under the tablecloth.
Over dessert she leaned across to ask whether my room had a bath. We came out into washed air, onto cobbles that shone. The bells of St Stephen's struck the hour. She squeezed my arm at every stroke, eleven times.
"The buttons are at the back"
The lift had a mirror. For four floors I watched a couple of strangers in it, a man too still in his coat, a woman smiling at the mirror rather than at him. Upstairs, I put the envelope by the lamp, as the agency had advised. Nobody mentioned it. She ran the bath on her way past, then crossed to the window, drew one curtain aside to uncover the wet roofs, and waited with her face to the glass. "The buttons are at the back." There were a great many. I would not have wished for fewer. With each one her skin grew warmer. Halfway down, I heard her breathing change.
"The water's lovely, come in"
The bath was large enough to get lost in. Livia went in first, hairpins between her teeth while she put up her hair. The steam had fogged the mirror before I could find us in it. "The water's lovely, come in." I came in. She leaned into me, the water at her shoulders, a stray curl on my cheek. She found my wrist, guided it under the surface, and left it there. I remember the bath overflowing, and having to hush each other, a palm over the mouth, so that the neighbours would not hear.
Of what followed, I will say only what a man may admit without betraying her. The sheet dragged to the floor, the light we never switched off, the taste of salt where her neck began, and my name, said twice under her breath, as if to learn it.
"Not a word"
I had asked for champagne to be sent up. The waiter knocked so softly I thought I had dreamt it. When I opened the door the corridor was empty and the ice bucket was waiting on a side table. We drank sitting on the carpet, leaning against the bed, in the hotel's dressing gowns, her legs across mine.
Livia told me of a town by the sea, a dog that ate the figs fallen from the tree and staggered in the sun afterwards, a book she reread every winter. None of it would have helped me find her. All of it made me want to. I was about to ask the name of the town. A finger, still cold from the glass, settled on my lips before the question. "Not a word." I said nothing.
She got up to open the curtains wide. It was raining again, and Vienna glistened. The black pane, above the roofs, gave me back the whole room, the lamp, the unmade bed, the dressing gown sliding from her shoulders. Then the lamp went out. In the pane, only the city remained.
Afterwards everything was slower, and gentler, with no light but what the street lent us. The rain stopped at some point. I did not hear it end.
"One, two, three"
As a rule I sleep badly beside someone I have known since the first drink. That night I went under at once, my face in her hair, where the fig had survived the bath.
I dreamt of a ball in a palace on the Ring. Everyone wore a mask, she among them, and I knew her by her scent. We waltzed. At every turn the room grew smaller and darker, and her dress weighed less under my hand. Her face could wait for the day. At the last turn the music stopped, and her hand between my shoulders went on keeping time by itself, one, two, three.
"Good morning"
It was that hand I felt climbing from the small of my back to the nape of my neck. The waltz fell silent. The hand stayed. Daylight was pouring through the open curtains, a sheet had slid to the floor, a mouth was lingering behind my ear.
I turned over. She was smiling. "Good morning," she murmured, without opening her eyes. I gave the palace, the masks, the waltz back to the dream. I kept the bar, the rain, the buttons, the black pane. The morning took up the night where we had left it.
"They invented the croissant here, you know"
Breakfast arrived at ten, on a tray Livia insisted should sit between us on the bed. There was coffee with its cap of foam, very cold butter, apricot jam and kipferl still warm from the oven. The croissant, she maintained, was born here, in the bakehouse of a man who had celebrated the end of a siege by shaping his dough into the Ottoman crescent. She did not believe a word of it, but told it beautifully, sitting cross-legged, a crumb at the corner of her mouth. I took it with mine.
She stole the jam from my kipferl, her eyes never leaving mine. Crumbs found their way into the sheets. We left them there. The sun had returned to the rooftops opposite. Neither of us spoke of leaving.
"I can stay a little longer"
Around eleven I rang reception to keep the room until evening. Livia listened, her cheek on my shoulder. At noon her phone buzzed on the bedside table. She read, wrote three words, turned it face down on the wood, and looked at me. "I can stay a little longer. Would you like that?" I would.
There was a second bath, shorter, in which she did not trouble to put up her hair. There was a real waltz, barefoot on the carpet, in dressing gowns, her cheek against mine. She did not need to ask whether I could dance. The Sunday piano, the closed door, nothing had escaped her. Her voice kept the count for me, one, two, three. The turns slowed until they were no longer turns, and I cannot say at what point the bed reclaimed us. Then the dress reclaimed her. I did the buttons up myself, one by one, tasting the skin I was about to cover. It took far longer than the undoing had.
At the door she kissed me the way you kiss someone you will see again. The lift chimed. Without her, the corridor became a corridor again. For the rest of the day I left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and the bed as it was. The smell of rain and fig still hung about it.
Livia is imaginary. Nights of this kind are not.
It takes one message for a woman, some evening soon, to cross your hotel bar without hurry and sit down opposite you. Tell us which Feline draws you, or simply the evening you have in mind, say where you will sleep, and keep your morning free.
