Amberlough(26)

“You’re not thinking of heading back to your hotel?” He kept his voice low and watched Cyril from under thick eyebrows. “You’ve come all the way from the Islands and you’re just going to go to bed? I had you pegged as a bit of a playboy. ‘I try never to be at home’ and all that.”

“I’m still a little under the weather,” said Cyril, but he let it sound like he could be convinced. Berhooven he knew the least about, from Landseer’s correspondence.

The man jumped on his hesitancy. “Come on, you’ve got to let me show you a little Nuesklan hospitality. Nothing for a complaint of the throat like a little tipple.”

“Don’t let Ives lead you down a path of dissipation.” Sofie threaded her arms into her coat, held open by a footman, then cast an appraising glance down Cyril’s figure. “I’ve seen him lay stronger men low.”

“You’re afraid for my morals?”

“I’m afraid for your liver,” she said, and followed her mother out the door.

*

Berhooven’s car was surprisingly shabby, dinged in small collisions and left unrepaired. And he drove it himself, whereas the Keeler women both got into the back of a sleek blue affair with ebony running boards. Van der Joost stayed behind for cigars and, presumably, political talk, but there was a man waiting for him in the driver’s seat of a black car with a long bonnet.

“I thought we’d start at the top and work our way down,” said Berhooven. “Does that sound all right by you?”

Cyril assured Berhooven he would defer to a local’s judgment.

Their first stop was an upscale club decorated in tacky bucolic fashion. Farther down the cliffs they sat through a tame burlesque. Cyril tried to figure out if Berhooven was testing him, or truly thought that these were titillating venues.

He got his answer over thin, sour wine in an empty hotel bar. They sat by the window, looking over the boardwalk. Few people were out enjoying the seaside—the night had turned icy with sleet. Cyril was tired and bored, and had so far got nothing worth knowing out of Berhooven.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself,” said his host.

“My head,” said Cyril. “I don’t think drinking is helping my cold after all.”

But Berhooven caught him in his lie. “I think you’re just a hard man to impress,” he said. “It’s time we went around the bay.”

Cyril realized it had been a test, and his apathy had helped him pass. “Around the bay?” he asked.

“If you want real entertainment,” said Berhooven, putting down a few bills for their tally, “you’ve got to head down to the wharves. I hope you don’t mind beer in the evening.”

“I don’t mind beer at all,” said Cyril, “provided it’s good.”

“This is Nuesklend,” said Berhooven. “Bad beer is a hanging offense.”

*

On the other side of the bay, Cyril felt at home immediately. Here, among the low buildings and towering rock, people braved the slippery pavement. They scurried in between bars and restaurants, flashing warm light and sound into the street each time they opened a door. In anticipation of the election, blue-and-yellow bunting hung from second-story windows: the colors of the regionalist party.

“Up on the cliffs it’s all industrialists,” said Berhooven, shouting over the roar of wind-driven surf. “A lot of them Ospies, like our friends at dinner.”

“But not like you?” Cyril followed him as he ducked into an alley. A door was propped open onto the narrow cobbled walkway, and Berhooven waved him inside. The crowd forced them to maneuver slowly.

“Oh,” said Berhooven, guiding Cyril to a table, “I move with the tide. And I could use a tax break or two. You saw the state of my poor buggy. Here, you first. Mind your step—the floor’s wet.” They slid into a booth, under an orange-paned lantern on a looped gold chain. The shallow arch of the ceiling was painted deep blue, spangled with mirrored tiles to imitate stars. Heat rose from the mass of bodies and warmed the room. On a low stage, a duo of accordion and double-reeded pipe wailed away at a syncopated reel. Smoke hung in a ragged veil over the heads of patrons and dancers.

“Put up your feet,” said Berhooven. “I’ll see about drinks.”

The band brought their reel to a staggering, stuttering, breakneck finale, and the dancers applauded. In the general rush for the bar, Cyril lost Berhooven. Scanning the press, he saw sailors from Liso, Hyrosia, and coastal Enselem. Three young women in Nuesklan police cadet uniforms drank in the corner, seemingly oblivious to the gaggle of prostitutes cruising the establishment. Cyril wondered if they knew yet, these laughing girls so smart in their jodhpurs and epaulets, that their force was on the Ospie payroll.

A flash of green drew his attention to the bandstand, where the piper and accordionist were arranging their instruments for the set break. A woman in a black dress and a green silk bolero had just brought them each a tall glass of cloudy beer. A familiar woman, with hair the color of buckwheat honey.

Sofie handed one glass to the piper, a willowy young man in a patchwork jacket. She kissed him, and Cyril smiled at what Sofie’s mother would no doubt consider an unsuitable attachment. Then, the accordionist set aside her squeezebox and opened her arms. Sofie sat on the woman’s broad lap and kissed her too, barely saving her beer from a spill.