Toby Pickett

strangers in the night

Strangers in the Night I. Bitter Limes I down three lemon lime bitters and two gin and tonics while I wait for Dad and I’m looking at a massive plasma TV in the lobby that’s playing images of a bombed-out town somewhere, and then it turns to an add and there’s blonde and tanned girls in bikinis in Palm Beach and there’s a slogan, flashing in letters that are red, looking like finger-drawn blood dripping, saying Are you happy? Are you good? as if that’s the same thing, and I adjust the cigarette dangling from my lips, across the lobby of the Four Seasons, a pianist playing Candle in the Wind and below an enormous picture of Goya’s Yard with Lunatics and Dad sighs, strokes his blonde hair, his skin is an orange tan, and he asks about the usual things, passes over a silver box that has a watch in it, the metallic shine blinds me, and I nod, as he goes to the restroom, leaving his Oxford suit jacket resting on the chair and I overhear an old man, his skin stricken with lines, talking about how it’s a ‘crazy world out there’ and I gaze at the windows, snow beginning to fall, and I’m about to leave, drain a final glass and head back to the flat, for Dad to find my empty chair, the muffle of lost conversations floating through the hall of the hotel, but an envelope drops to my lap, yellow and stained, and I slip my hand beneath its papery cover, revealing a cheque of dollars, twenty thousand of them, and that’s when the night turns.