Hotel Living Read Online Free Page B

and you’re to blame for that . . . What are you doing next weekend? Wanna hang out in London? E.”
    ENDLESS DAYS LATER, I WALKED into a shabby neighborhood pub on Earls Court, dragging my carry-on. A couple of old-timersturned to give me a glance. Erik, against the bar, in an M79 army vest, was working on a pint and talking to the bartender. They looked deep in the middle of a joke.
    â€œHey! My man!” Erik threw his arm around my neck and eyebrowed my suitcase’s high-tech wheels. “Nice bag.”
    â€œGood to see you,” I said. “I’d have dropped my bag off if I had a hotel addy, but—” I smiled at his jacket—“it looks you were busy enlisting.”
    â€œEnough!” Erik made a cease-fire face. “This is my Greek mate, Stathis,” he said to the bartender. “This is Ian,” he said to me.
    Ian reached for a glass from the bar’s ceiling. The tattoo crawling up his arm looked like Jesus on the cross in a Manchester United outfit, or Madonna at a concert. “You’re Greek, malaka ?” Ian asked.
    â€œBorn and raised,” I said.
    â€œMy first wife was Greek.” He pushed a London Pride to me. “She liked spanakorizo and Telly Savalas.”
    â€œWho loves ya, baby?” I tried, but it came out more Greek than New York Kojak.
    Ian pointed at our pints. “The house,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
    â€œDon’t get too cocky,” Erik warned me. “He told me his second wife’s from Boston.”
    â€œSo he moved up in life.”
    Erik managed a grin. “Plus, we’re staying at his place.”
    What? “Come again?” I said.
    â€œHe has rooms upstairs for thirty pounds,” Erik said casually.
    I had to restrain myself from looking around. Ian’s pub was falling apart faster than Montmelian. “I’m in school debt and all, but, er, we have a bathroom, right?”
    â€œOf course. There’s a bathroom on our floor,” Erik said, studying his pint.
    Right, what was I thinking. “I spent two summers in a Greek camp. E. coli’s a friend.” I lifted my pint.
    â€œCheers, mate!” Erik faked an English accent. “I thought we better see the room after a drink.”
    â€œOr a few,” I murmured.
    â€œMore fun getting naked drunk anyway,” Erik said, his face unchanged. He didn’t glance at me to check for a reaction; he took sex for granted.
    â€œMaybe we stay that way. Be on the safe side,” I double dared.
    â€œDrunk or naked?”
    â€œI’m Greek. What’s the difference?”
    He smiled. “It’s my birthday. Will you suck my dick?”
    Prick. “Need ID for that one.”
    FOUR PINTS, SIX SHOTS, AND two fucks later, we were lying naked at opposite ends of a smaller-than-double bed, needing a shower and a new set of sheets. All through the evening we could hear footsteps and coughing from our floor. Given the time they took to get from the elevator to their room, our neighbors had to be in their eighties, or obese.
    As I came later for a third time, growling, I heard a walker being dragged outside our door. Erik put his hand over my mouth, an act that somehow tamed him, while in the hallway outside I heard fragile hinges clap. When they had gone, Erik went to use the bathroom down the hall, buck naked, without shoes, which threw my tame-Erik hypothesis out the window. I walked there only to see how flooded it was and U-turned back to our room, hoping I wouldn’t have to use the bathroom for the rest of the weekend. I pissed in empty beer bottles in our room, something that Erik found hilarious and competitive. He tried it, but without my precision.
    â€œIt’s a skill I got from driving around Pelio, in Greece,” I said. “I can actually do it without stopping the car.”
    â€œLiar!”
    â€œIf I stopped for more than twenty seconds, the relanti would