Little Caesar Read Online Free Page B

carving mysterious symbols in the air or, with a bit of fantasy on the viewer’s part, conducting an orchestra of invisible mice.
    Alburgh had also gained a certain fame for the large number of hardwood benches in its public spaces. They were everywhere, along the esplanade, by the golf course, beside the pub; simple benches donated by survivors for the public good. The backrests bore inscriptions showing to whose memory the bench was dedicated.
    My loving husband, he loved Alburgh deeply.
    In view of sea and sail.
    To all those here, nipping at their pints. Think of Tom.
    Ginger Tooke, a spry little woman, had once given guided tours past the benches; she knew the stories behind many of the inscriptions. For all I knew, Ginger Tooke herself might meanwhile have passed on to her next incarnation as a hardwood bench along the esplanade.
    I had to get back to the hotel for my afternoon shift. Linny and I walked into the place like excited children. I ran upstairs to iron a shirt. On my voicemail I found another message from my former employer. The poison was not yet out of his stinger.
    ‘Ludwig? This is Peter. Hope you still remember me. You’ll never play here again. I sent a fax to the whole hotel chain. And, oh yeah, I’ve filed a claim against you. Violation of contract. I know what you’re thinking, but an oral agreement counts too. In court. You’ll hear more about it. Asshole.’
    I opened another little text folder. Mi amor. Where are you? I don’t deserve this. F.
    I had no idea who F. was. My telephone didn’t recognize her number. I thought about the Spanish salutation, but that didn’t really say anything: the language of love is a confusion of tongues. I deleted the message. The battery still showed one little stripe of energy.

    There were a few guests in the lounge, sitting in orange easy chairs and reading thrillers and newspapers. Two waiters had rolled the piano into the room. Linny Wallace was squatting down beside the stone hearth, poking up the glowing heart of the fire. The head waiter, a mere boy, was staring attentively at her ass. He was the liaison between bar and lounge. Children were playing on the olive-green carpet. I sat down at the piano and leafed through the bundle of sheet music. When I flagged him down, the waiter came over to me with a rather wobbly gait.
    ‘Could you bring me a daiquiri?’
    His knitted brow sank into a dip above the bridge of his nose; it looked as though he were about to ask huh?
    ‘I’m not sure we have that,’ he said.
    ‘It’s a mixed drink, you can make it.’
    Finding out whether this was within the realm of possibility was something about which he didn’t seem particularly keen. The word itself, I suspected, would disappear from his mind halfway between here and the bar, like a copper falling out of your pocket.
    ‘Could you tell me the name again. Perhaps Mr. Leland knows what it is.’
    ‘Dai-qui-ri. I’m sure he does.’
    The boy shuffled over to the door, his shirttail hanging out of the back of his trousers. The look of his backside was as lifeless as the one on his face.
    I had copied the music onto A5 sheets, so I didn’t have to turn the pages as quickly. A few bits from Tchaikovsky’s ballets, for starters, ‘The Waltz of the Flowers’ from The Nutcracker , then a waltz from The Sleeping Beauty . My shoes creaked on the pedals, I really hated that sound. After Tchaikovsky I swung out into Mozart. In the pause between two Sonatines Viennoises , Leland came into the lounge.
    ‘What did you ask the poor lad for?’ he whispered. ‘A do-re-mi?’
    ‘A daiquiri,’ I whispered back.
    Leland shook his head.
    ‘A daiquiri, bloody hell.’
    He nodded deferentially to the guests who were peering at us over newspapers and the tops of reading glasses. A few minutes later the boy came in with a daiquiri in a cone-shaped glass, with a layer of sugar around the rim, just the way I liked it.
    Linny was thrilled by how I brought Mozart to life.