If I Had You by Heather Hiestand

they are regulars.”
    â€œYes, I know who they are. Cousins of Miss Plash.”
    She nodded. “That makes a great deal of sense. They came up to us when I was speaking to her.”
    He suddenly understood. “Oh! Was it you who returned the ashtrays?” That evening’s notice had been about the return of purloined articles. He’d solved the problem of the missing newspapers, when he found that one of the long-term residents’ valets had been taking them to the den on the seventh floor as soon as they were fanned out in the Reading Room. Then a cache of coffee spoons had turned up in a laundry sack in a storage room on the fourth floor. He’d found those too, during his rounds.
    â€œYes, Mrs. Plash had them, I’m afraid. But I don’t know if she collected them or found them already together.”
    It could be either way. “Poor woman.”
    â€œDo you know?” she asked. “Well, it’s an indelicate question.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œAre Mr. Eyre and Miss Plash still keeping company?”
    Irrational anger surged through him. Did Miss Loudon think Peter Eyre would take her on, make her over in his mysterious, stylish image? Maybe he could. Maybe, just. This sensuality was a new side of her; one he’d imagined, however momentarily, that she’d shown only him. Maybe it was Eyre bringing it out in her, not the music.
    â€œI have to make my rounds,” he said stiffly. “You should return to your room.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause the ghosts might get you.” He stomped away without answering her question about Eyre. He didn’t know the answer anyway.
    * * *
    Alecia rolled her eyes at Ivan’s back as he stomped away. Ghosts were unlikely to be much of a nuisance here. Drunken lads from the Coffee Room, those who stayed there to drink themselves into a stupor instead of moving on to the nightclub, were much more trouble.
    She wished she’d been able to determine what Sybil was up to. Ivan might know, but he didn’t seem inclined to help her.
    Did Ivan realize she was as traumatized by her parents’ fate as he was by his? That her ghosts were inside her own head? She wished she were a man. They seemed to be able to compartmentalize better, spend less time in their own heads. She doubted he saw his equivalent of the Lusitania ’s four smokestacks every time he laid his head down on his pillow.
    Or maybe he did. He worked nights for a reason.
    * * *
    Ivan opened the door to his flat, exhausted after a long night on his feet. One of the kitchen maids at the hotel had given him a bag of bread rolls when he’d drifted through the kitchens hoping to grab a cup of coffee, and he munched on one of the yeasty treats as he walked in. As he began to toe off his shoes, he realized there were more voices than usual. Vera and Sergei had been joined by their White Russian friends. Ivan knew the speaker only as Pavel. Another man, Anatoly Smirnov, who never spoke in Ivan’s presence, sat in the corner on Vera’s footstool.
    â€œWhat did you bring us today?” Vera asked, holding out her hand for the bag.
    Ivan didn’t give it to her. He didn’t mind Sergei, but he loathed the others. Nothing good came of their presence. They’d spend hours here, debating the fate of the Romanovs, filling the air with smoke and eating every morsel of food, drinking every drop of vodka in the flat. He had no interest in supporting whatever they were. Not working men. Imperialists? Revolutionaries? He had no label for their activities, and didn’t care.
    Ignoring them, he went to the icebox. Of course, his cider was long gone. He poured himself a glass of water and walked past the group into the bedroom, his chin itching when he saw Pavel’s untidy beard. Maybe he’d shave before he slept, but then he’d have to take his rolls into the untidy shared lavatory on the landing.
    Not worth