The Insult by Rupert Thomson Page B

were lying on the carpet, half in and half out of the lift. One of the woman’s arms trailed across the corridor, as if she was practising her backstroke, as if the whole thing was taking place in water and she was trying to swim away from it. Every now and then, the lift doors closed on her – then opened again. There were red marks where the stainless steel had bitten into her hips. It was like seeing one form of life caught in the jaws of another. This didn’t seem to detract from her pleasure, though; in fact, it could well have been contributing. I smiled, murmured an apology and, stepping carefully over her outstretched arm, continued up the next flight of stairs. They didn’t seem to notice me at all.
    I might not have thought any more about it – after all, they were probably just business people: a company director and his secretary – but then, two days later, I saw another couple. They were sideways-on to me, at the far end of the corridor. The woman lay on her back, though her shoulders were taking most of the weight. She was folded almost double, her heels tucked into the old-fashioned radiator that stood under the window. Blue light flashed on the stretched backs of her thighs as a tram rumbled past outside. The man, dark-haired and muscular, half-stood, half-sat above her, knees slightly bent. As he pushed downwards, into her, he happened to glance round. A gold medallion swung across his chest, one stroke of a pendulum, and came to rest. Did he see me standing there in the shadows by the stairs? And, if so, was he reassured by my dark glasses and my white stick?
    That was Saturday. As chance would have it, during the next week, the lift was either in use or out of order (for reasons I was now beginning to understand); most nights I was forced to climb the eight floors to my room. On Monday I saw the woman I’d last seen trapped in the lift doors. This time she was bent over the small table that had the hotel telephone on it. She was naked and a man was standing behind her, wearing a tuxedo and a pair of black socks. I didn’t recognise him. The telephone was ringing underneath the woman. ‘Don’t you think someone ought to answer that?’ I said. They looked at me, but didn’t say anything. On Wednesday night, as I reached the second floor, I saw three girls in black leather sitting on the sofa. They were smoking. One of them wore a long metal ring that extended beyond her middle finger like a second, sharper nail. Halfway along the corridor I could see a short fat man on his hands and knees. He wore a black T-shirt, a black PVC mini-skirt and black high-heels. His legs were shaved. One of the girls stretched her thigh-length boot out as he crawled across the carpet towards her. He bent down and began to suck the toe. ‘You got a problem?’ one of the girls said suddenly (it was the girl with the ring). ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I hurried on up the stairs. On Thursday I decided not to stop on the second floor, no matter what I saw, but as it turned out it was a quiet night. There was a girl in white-lace underwear standing in the doorway of a room. A man in a suit was talking to her. He had his hands in his pockets. The two of them were deep in some private negotiation, though they fell silent as soon as they noticed me. The girl didn’t have the kind of face you’d associate with somebody who was almost naked; it was attentive, businesslike, as if she was in an office, or a bank. The man was probably a pimp, I thought, as I began to climb towards the third floor. At that moment he looked at me, over his shoulder. His face was entirely without expression.
    That weekend I met Gregory in Leon’s. I leaned over the table in a conspiratorial manner that I knew he liked and asked him if he had noticed anything strange about the second floor.
    ‘You mean, at the Kosminsky?’
    I nodded.
    ‘No.’
    ‘You haven’t noticed anything at all?’
    ‘Like what?’
    I told him to go and have