Dinner With the Impostor
“More tea Mr Tullick?” asked one of the starched and pressed waiters, leaning slightly forwards over the table slightly with a teapot in his hands. His face was the image of patient politeness, his bowtie was the definition of symmetry, and by the look of him his name probably had more barrels than a whiskey distillery. He was old-blood with an ingrained knowledge of dinner etiquette, and for some reason had fallen onto the less glamorous side of the dining experience line.
“Erm, no. No thank you.” Rick replied with a nervous smile, having never felt such pressure over beverage replenishment in his life. He felt the friendly, accommodating gaze of the waiter burning into him. Refusing more tea was just the sort of blatant, extreme alarm bell which would rouse suspicion and give everything away.
“Very well, sir.” The waiter accepted, turning to the next guest along the table. Rick breathed a shallow sigh of partial relief and turned back to the plate of key lime pie in front of him. It had no eyes to judge him and no mind to question his presence, so he considered it his best friend at this moment. A friend which he was about to eat. It’s what the pie would have wanted; giving itself up to help Rick look inconspicuous.
The tuxedo trousers were not his friend, binding tightly against Rick’s thighs. Smart shoes were similarly unyielding to his soft feet, and his tie was squeezing slightly on his throat. Everything about the formal dinner wear conspired against him to make consuming dinner more difficult; it felt as if his lack of expertise in wearing a suit would declare to everyone that he didn’t belong.
A wide array of cutlery still lingered around his place setting, giving nothing away as to which of the small scooped and pronged implements was most appropriate for the dessert in question. With his outsider’s eyes he couldn’t choose between them, each one appearing as if it would do a passable job of transporting cheesecake from plate to mouth. Without looking up he was convinced that every pair of eyes around the table would be on him, waiting to see which utensil he selected for the task. Hand quivering, he hovered his fingers slowly over one fork and then another, drifting up and down the number of prongs, radius of curvature, and ornateness of handle. There were so many variables for so little impact, and so many wrong choices which might expose the ruse.
Sweat beaded on Rick’s forehead. The room was cloying in its heat and the air thick with remnant aromas of rich food. Warmth billowing from inside Rick’s body had no way to escape, instead collecting itself within his white dinner shirt like an amateur’s hot air balloon. But rising up was not on the agenda for the evening; right now, the lower he stayed the better it would be for him. He felt the clamminess of his hands growing as the time for him to choose a cake fork ticked down, slick sweat plotting to loosen his grip on whichever tool he eventually settled upon.
Rick swallowed and grabbed a delicate fork with three short prongs, one considerably wider than the others, by its white porcelain handle. A rim of small pearls encircled the top unnecessarily, adding nothing other than an increased difficulty of washing up at the end of the evening. Tensing his shoulders he waited for the collective intake of breath and backlash from the other dining guests. They would all have seen what he’d chosen and realised that he was bluffing, that he knew nothing of where he was or the correct etiquette. A dozen hands would seize him by the arms and drag him away to goodness only knows where.
But nothing came. Rick looked up and no-one was staring towards him. Heart pounding all-the-same, Rick sank the prongs into his key lime pie and cut off a small piece.
“Good choice, Mr Tullick.” A man across the table said suddenly, looking at him with a jovial smile.
“Hm?!” Rick started.
“I’m a big fan of key lime pie. Already finished mine! You’re in for a treat.” The man informed him with a toothy grin. It appeared that the man enjoyed desserts very regularly.
“Oh… yes… good to know. Looking forward to it.” Rick stammered, desperately striving to hold it together. That had been too close for comfort.
Raising the forkful up to his mouth he tried to take stock and calm his nerves. He’d managed to get through for this long already, and even defeated the dessert-fork mystery. But that didn’t get him any closer to working out who on Earth ‘Mr Tullick’ was or how to remain convincing.
Chewing with eyes wide, Rick tried to take in everything about his surroundings and scan for the look of familiarity in other people’s eyes. Thus far he’d managed to keep himself entirely isolated to his own meal and avoid conversation, but now that someone had talked to him loudly and obviously, he would need to acknowledge his co-diners and thereby risk discovery. Delicate lime flavours swirled across his palate while coarse fears of being detected cascaded through his mind. They were far more like the crunchy bites of biscuit base than the soft mousse.
“Good, eh!” the jovial man prompted, nodding his head and raising his eyebrows knowingly. Rick had never come across someone so emotionally invested in another man’s dessert. Maybe that was a clue, or maybe it was just a lack of social awareness on both of their parts.
“Mm, yes. Delicious.” Rick replied with a weak smile and an exaggerated nod, all the while cursing his own life choices. He was out of his depth, that much had been clear earlier in the evening during the soup course, and an adequate escape route was yet to present itself. With those elements of his body which weren’t preoccupied with digestion, he wished that he’d not got swept up in the crowd of well-dressed diners out in the street.
“Reminds me of one I had at a restaurant in Mayfair some years ago. Got the consistency just right. And the chef knew his citrus business well, I can tell you!” Mr Joviality bellowed, apparently under the erroneous impression that Rick wanted their interaction to continue.
“Really…” Rick answered, dreading the idea of getting embroiled in conversation. As long as he kept himself to himself and maintained a low profile he might still slip under everyone else’s notice. Continuing to speaking to another guest would only raise suspicions.
“Oh yes! Got exactly the right amount of zest and juice in there to give it a delightful kick. And the base was crunchy without being dry or tough, absolute poetry in motion!”
Everything the red-faced, enthusiastic key lime pie lover said was accentuated with a wide hand and a sweeping motion of the arm. The finer details of the fabled pie were emphasised by a thumb and forefinger pressed to pouting lips.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Rick ventured, realising soon after that his response was little off-the-mark.
“I was glad to taste it! Bahaha!” the gentleman guffawed, apparently accepting the slightly dismissive response. Rick had never seen someone guffaw before, and was gratified to see that it looked exactly as he’d imagined it would.
Rick forced out a laugh and took another mouthful of dessert to excuse himself from having to speak for a few moments. Silence had, mercifully, been all that anyone had offered to or requested from him between entering the dining hall and being congratulated by the amateur dessert critic on the opposite side of the table.
Looking back on it, Rick didn’t have a clue of what he’d been thinking when he entered the building in the first place. He remembered being too polite to push past anyone among the sudden tide well-dressed evening diners, instead allowing the stream of bodies pouring along the road to sweep him into their palatial destination. As to why he resisted quite so little he couldn’t say; in retrospect, saying ‘Excuse me please’ would have resolved the problem. Being critically honest with himself, Rick decided that perhaps he could say why he’d allowed it to happen, but he was just too embarrassed to admit to himself that his inaction was largely due to not wanting to disturb anybody. Once he’d not-disturbed anyone to the point of getting inside a hotel of unknown name, the porters hadn’t wasted a second in leaping on him.
“Do you not have a dinner-suit, sir?” A skinny chap in a bowtie had asked, and Rick had indicated his own faded jeans and hoody by way of saying no. It would have been perfectly simple just to state outright that he wasn’t supposed to be there, make his apologies, and walk out again. Perfect simplicity was still enough to outfox him, it seemed.
“Not a problem, sir. We have several available as a courtesy to our esteemed guests. We understand that it is not always possible to travel with everything one requires.” The porter had surged on without missing a beat. “Justin,” he called out to one of his colleagues “please show the gentleman to room 103 with a size…” he paused and looked critically at Rick “forty dinner suit please. Thirty-two leg.”
“I, erm, I don’t think I-” was as far as Rick was able to stammer, before a younger porter had placed a guiding hand on Rick’s back and directed him along a corridor to one side.
“This way sir. I shall have your suit brought to you directly.” Justin chaperoned expertly. “Dinner will be starting promptly as usual, so please feel free to leave your clothes where they fall and the maids will take care of them. Collections can be made at the usual location.”
“My clothes? Please don’t tak-”
“Just here on your right sir.” Justin ignored, pushing open the door to a moderately sized hotel room and leading Rick inside. “I shall be outside whenever you are ready.”
“Look, there’s been a mistake. I should just go.”
“Sir, please. Forgetting one’s suit is not an issue and I must insist that you get changed. We are at risk of starting late.”
“But I don’t-”
“And here’s your suit now. I hate to rush you sir, but we are pushed for time. If you have any other concerns then please raise them during the meal.”
Before Rick could splutter out another half-response, Justin had slipped out and shut the door. Once again shackled by his own reluctance to outright defy someone, he dutifully started to get changed against his will.
At the dinner table, with dessert slowly coming to a close, things had got little better. Rick had politely sat down in room with over a hundred unknown people, and eaten a stranger’s dinner whilst dressed in a borrowed dinner suit. There must have been a line somewhere at which not saying anything became less impolite than continuing to let them think he was Mr Tullick, or anyone else who was actually meant to be there for that matter. Wherever that line really was, he had surely blitzed past it by the end of the second course.
It hadn’t been an act of gluttony to consume everything provided to him under the belief that he was Mr Tullick. Rick had been acutely aware that someone else had paid for the fine foods being served to him with every bite, guilt assailing him as the delicate richness filled his mouth. The wine, too, had been a flood of burgundy remorse every time the glass came down empty. Whenever a bottle appeared and restored the fluid levels to their former glory it was as much as his conscience could take.
Yet despite the guilt, it was as nothing compared to the guilt he would have felt for leaving anything, or making the serving staff think that he wasn’t having a good time. It would also have drawn additional attention to himself to try to leave mid-way through the dinner, and that would invite questions as to why he was going. Slipping out unnoticed, after rescuing the clothes he had been forced to abandon in room 103, was the only way to go. He’d have to go via ‘the usual location place’ for clothing retrieval too, wherever that was. It was probably a desk of some sort; stolen clothes were always reclaimed at desks.
Even without the additional requirements to pass by a desk and employ stealth, escape was still a distant dream. Enclosed by seated guests on either side and constantly surrounded by helpful serving staff, Rick didn’t think he’d get an opportunity to slip away at any time soon. Add to that the fact that the lavatories appeared to be in the opposite direction to the exit and his best excuse was dashed against the rocks. Disarmed of his best weapons in the quest for egress, Rick was forced to sit in place with his ever-increasing tension. He was an impostor just waiting to be discovered, and far too full of high-class cuisine to make a decent run for it now.
“So Mr Tullick, did I hear correctly that you’ve been back to the Sudan this year?” A woman asked from a few seats down. She wore a bright red fascinator in her hair, which certainly drew the eye but was a little too pretentious to be truly fascinating, and a string of pearls around her skinny neck. Curled mousey-brown hair framed a face like someone had, in a moment of exquisite madness, upholstered a vulture with second-hand boot leather.
“I… erm… yes you might have done, probably.” Rick spluttered.
“Well? How did you get on this time?”
“Oh… you know. It was fine.” He answered generically. The vulture kept staring in silence, apparently expecting something more. “How did I get on with what in particular?”
“Come now! I know that you were trying to make those sales that Her Majesty’s own didn’t want to. Nothing wrong with finding business where there are eager partners, so don’t be bashful.” The woman-of-prey pushed. Rick was now even further out of his depth. He’d have thought it’d all be academic by this stage; the difference between having ten or eleven metres of water underneath him shouldn’t have mattered, but after that last question he felt every additional inch.
“Erm, well, it wouldn’t do to talk much about it, you know? I don’t want to, uh, kiss and tell, I suppose.” He stalled, cheeks flushing red.
“Mr Tullick! I wasn’t expecting you to be so coy.”
“Certainly not!” A gentleman to the vulture-woman’s left agreed. “After the stories I’ve heard I would have thought you’d be bragging freely about your exploits.” His grey moustache seemed all the paler against his ruddy, bloodshot cheeks. At least his glimmering face confirmed that Rick wasn’t the only person feeling the heat of the room.
“Well…”
“With everything that happened in your manufactory in China you should be shouting loud about Sudan. Anything which doesn’t end with an inferno to cover up somehow is a win in my book.” He blabbered.
Rick nearly spat out his tea. In all honesty spitting it out would have been preferable; instead, he was choking on it.
“Don’t choke, man!” the jovial gentleman bellowed across good-naturedly. Rick found himself missing the key lime pie discussion and its calorific innocence.
“Alright old boy?” Vulture enquired.
“Ha! Hit a nerve with the talk of China I suppose.” Moustache man laughed. “Well don’t you worry, we’re all friends here. No-one’s going to talk to the media about your little firestorm incident. Faulty refrigerators are a bugger, eh?” he added with a conspiratorial wink.
“Ugh erm, right. Thanks.” Rick answered quickly, his heart pounding ever harder. There was a definite sense of corruption and loose morality about the conversation, and that painted it as the kind of company it would sensible not to lie to. Or spy on. Or both, as he was technically currently doing.
In front of him now he saw a group of people who knew an awful lot about this Mr Tullick, apparently without knowing what he looked like. And from the sounds of it, they were quite willing to look beyond Rick’s own appearance, which he didn’t think matched up to the stories the other guests were alluding to. Rick’s his eyes flitted from face-to-face, defensively attempting to keep his own expression in check whilst he struggled to make sense of it all.
As best he could, which was fairly poorly, Rick tried to make some snap judgements and inferences about the other guests from their behaviour towards him thus far. It wasn’t too much better than the sea of strangers’ faces he’d seen when being shown to the empty chair earlier in the evening.
After getting changed and exiting his room, Justin had wasted no time in striding away and leading him to the dining area. Shifting his shoulders uncomfortably against the constricting fabrics of the dinner suit he’d been provided, Rick had followed along hurriedly. The porter walked quickly, too quickly for Rick to feel like he could tap him on the arm and try to explain himself again. It was all the more difficult to say ‘I wasn’t meant to be in here, I just got a bit swept up in a crowd’ after getting changed into someone else’s hired dinner suit and leaving a pile of clothes in a hotel room. That sort of behaviour generally expressed some kind of intentional action, and the staff would quite naturally exercise scepticism about the ‘innocent mistake’ angle as a result. Then again, he’d thought, it would be better to absorb the embarrassment of a wardrobe change than a wardrobe change alongside a full meal at somebody else’s expense. Especially if that somebody else appeared half way through. The realisation that he must, necessarily, be occupying the place of a genuinely late guest had drained through Rick’s body like icy water.
Hurrying to catch up, or even keep up, Rick followed Justin through a set of double doors and emerged into the vaulted dining hall of the palatial hotel. Everything about the decor was richer than Rick would ever be. The same, he would come to find out later, was true of the food. Underfoot a hardwood floor gleamed. Either the diligence of the cleaning staff was utterly exemplary or the floor was brilliant at dodging falling food. It had caught every one of Rick's footfalls thus far though, so it was, at least, not using any dodging abilities for mischief.
Hanging from the ceiling, which was maintaining a healthy distance from the floor and guests, were grand chandeliers and banners. Artwork from a time which Rick characterised as 'too old for a proper date' adorned the spaces between pillars and frescos, each of them probably worth a considerable amount more than Rick’s own house. He felt with certainty that he didn’t belong here.
“Justin? Justin? Where do I pick my clothes up? There’s been a misunderstanding.” Rick tried, but Justin either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear him. He was too busy striding between the tables, arranged at a one-person distance from one another, and giving unintelligible hand-signals to the other serving staff.
“There’s been a ho-” Rick had to stand aside to allow another waiter to saunter though. “There’s been a horrible misunderstanding here Justin.”
A gap in the sea of over-dressed diners finally appeared on a table to their left.
“This is your seat Mr Tullick.” Justin had said.
“Mr Tullick? I’m not supposed to-”
“Please.” the waiter said, pulling out the chair and indicating towards the seat. “First course will be along any second now.” An urgent edge to his voice made Rick think that following the instructions would get Justin to listen faster. That had, of course, been incorrect.
Accepting the seat reluctantly, Rick felt the chair sliding inwards once again under the waiter’s alarmingly effortless push, slotting him tightly between two similarly suited attendees. Immediately Rick turned to face Justin in an attempt to explain his predicament again, but the waiter had already disappeared.
Arms tucked in slightly to avoid clashing elbows with his neighbours, Rick slowly and fearfully rotated his head to face across the table. Ever since entering whatever event was being held at this hotel, the situation had escalated rapidly. Finding himself trapped among something approximating to high society, Rick told himself that he’d think of something soon and get away. There was no way to get stuck any deeper. Again, his correctness left something to be desired.
A brief puzzled expression drifted on and off of the moustached man’s face. Rick’s throat tightened, sure that he was drawing suspicion to himself with vague responses to potential human rights abuses. Whoever the man was, he seemed to know some deeply incriminating information about this Mr Tullick, and it didn’t seem likely that he would buy the embarrassed, nervous responses he was receiving. No-one who had subversive dealings in Sudan or caused apparent firestorms in China would feel uncomfortable with conversation at dinner. They’d probably make some kind of wittily dismissive remark and carry on unabashed. Contrariwise, Rick’s responses were mostly constructed out of stuttering and excessive perspiration. That certainly didn’t fit the international power-player that Mr Tullick seemed to be.
“Are you feeling yourself, Mr Tullick?” Vulture woman asked. It seemed to come more from a place of suspicion than concern.
“Key lime pie addled your mind?” the jovial man called over.
“Er, um, yes. Yes I’m fine. Just a little out of sorts from Sudan. Jet lag. And... erm, other things.” Rick spluttered.
“Jet lag? Still? I thought you were in the Sudan at the start of the year?” Vulture responded with surprise.
A significant amount of internal cursing echoed through Rick’s mind.
“Oh. Well I’ve been working on their time zone still.”
“Sudan is only two hours ahead of us. How could you ever have had jetlag?” Moustache enquired.
“Yes…. Yes it is but I’ve been working a Sudanese night shift. So I start even later into the night than I otherwise would.” Internally he started to map out the most efficient path from table to exit. The time for excuses might soon be past, and he could simply leg it.
“Alongside your normal activities?!”
“Yes. Apparently alongside my normal activities.” Whatever normal was for someone like Mr Tullick.
“So you’re tired. You’re not jet lagged.” Moustache clarified.
“Don’t be so picky Renshaw.”
“I just think the man should say what he means.”
“You knew what he meant regardless of what he said. When our mutual association depends on immaculate grammar and an infallible lexicon then we’ll discuss each other’s choice of words more deeply. Until then I would appreciate a short period of this evening without you judging everyone else like an aggravated English teacher.” Vulture-woman swooped in, ignoring the carrion of Rick for the relatively fresh meat of the moustached man. Perhaps they had some history, or perhaps they all just enjoyed a good argument. Or a bad one.
Silence filled the space between them. Rick could almost feel it creaking like a rope under tension as neither one of them made any motion. Even the more distant conversations seemed to fade away, drowned out by the intense lack of speaking at close proximity. A bead of condensation ran down vulture-woman’s wine glass. Steam rose cautiously from Rick’s tea. A peppercorn sauce spill dried slowly onto the table cloth.
“I’ll have you know” moustache man said with a soft menace “that clear communication is critical to our partnership. Contradictions, inaccuracies and vagueness are both the tools and the pitfalls of the liar. Lies and secrets have no place here.”
Every word hung in the air, as if giving everyone else sufficient time to take them in. Rick’s stomach found yet more opportunity to tighten. The vulture’s eyes narrowed. Jovial man reached across the table to the leftovers of someone else’s key lime pie.
And then they burst into laughter.
“You’re a dog, Renshaw.” The vulture smirked.
“Can you imagine it? Any of us here admitting to… well, any of our business?”
“Lies and secrets have no place here indeed! I rather think they’re our conditions of acceptance!”
Further laughter shook the table. Rick tried an unconvincing smile as his eyes continued to widen in terror. Any further and his eyelids stood a significant chance of folding back over his forehead. That would definitely make him look out of place.
All-in-all, Rick was not comfortable with his situation. Somehow all the laughter made it even worse. The deeply unlawful nature of what had been implied was bad enough, but coupled to the mirthful tone it took on an even more sinister aspect. A better man might try to get as many details as possible and take them to the police. He might call the emergency services discreetly from the lavatories and arrange to pass information. He might even try to get an invitation to further activities and crack the whole corrupt charade open. Then again, a better man probably wouldn’t have been too scared to say ‘I’m leaving now’, nor would they have got changed against their own will and eaten a delicious meal under duress, so they wouldn’t have had a chance to do any of the exciting police work anyway.
Rick himself was not a better man. By definition he was only as good of a man as he was, and even then he wondered if his own estimation of self-quality had been a little high in the past. All he wanted to do was get himself as far away as possible from the scenario in which he’d become embroiled, and subsequently forget about the whole affair. Heroics were for heroes, and steadfast repressions of awkward moments of his own creation were for Rick. It was just a matter of expediting his progress to the point of repression, and away from the agonising process of painful memory creation.
"When's the entertainment anyway?" Moustache asked vulture, apparently losing interest in whatever he wanted to hear from Mr Tullick after the tension-breaking merriment. Rick didn't allow himself to relax, still staring with eyes held wide open and lips involuntarily pursed.
The man on Rick's left sneezed, raising an arm to cover his face and, in doing so, knocking Rick's own arm half across his body. Looking down in horror he saw that the motion had dipped his fork full of key lime pie into the steaming tea, creating an amalgamated horror of dissolving cream cheese and floating biscuit. Besides that, he liked his tea black and free from lime, so two crimes had been committed in that one foul swoop.
A small wave of mildly shocked noises emanated outwards from the over-dunked tea. Rick dared not kick up a fuss though, not least of all because the gentleman who had knocked might well, on closer inspection, have been a mountain gorilla somehow tricked into a dinner suit. Muscle bulged within the arms, pulling at the seams and leaving them perilously taut. Any more pressure and it looked like he would rupture at any moment, which was certainly a breach of good table manners. Hulking away about his own business, the figure was markedly different to the other guests. There were certainly some other large contenders, but their bulging wasn't of a particularly muscular variety. He didn’t even appear to have noticed what he had done, and that was perfectly fine with Rick.
To his other side was a different story, one of far less extreme musculature and an even less convincing character. In all his years Rick had never seen anyone who genuinely had a hook in place of a hand. This was still true, but he had now sat next to someone with what appeared to be a strangely decadent washing up brush sprouting from their wrist. It was doing a remarkable job of controlling cutlery, and it had taken Rick a great deal of time to even notice that where there should have been fingers, only bristles remained.
Seeing the brush hand was punishment enough for wandering eyes, and he returned them squarely to his own plate, staring down without seeing as his mind looped the brush hand over and over for him. Taking a perfunctory sip of his key lime tea, at a loss for anything else to do, Rick was faintly aware of a brushing sound to his right, like someone scrubbing at a stubbornly stained set of cutlery. He scrunched his eyes tight.
"Limey tea not to your tastes?" Vulture asked with a smirk, evoking a ripple of laughter from the guests around her. Rick couldn't see her face, on account of his scrunched up closed eyes, but he could hear the smirk distorting her words. The suited gorilla was probably chuckling away too at his unwitting dessert-beverage creation. They all must have known from the start that he wasn't supposed to be here. They were toying with him and taunting him with the knowledge that he knew nothing of Mr Tullick. Was this all planned, from seating him betwixt a man-brush hybrid and an ape to torturing him with the fear of exposure as a fraud?
Rick’s heartrate, which had scarcely been stable since the start of the evening, was once again on the rise and threatening to pound his chest clean open.
“Leave the man be.” Brush said suddenly, his voice like a leather jacket being zipped up through molasses. “We’ve finally got him out here, let’s not make him regret it.”
Risking a look up and finding eye contact, Rick received a respectful nod from brush, who then looked down and continued his own dessert.
“We’re not doing any harm, he knows how to take a joke.” Vulture defended.
“Knows how to take a lot more than a joke from what I’ve heard.” Moustache added. “I thought ‘back-handers’ and ‘inventive liberties with export law’ were more his flavour of takings.”
Rick swallowed audibly.
“See, this” Brush said, swinging his arm around and pointing at each of Rick and moustache in turn with the brush. Rick’s eyes followed it involuntarily, fearing an impromptu scrubbing. “is what I’m talking about. Mr Tullick has come out for the very first time to one of our little soirees and here you are making him uncomfortable. Man tries to make a profit for himself by some underhand means, sure, but it doesn’t mean he wants to go into the details over a cheesecake.”
“Looks like he’s mostly uncomfortable with having a cleaning appliance dining next to him.” Vulture sneered.
“You’d better wash your mouth out.” Brush advised back.
“Or what? You’ll scrub it clean for her?” Moustache challenged.
The odd nervous chuckle was the only sound to break the following silence. If anything, it highlighted the lack of any other noise in the immediate area. Brush’s eyes narrowed.
“Or we’ll find that Mr Tullick declines our next invitation, which would be most unwelcome.” He said with slow, measured speech. “And you’ll find that a number of acceptances don’t have invitations to match in the first place.”
“Bah! Empty words. You’ve not got the clout to make that kind of threat. Are you that much of a delicate flower, Mr Tullick, that we’re scaring you away?”
“Well, erm… I…” Rick struggled. He didn’t want to escalate the engagement with moustache and vulture, but felt a strange compulsion to stand in solidarity with brush. He’d put himself out for Rick, and it wouldn’t do to let him down. Rick also noted that the jovial chap had been strangely silent this whole time; a fair weather friend who rode the high waves of good dessert but disappeared when the going got a little tougher. “I think that I would prefer not to speak about my…uh… business. As has been rightly indicated for me.”
The only thing quivering more than Rick’s hands was his voice, to the point that his statement sounded like the confession of a washing machine struggling against a particularly heavy load.
“Tch.” Vulture clicked disdainfully.
“So much for the reclusive charismatic.” Moustache grumbled. “All talk and no trousers. No, scrap that. He’s no talk and no trousers.”
Rick couldn’t help but feel that exchanging enquiries for insults wasn’t in the true spirit of what brush had been suggesting, but at least it put less onus on him to reply. And if moustache kept it up then Rick thought it might give him a reasonable excuse to push back from the table and make a dash for it.
“Thanks” He muttered quietly to brush.
“Don’t mention it. I remember my first major sale, like your Sudan deal. Point of professional pride, sure, but not exactly dinner conversation.” Brush replied, still looking down at his plate. "Why you changed your mind and finally came along is none of my business so don't worry, I won't ask. It'll keep the political animals happy that you did, though." He said, idly rotating his brush hand with a spoon still nestled among its bristles. "Although I suppose that's stating the obvious to someone like you."
"That's fine, it's, er, nice to hear someone saying the obvious things. You know. It confirms that the obvious is true and known." Rick said. He was desperate for the obvious to be stated right then, since no-one else seemed to be stating anything definite at all. The obvious would at least give him a slight ledge for whenever he found a leg to stand on, rather than panicked stammering and and guesswork.
Brush paused his rotations and leaned back, suit jacket falling open slightly and revealing a few dinner-stains on his otherwise white shirt. Rick tried not to look; it was probably something to do with trying to hold cutlery using a cleaning tool rather than the one perfectly functional hand he had remaining.
“I guess so.”
Rick took another sip of his tea, remembering too late that it was tainted. Part of him thought he should just ask the waiter for another cup, but that was overruled by the part of him which screamed that he still needed to leave immediately. Brush had bailed him out of one round of questioning, but there was no guarantee that it would happen again. Rick needed to start seriously paving his own way to freedom.
“So… erm… do you know where I need to go to pick up my clothes?”
Brush stopped. He hadn’t been doing much of anything, but it was perfectly clear that whatever had been going on inside or outside of his head, Rick’s question had caused it to stop. The thick, tanned skin of brush’s face folded up, the cogs turning clearly enough for everyone to see but not necessarily reaching a satisfactory conclusion. He turned the words over this way and that in his mind, attempting to mould them into a shape which made more sense, but found them to be insufficiently malleable.
“Are you asking me if I know where your dry-cleaner is?” he finally asked.
“Oh, no! I’m asking whereabouts in here, this hotel, that I need to go to get my clothes back. The usual place for that.”
Brush looked at Rick properly for the first time. It was the kind of look used to determine whether a flushed toilet was going to behave itself, or make a grand and soggy offering to the floor below. His eyes ran up and down Rick’s body, lingered on Rick’s own eyes, and then returned to his plate.
“You’re already dressed.”
“I… yes but I had to get changed into this, and the porter told me my clothes would be available to pick up in the normal place.” Rick explained.
“Where, and why, did you leave them?”
“It was in one of the rooms while I was getting changed because the porter told me to.”
Another lingering look was the only answer Rick got.
“He said I could pick them up from the usual place so I didn’t think any more of it, but I don’t know where that place is.”
“Nor do I.” Brush said, sounding a little suspicious, as if he thought Rick was making a joke at his expense. “I’d guess reception is a good starting place though.”
“Yeah… sounds good. Thanks.”
Brush went back to idly turning his brush hand around and watching it reflect the candle light.
“So… um, when does this all finish?” Rick asked, continuing to push for information.
“Normally around midnight. After the show’s over.” Brush told him without looking up. Part of Rick suspected that the man was regretting engaging with him in the first place.
“Oh right. OK.” There was no way Rick would be staying stuck until midnight. Quite apart from anything else his last train home departed the station at quarter past and he was more than fifteen minutes from the station. If theft and fraud weren’t enough of a reason to leave, then the prospect of an extortionate late-night cab ride certainly was.
“Some folk like to keep the night going elsewhere, of course.” Brush added ominously, although the ominousness may have arisen from the implication that the time after midnight might hold anything other than bedtime.
“Yeah, of course.” There was a silence, which Rick felt unaccountably responsible to fill. “Do… you tend to go with them?”
“Not usually, no. After the whole evening here there’s only so much more I want to talk about arming the mobs. By the time I’ve closed the deal and the cash has been exchanged I tend to be burned out on the topic, so you can imagine how little interest I have in extending this” he waved his brush around vaguely “whole business.”
“Yes… yeah.” Rick agreed for the sake of appearances, whilst he screamed inside. He was making friends with an arms dealer. The irony that he was missing an arm of his own did not calm Rick’s nerves.
“And everyone likes to get into the details of who their highest profile customer was, how many cities have fallen to whose products, which regime is asking about what. It just gets very dry.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And none of them will match up to your record anyway, Tullick. Everyone else here is small-fry compared to you.” Brush continued, starting to get lost on a train of thought.
“Oh… I don’t know about that…”
“Well I do. Numbers don’t lie.” He looked up and saw how obviously uncomfortable Rick was becoming. “But I’m getting as bad as the rest of them with all this shop-talk, I’ll give it a rest now.”
“It’s fine…. But erm, I’d better just go for a moment.” Rick said, initiating his grand escape attempt.
“For a moment? Be back soon or you’ll miss the start of the show.” Moustache told him with mild surprise from across the table.
“Yep.” Rick replied dutifully. It must have sounded unconvincing.
“Disappearing again so soon? More Sudanese night-shift work?” Vulture butted-in.
“No… no not tonight.”
“Sit down, man. You’re already here and it’s going to start any minute. Give it a shot.” Moustache persisted.
“Well, er, yes that’s my point exactly. I have to go now otherwise I’d be leaving in the middle, and that would seem awfully discourteous of me.” Rick countered.
“Honestly, I think that supplying napalm to a militant group was probably further along the road of discourtesy than leaving mid-show.” Vulture snapped back accusingly.
“Oh my god.” Rick uttered involuntarily. Several sets of eyes locked onto him. “I mean, bringing that up at the dinner table is a bit… erm… you know.”
“I don’t think we do know, Mr Tullick. Why don’t you explain?” Vulture asked suspiciously, but she received no answer. Rick was too busy scurrying along between the tables, barely holding himself back from breaking into a run. Decreasingly hushed voices followed him as he pushed his way through the double doors at the end of the room, amid a sea of half-interested turned heads.
“Could I please have my clothes back?” Rick asked urgently at the reception desk.
“What’s the name, please, sir?” The receptionist asked with a brave expression of professionalism, trying not to look at the glistening sweat on Rick’s face.
“It’s Ri.. erm, Mr Tullick?”
“And do you have a first name, Mr Tullick?”
“Not that I’ve heard.” Rick answered honestly.
The receptionist kept his gaze downward and breathed an almost imperceptible but unmistakably heavy sigh. After some scanning of a leger in front of him, he evidently found what he was searching for.
“Ah, here we go. Clothes left in room 103 yes? We’ve burned them already, sir.”
Rick tipped his head to one side slightly.
“Bu…”
“They were so… out of keeping with everything else that we assumed them to be a disguise of some sort.” The receptionist told him matter-of-factly.
“One that I wouldn’t want to change back into to leave?” Rick questioned.
“That is the general custom sir, yes. No-one can match what goes in to what comes out.”
“But Justin said that I could pick them up from the usual place.” Rick complained, feeling betrayed by Justin’s dishonesty. It was a bit rich, following Rick’s prolonged identity theft, but the irony was lost on him.
“He’s new to the role, sir.” The receptionist explained. “We’ll admonish him for his mistakes and misleading you. I can assure you that whatever is left of your clothing cannot be picked up from anywhere, excepting with the use of a dustpan and brush.”
“Oh…” Rick said, defeated. “OK. Can I keep this suit?”
“We’ll add the cost to your tab, sir.” The receptionist said with a mirthless smile.
“Works for me.” Rick said. “Well, er, bye.”
The receptionist looked back down at his books, and Rick fled from the hotel.
Rick half-ran along the dark street, popping in and out of pools of illumination from the streetlights. Every car that sped by, every headlight that flashed past him, and every footstep behind him was pursuit to his panicked mind. That is, until they all petered out in a fizzle of underwhelming harmlessness. By the time he reached the train station the prospect of immediate pursuit had dulled down into negligibility. Taking a seat on the quiet coach after all the uncomfortable conversation he’d been forced to endure, Rick peered out of the window for a last double-check that he wasn’t being followed. The only person in a conspicuous dinner suit or ball gown was him. He was free.
Calmed by his train ride and the short walk afterwards, Rick entered his home, climbed the soft-carpeted staircase, and crept into the bedroom. Navigating the darkness by experience alone he padded to his own side of the bed, carefully undoing the unfamiliar buttons on his dinner suit.
“Hng, Rick?” came Carly’s bleary, sleepy voice. “Where have you been?”
“Hey. I, erm, got caught up having dinner unexpectedly.” He told her.
“Unexpected dinner?” she asked with a yawn. “With work friends?”
“No, not quite. With some strangers. It’s quite a long story.” He replied, deciding that the details would require far more thought before getting relayed.
“Right. Sounds lovely.” She said, noncommittally.
“I got a dinner suit too.” Rick added as he slipped beneath the covers.
“Why?”
“Because my other clothes got… well… they got burned.” He confessed.
Carly yawned again.
“Oh dear.” She assessed. Rick wasn’t sure that she was giving this conversation her full attention.
“And I think I met some war criminals, technically.” He said, getting it in whilst her attentiveness was low. That way he had technically already told her, so if he forgot to mention it again in the morning then he had plausible deniability.
“That’s nice. You can tell me all about it in the morning.”
“Yeah, alright. Will do. Night night my love.”
“Night, trouser-burner.”
Carly’s breathing almost immediately slowed and deepened, indicating her departure from wakefulness. Rick shifted and shuffled himself into comfort, his whole body relieved to be free from the fabric prison in which it had spent the night. His mind relived the details of the evening over and over, not in chronological order but in sporadic bursts of conversation, and always against the visual backdrop of a peculiar prosthetic brush hand. Whatever had been going on, he told himself, the main thing was that he’d got home safely. Amid questions of Mr Tullick and his international capers, Rick let his eyes close and drifted safely off to sleep, safe in the knowledge of who he was supposed to be.
“Erm, no. No thank you.” Rick replied with a nervous smile, having never felt such pressure over beverage replenishment in his life. He felt the friendly, accommodating gaze of the waiter burning into him. Refusing more tea was just the sort of blatant, extreme alarm bell which would rouse suspicion and give everything away.
“Very well, sir.” The waiter accepted, turning to the next guest along the table. Rick breathed a shallow sigh of partial relief and turned back to the plate of key lime pie in front of him. It had no eyes to judge him and no mind to question his presence, so he considered it his best friend at this moment. A friend which he was about to eat. It’s what the pie would have wanted; giving itself up to help Rick look inconspicuous.
The tuxedo trousers were not his friend, binding tightly against Rick’s thighs. Smart shoes were similarly unyielding to his soft feet, and his tie was squeezing slightly on his throat. Everything about the formal dinner wear conspired against him to make consuming dinner more difficult; it felt as if his lack of expertise in wearing a suit would declare to everyone that he didn’t belong.
A wide array of cutlery still lingered around his place setting, giving nothing away as to which of the small scooped and pronged implements was most appropriate for the dessert in question. With his outsider’s eyes he couldn’t choose between them, each one appearing as if it would do a passable job of transporting cheesecake from plate to mouth. Without looking up he was convinced that every pair of eyes around the table would be on him, waiting to see which utensil he selected for the task. Hand quivering, he hovered his fingers slowly over one fork and then another, drifting up and down the number of prongs, radius of curvature, and ornateness of handle. There were so many variables for so little impact, and so many wrong choices which might expose the ruse.
Sweat beaded on Rick’s forehead. The room was cloying in its heat and the air thick with remnant aromas of rich food. Warmth billowing from inside Rick’s body had no way to escape, instead collecting itself within his white dinner shirt like an amateur’s hot air balloon. But rising up was not on the agenda for the evening; right now, the lower he stayed the better it would be for him. He felt the clamminess of his hands growing as the time for him to choose a cake fork ticked down, slick sweat plotting to loosen his grip on whichever tool he eventually settled upon.
Rick swallowed and grabbed a delicate fork with three short prongs, one considerably wider than the others, by its white porcelain handle. A rim of small pearls encircled the top unnecessarily, adding nothing other than an increased difficulty of washing up at the end of the evening. Tensing his shoulders he waited for the collective intake of breath and backlash from the other dining guests. They would all have seen what he’d chosen and realised that he was bluffing, that he knew nothing of where he was or the correct etiquette. A dozen hands would seize him by the arms and drag him away to goodness only knows where.
But nothing came. Rick looked up and no-one was staring towards him. Heart pounding all-the-same, Rick sank the prongs into his key lime pie and cut off a small piece.
“Good choice, Mr Tullick.” A man across the table said suddenly, looking at him with a jovial smile.
“Hm?!” Rick started.
“I’m a big fan of key lime pie. Already finished mine! You’re in for a treat.” The man informed him with a toothy grin. It appeared that the man enjoyed desserts very regularly.
“Oh… yes… good to know. Looking forward to it.” Rick stammered, desperately striving to hold it together. That had been too close for comfort.
Raising the forkful up to his mouth he tried to take stock and calm his nerves. He’d managed to get through for this long already, and even defeated the dessert-fork mystery. But that didn’t get him any closer to working out who on Earth ‘Mr Tullick’ was or how to remain convincing.
Chewing with eyes wide, Rick tried to take in everything about his surroundings and scan for the look of familiarity in other people’s eyes. Thus far he’d managed to keep himself entirely isolated to his own meal and avoid conversation, but now that someone had talked to him loudly and obviously, he would need to acknowledge his co-diners and thereby risk discovery. Delicate lime flavours swirled across his palate while coarse fears of being detected cascaded through his mind. They were far more like the crunchy bites of biscuit base than the soft mousse.
“Good, eh!” the jovial man prompted, nodding his head and raising his eyebrows knowingly. Rick had never come across someone so emotionally invested in another man’s dessert. Maybe that was a clue, or maybe it was just a lack of social awareness on both of their parts.
“Mm, yes. Delicious.” Rick replied with a weak smile and an exaggerated nod, all the while cursing his own life choices. He was out of his depth, that much had been clear earlier in the evening during the soup course, and an adequate escape route was yet to present itself. With those elements of his body which weren’t preoccupied with digestion, he wished that he’d not got swept up in the crowd of well-dressed diners out in the street.
“Reminds me of one I had at a restaurant in Mayfair some years ago. Got the consistency just right. And the chef knew his citrus business well, I can tell you!” Mr Joviality bellowed, apparently under the erroneous impression that Rick wanted their interaction to continue.
“Really…” Rick answered, dreading the idea of getting embroiled in conversation. As long as he kept himself to himself and maintained a low profile he might still slip under everyone else’s notice. Continuing to speaking to another guest would only raise suspicions.
“Oh yes! Got exactly the right amount of zest and juice in there to give it a delightful kick. And the base was crunchy without being dry or tough, absolute poetry in motion!”
Everything the red-faced, enthusiastic key lime pie lover said was accentuated with a wide hand and a sweeping motion of the arm. The finer details of the fabled pie were emphasised by a thumb and forefinger pressed to pouting lips.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Rick ventured, realising soon after that his response was little off-the-mark.
“I was glad to taste it! Bahaha!” the gentleman guffawed, apparently accepting the slightly dismissive response. Rick had never seen someone guffaw before, and was gratified to see that it looked exactly as he’d imagined it would.
Rick forced out a laugh and took another mouthful of dessert to excuse himself from having to speak for a few moments. Silence had, mercifully, been all that anyone had offered to or requested from him between entering the dining hall and being congratulated by the amateur dessert critic on the opposite side of the table.
Looking back on it, Rick didn’t have a clue of what he’d been thinking when he entered the building in the first place. He remembered being too polite to push past anyone among the sudden tide well-dressed evening diners, instead allowing the stream of bodies pouring along the road to sweep him into their palatial destination. As to why he resisted quite so little he couldn’t say; in retrospect, saying ‘Excuse me please’ would have resolved the problem. Being critically honest with himself, Rick decided that perhaps he could say why he’d allowed it to happen, but he was just too embarrassed to admit to himself that his inaction was largely due to not wanting to disturb anybody. Once he’d not-disturbed anyone to the point of getting inside a hotel of unknown name, the porters hadn’t wasted a second in leaping on him.
“Do you not have a dinner-suit, sir?” A skinny chap in a bowtie had asked, and Rick had indicated his own faded jeans and hoody by way of saying no. It would have been perfectly simple just to state outright that he wasn’t supposed to be there, make his apologies, and walk out again. Perfect simplicity was still enough to outfox him, it seemed.
“Not a problem, sir. We have several available as a courtesy to our esteemed guests. We understand that it is not always possible to travel with everything one requires.” The porter had surged on without missing a beat. “Justin,” he called out to one of his colleagues “please show the gentleman to room 103 with a size…” he paused and looked critically at Rick “forty dinner suit please. Thirty-two leg.”
“I, erm, I don’t think I-” was as far as Rick was able to stammer, before a younger porter had placed a guiding hand on Rick’s back and directed him along a corridor to one side.
“This way sir. I shall have your suit brought to you directly.” Justin chaperoned expertly. “Dinner will be starting promptly as usual, so please feel free to leave your clothes where they fall and the maids will take care of them. Collections can be made at the usual location.”
“My clothes? Please don’t tak-”
“Just here on your right sir.” Justin ignored, pushing open the door to a moderately sized hotel room and leading Rick inside. “I shall be outside whenever you are ready.”
“Look, there’s been a mistake. I should just go.”
“Sir, please. Forgetting one’s suit is not an issue and I must insist that you get changed. We are at risk of starting late.”
“But I don’t-”
“And here’s your suit now. I hate to rush you sir, but we are pushed for time. If you have any other concerns then please raise them during the meal.”
Before Rick could splutter out another half-response, Justin had slipped out and shut the door. Once again shackled by his own reluctance to outright defy someone, he dutifully started to get changed against his will.
At the dinner table, with dessert slowly coming to a close, things had got little better. Rick had politely sat down in room with over a hundred unknown people, and eaten a stranger’s dinner whilst dressed in a borrowed dinner suit. There must have been a line somewhere at which not saying anything became less impolite than continuing to let them think he was Mr Tullick, or anyone else who was actually meant to be there for that matter. Wherever that line really was, he had surely blitzed past it by the end of the second course.
It hadn’t been an act of gluttony to consume everything provided to him under the belief that he was Mr Tullick. Rick had been acutely aware that someone else had paid for the fine foods being served to him with every bite, guilt assailing him as the delicate richness filled his mouth. The wine, too, had been a flood of burgundy remorse every time the glass came down empty. Whenever a bottle appeared and restored the fluid levels to their former glory it was as much as his conscience could take.
Yet despite the guilt, it was as nothing compared to the guilt he would have felt for leaving anything, or making the serving staff think that he wasn’t having a good time. It would also have drawn additional attention to himself to try to leave mid-way through the dinner, and that would invite questions as to why he was going. Slipping out unnoticed, after rescuing the clothes he had been forced to abandon in room 103, was the only way to go. He’d have to go via ‘the usual location place’ for clothing retrieval too, wherever that was. It was probably a desk of some sort; stolen clothes were always reclaimed at desks.
Even without the additional requirements to pass by a desk and employ stealth, escape was still a distant dream. Enclosed by seated guests on either side and constantly surrounded by helpful serving staff, Rick didn’t think he’d get an opportunity to slip away at any time soon. Add to that the fact that the lavatories appeared to be in the opposite direction to the exit and his best excuse was dashed against the rocks. Disarmed of his best weapons in the quest for egress, Rick was forced to sit in place with his ever-increasing tension. He was an impostor just waiting to be discovered, and far too full of high-class cuisine to make a decent run for it now.
“So Mr Tullick, did I hear correctly that you’ve been back to the Sudan this year?” A woman asked from a few seats down. She wore a bright red fascinator in her hair, which certainly drew the eye but was a little too pretentious to be truly fascinating, and a string of pearls around her skinny neck. Curled mousey-brown hair framed a face like someone had, in a moment of exquisite madness, upholstered a vulture with second-hand boot leather.
“I… erm… yes you might have done, probably.” Rick spluttered.
“Well? How did you get on this time?”
“Oh… you know. It was fine.” He answered generically. The vulture kept staring in silence, apparently expecting something more. “How did I get on with what in particular?”
“Come now! I know that you were trying to make those sales that Her Majesty’s own didn’t want to. Nothing wrong with finding business where there are eager partners, so don’t be bashful.” The woman-of-prey pushed. Rick was now even further out of his depth. He’d have thought it’d all be academic by this stage; the difference between having ten or eleven metres of water underneath him shouldn’t have mattered, but after that last question he felt every additional inch.
“Erm, well, it wouldn’t do to talk much about it, you know? I don’t want to, uh, kiss and tell, I suppose.” He stalled, cheeks flushing red.
“Mr Tullick! I wasn’t expecting you to be so coy.”
“Certainly not!” A gentleman to the vulture-woman’s left agreed. “After the stories I’ve heard I would have thought you’d be bragging freely about your exploits.” His grey moustache seemed all the paler against his ruddy, bloodshot cheeks. At least his glimmering face confirmed that Rick wasn’t the only person feeling the heat of the room.
“Well…”
“With everything that happened in your manufactory in China you should be shouting loud about Sudan. Anything which doesn’t end with an inferno to cover up somehow is a win in my book.” He blabbered.
Rick nearly spat out his tea. In all honesty spitting it out would have been preferable; instead, he was choking on it.
“Don’t choke, man!” the jovial gentleman bellowed across good-naturedly. Rick found himself missing the key lime pie discussion and its calorific innocence.
“Alright old boy?” Vulture enquired.
“Ha! Hit a nerve with the talk of China I suppose.” Moustache man laughed. “Well don’t you worry, we’re all friends here. No-one’s going to talk to the media about your little firestorm incident. Faulty refrigerators are a bugger, eh?” he added with a conspiratorial wink.
“Ugh erm, right. Thanks.” Rick answered quickly, his heart pounding ever harder. There was a definite sense of corruption and loose morality about the conversation, and that painted it as the kind of company it would sensible not to lie to. Or spy on. Or both, as he was technically currently doing.
In front of him now he saw a group of people who knew an awful lot about this Mr Tullick, apparently without knowing what he looked like. And from the sounds of it, they were quite willing to look beyond Rick’s own appearance, which he didn’t think matched up to the stories the other guests were alluding to. Rick’s his eyes flitted from face-to-face, defensively attempting to keep his own expression in check whilst he struggled to make sense of it all.
As best he could, which was fairly poorly, Rick tried to make some snap judgements and inferences about the other guests from their behaviour towards him thus far. It wasn’t too much better than the sea of strangers’ faces he’d seen when being shown to the empty chair earlier in the evening.
After getting changed and exiting his room, Justin had wasted no time in striding away and leading him to the dining area. Shifting his shoulders uncomfortably against the constricting fabrics of the dinner suit he’d been provided, Rick had followed along hurriedly. The porter walked quickly, too quickly for Rick to feel like he could tap him on the arm and try to explain himself again. It was all the more difficult to say ‘I wasn’t meant to be in here, I just got a bit swept up in a crowd’ after getting changed into someone else’s hired dinner suit and leaving a pile of clothes in a hotel room. That sort of behaviour generally expressed some kind of intentional action, and the staff would quite naturally exercise scepticism about the ‘innocent mistake’ angle as a result. Then again, he’d thought, it would be better to absorb the embarrassment of a wardrobe change than a wardrobe change alongside a full meal at somebody else’s expense. Especially if that somebody else appeared half way through. The realisation that he must, necessarily, be occupying the place of a genuinely late guest had drained through Rick’s body like icy water.
Hurrying to catch up, or even keep up, Rick followed Justin through a set of double doors and emerged into the vaulted dining hall of the palatial hotel. Everything about the decor was richer than Rick would ever be. The same, he would come to find out later, was true of the food. Underfoot a hardwood floor gleamed. Either the diligence of the cleaning staff was utterly exemplary or the floor was brilliant at dodging falling food. It had caught every one of Rick's footfalls thus far though, so it was, at least, not using any dodging abilities for mischief.
Hanging from the ceiling, which was maintaining a healthy distance from the floor and guests, were grand chandeliers and banners. Artwork from a time which Rick characterised as 'too old for a proper date' adorned the spaces between pillars and frescos, each of them probably worth a considerable amount more than Rick’s own house. He felt with certainty that he didn’t belong here.
“Justin? Justin? Where do I pick my clothes up? There’s been a misunderstanding.” Rick tried, but Justin either couldn’t or wouldn’t hear him. He was too busy striding between the tables, arranged at a one-person distance from one another, and giving unintelligible hand-signals to the other serving staff.
“There’s been a ho-” Rick had to stand aside to allow another waiter to saunter though. “There’s been a horrible misunderstanding here Justin.”
A gap in the sea of over-dressed diners finally appeared on a table to their left.
“This is your seat Mr Tullick.” Justin had said.
“Mr Tullick? I’m not supposed to-”
“Please.” the waiter said, pulling out the chair and indicating towards the seat. “First course will be along any second now.” An urgent edge to his voice made Rick think that following the instructions would get Justin to listen faster. That had, of course, been incorrect.
Accepting the seat reluctantly, Rick felt the chair sliding inwards once again under the waiter’s alarmingly effortless push, slotting him tightly between two similarly suited attendees. Immediately Rick turned to face Justin in an attempt to explain his predicament again, but the waiter had already disappeared.
Arms tucked in slightly to avoid clashing elbows with his neighbours, Rick slowly and fearfully rotated his head to face across the table. Ever since entering whatever event was being held at this hotel, the situation had escalated rapidly. Finding himself trapped among something approximating to high society, Rick told himself that he’d think of something soon and get away. There was no way to get stuck any deeper. Again, his correctness left something to be desired.
A brief puzzled expression drifted on and off of the moustached man’s face. Rick’s throat tightened, sure that he was drawing suspicion to himself with vague responses to potential human rights abuses. Whoever the man was, he seemed to know some deeply incriminating information about this Mr Tullick, and it didn’t seem likely that he would buy the embarrassed, nervous responses he was receiving. No-one who had subversive dealings in Sudan or caused apparent firestorms in China would feel uncomfortable with conversation at dinner. They’d probably make some kind of wittily dismissive remark and carry on unabashed. Contrariwise, Rick’s responses were mostly constructed out of stuttering and excessive perspiration. That certainly didn’t fit the international power-player that Mr Tullick seemed to be.
“Are you feeling yourself, Mr Tullick?” Vulture woman asked. It seemed to come more from a place of suspicion than concern.
“Key lime pie addled your mind?” the jovial man called over.
“Er, um, yes. Yes I’m fine. Just a little out of sorts from Sudan. Jet lag. And... erm, other things.” Rick spluttered.
“Jet lag? Still? I thought you were in the Sudan at the start of the year?” Vulture responded with surprise.
A significant amount of internal cursing echoed through Rick’s mind.
“Oh. Well I’ve been working on their time zone still.”
“Sudan is only two hours ahead of us. How could you ever have had jetlag?” Moustache enquired.
“Yes…. Yes it is but I’ve been working a Sudanese night shift. So I start even later into the night than I otherwise would.” Internally he started to map out the most efficient path from table to exit. The time for excuses might soon be past, and he could simply leg it.
“Alongside your normal activities?!”
“Yes. Apparently alongside my normal activities.” Whatever normal was for someone like Mr Tullick.
“So you’re tired. You’re not jet lagged.” Moustache clarified.
“Don’t be so picky Renshaw.”
“I just think the man should say what he means.”
“You knew what he meant regardless of what he said. When our mutual association depends on immaculate grammar and an infallible lexicon then we’ll discuss each other’s choice of words more deeply. Until then I would appreciate a short period of this evening without you judging everyone else like an aggravated English teacher.” Vulture-woman swooped in, ignoring the carrion of Rick for the relatively fresh meat of the moustached man. Perhaps they had some history, or perhaps they all just enjoyed a good argument. Or a bad one.
Silence filled the space between them. Rick could almost feel it creaking like a rope under tension as neither one of them made any motion. Even the more distant conversations seemed to fade away, drowned out by the intense lack of speaking at close proximity. A bead of condensation ran down vulture-woman’s wine glass. Steam rose cautiously from Rick’s tea. A peppercorn sauce spill dried slowly onto the table cloth.
“I’ll have you know” moustache man said with a soft menace “that clear communication is critical to our partnership. Contradictions, inaccuracies and vagueness are both the tools and the pitfalls of the liar. Lies and secrets have no place here.”
Every word hung in the air, as if giving everyone else sufficient time to take them in. Rick’s stomach found yet more opportunity to tighten. The vulture’s eyes narrowed. Jovial man reached across the table to the leftovers of someone else’s key lime pie.
And then they burst into laughter.
“You’re a dog, Renshaw.” The vulture smirked.
“Can you imagine it? Any of us here admitting to… well, any of our business?”
“Lies and secrets have no place here indeed! I rather think they’re our conditions of acceptance!”
Further laughter shook the table. Rick tried an unconvincing smile as his eyes continued to widen in terror. Any further and his eyelids stood a significant chance of folding back over his forehead. That would definitely make him look out of place.
All-in-all, Rick was not comfortable with his situation. Somehow all the laughter made it even worse. The deeply unlawful nature of what had been implied was bad enough, but coupled to the mirthful tone it took on an even more sinister aspect. A better man might try to get as many details as possible and take them to the police. He might call the emergency services discreetly from the lavatories and arrange to pass information. He might even try to get an invitation to further activities and crack the whole corrupt charade open. Then again, a better man probably wouldn’t have been too scared to say ‘I’m leaving now’, nor would they have got changed against their own will and eaten a delicious meal under duress, so they wouldn’t have had a chance to do any of the exciting police work anyway.
Rick himself was not a better man. By definition he was only as good of a man as he was, and even then he wondered if his own estimation of self-quality had been a little high in the past. All he wanted to do was get himself as far away as possible from the scenario in which he’d become embroiled, and subsequently forget about the whole affair. Heroics were for heroes, and steadfast repressions of awkward moments of his own creation were for Rick. It was just a matter of expediting his progress to the point of repression, and away from the agonising process of painful memory creation.
"When's the entertainment anyway?" Moustache asked vulture, apparently losing interest in whatever he wanted to hear from Mr Tullick after the tension-breaking merriment. Rick didn't allow himself to relax, still staring with eyes held wide open and lips involuntarily pursed.
The man on Rick's left sneezed, raising an arm to cover his face and, in doing so, knocking Rick's own arm half across his body. Looking down in horror he saw that the motion had dipped his fork full of key lime pie into the steaming tea, creating an amalgamated horror of dissolving cream cheese and floating biscuit. Besides that, he liked his tea black and free from lime, so two crimes had been committed in that one foul swoop.
A small wave of mildly shocked noises emanated outwards from the over-dunked tea. Rick dared not kick up a fuss though, not least of all because the gentleman who had knocked might well, on closer inspection, have been a mountain gorilla somehow tricked into a dinner suit. Muscle bulged within the arms, pulling at the seams and leaving them perilously taut. Any more pressure and it looked like he would rupture at any moment, which was certainly a breach of good table manners. Hulking away about his own business, the figure was markedly different to the other guests. There were certainly some other large contenders, but their bulging wasn't of a particularly muscular variety. He didn’t even appear to have noticed what he had done, and that was perfectly fine with Rick.
To his other side was a different story, one of far less extreme musculature and an even less convincing character. In all his years Rick had never seen anyone who genuinely had a hook in place of a hand. This was still true, but he had now sat next to someone with what appeared to be a strangely decadent washing up brush sprouting from their wrist. It was doing a remarkable job of controlling cutlery, and it had taken Rick a great deal of time to even notice that where there should have been fingers, only bristles remained.
Seeing the brush hand was punishment enough for wandering eyes, and he returned them squarely to his own plate, staring down without seeing as his mind looped the brush hand over and over for him. Taking a perfunctory sip of his key lime tea, at a loss for anything else to do, Rick was faintly aware of a brushing sound to his right, like someone scrubbing at a stubbornly stained set of cutlery. He scrunched his eyes tight.
"Limey tea not to your tastes?" Vulture asked with a smirk, evoking a ripple of laughter from the guests around her. Rick couldn't see her face, on account of his scrunched up closed eyes, but he could hear the smirk distorting her words. The suited gorilla was probably chuckling away too at his unwitting dessert-beverage creation. They all must have known from the start that he wasn't supposed to be here. They were toying with him and taunting him with the knowledge that he knew nothing of Mr Tullick. Was this all planned, from seating him betwixt a man-brush hybrid and an ape to torturing him with the fear of exposure as a fraud?
Rick’s heartrate, which had scarcely been stable since the start of the evening, was once again on the rise and threatening to pound his chest clean open.
“Leave the man be.” Brush said suddenly, his voice like a leather jacket being zipped up through molasses. “We’ve finally got him out here, let’s not make him regret it.”
Risking a look up and finding eye contact, Rick received a respectful nod from brush, who then looked down and continued his own dessert.
“We’re not doing any harm, he knows how to take a joke.” Vulture defended.
“Knows how to take a lot more than a joke from what I’ve heard.” Moustache added. “I thought ‘back-handers’ and ‘inventive liberties with export law’ were more his flavour of takings.”
Rick swallowed audibly.
“See, this” Brush said, swinging his arm around and pointing at each of Rick and moustache in turn with the brush. Rick’s eyes followed it involuntarily, fearing an impromptu scrubbing. “is what I’m talking about. Mr Tullick has come out for the very first time to one of our little soirees and here you are making him uncomfortable. Man tries to make a profit for himself by some underhand means, sure, but it doesn’t mean he wants to go into the details over a cheesecake.”
“Looks like he’s mostly uncomfortable with having a cleaning appliance dining next to him.” Vulture sneered.
“You’d better wash your mouth out.” Brush advised back.
“Or what? You’ll scrub it clean for her?” Moustache challenged.
The odd nervous chuckle was the only sound to break the following silence. If anything, it highlighted the lack of any other noise in the immediate area. Brush’s eyes narrowed.
“Or we’ll find that Mr Tullick declines our next invitation, which would be most unwelcome.” He said with slow, measured speech. “And you’ll find that a number of acceptances don’t have invitations to match in the first place.”
“Bah! Empty words. You’ve not got the clout to make that kind of threat. Are you that much of a delicate flower, Mr Tullick, that we’re scaring you away?”
“Well, erm… I…” Rick struggled. He didn’t want to escalate the engagement with moustache and vulture, but felt a strange compulsion to stand in solidarity with brush. He’d put himself out for Rick, and it wouldn’t do to let him down. Rick also noted that the jovial chap had been strangely silent this whole time; a fair weather friend who rode the high waves of good dessert but disappeared when the going got a little tougher. “I think that I would prefer not to speak about my…uh… business. As has been rightly indicated for me.”
The only thing quivering more than Rick’s hands was his voice, to the point that his statement sounded like the confession of a washing machine struggling against a particularly heavy load.
“Tch.” Vulture clicked disdainfully.
“So much for the reclusive charismatic.” Moustache grumbled. “All talk and no trousers. No, scrap that. He’s no talk and no trousers.”
Rick couldn’t help but feel that exchanging enquiries for insults wasn’t in the true spirit of what brush had been suggesting, but at least it put less onus on him to reply. And if moustache kept it up then Rick thought it might give him a reasonable excuse to push back from the table and make a dash for it.
“Thanks” He muttered quietly to brush.
“Don’t mention it. I remember my first major sale, like your Sudan deal. Point of professional pride, sure, but not exactly dinner conversation.” Brush replied, still looking down at his plate. "Why you changed your mind and finally came along is none of my business so don't worry, I won't ask. It'll keep the political animals happy that you did, though." He said, idly rotating his brush hand with a spoon still nestled among its bristles. "Although I suppose that's stating the obvious to someone like you."
"That's fine, it's, er, nice to hear someone saying the obvious things. You know. It confirms that the obvious is true and known." Rick said. He was desperate for the obvious to be stated right then, since no-one else seemed to be stating anything definite at all. The obvious would at least give him a slight ledge for whenever he found a leg to stand on, rather than panicked stammering and and guesswork.
Brush paused his rotations and leaned back, suit jacket falling open slightly and revealing a few dinner-stains on his otherwise white shirt. Rick tried not to look; it was probably something to do with trying to hold cutlery using a cleaning tool rather than the one perfectly functional hand he had remaining.
“I guess so.”
Rick took another sip of his tea, remembering too late that it was tainted. Part of him thought he should just ask the waiter for another cup, but that was overruled by the part of him which screamed that he still needed to leave immediately. Brush had bailed him out of one round of questioning, but there was no guarantee that it would happen again. Rick needed to start seriously paving his own way to freedom.
“So… erm… do you know where I need to go to pick up my clothes?”
Brush stopped. He hadn’t been doing much of anything, but it was perfectly clear that whatever had been going on inside or outside of his head, Rick’s question had caused it to stop. The thick, tanned skin of brush’s face folded up, the cogs turning clearly enough for everyone to see but not necessarily reaching a satisfactory conclusion. He turned the words over this way and that in his mind, attempting to mould them into a shape which made more sense, but found them to be insufficiently malleable.
“Are you asking me if I know where your dry-cleaner is?” he finally asked.
“Oh, no! I’m asking whereabouts in here, this hotel, that I need to go to get my clothes back. The usual place for that.”
Brush looked at Rick properly for the first time. It was the kind of look used to determine whether a flushed toilet was going to behave itself, or make a grand and soggy offering to the floor below. His eyes ran up and down Rick’s body, lingered on Rick’s own eyes, and then returned to his plate.
“You’re already dressed.”
“I… yes but I had to get changed into this, and the porter told me my clothes would be available to pick up in the normal place.” Rick explained.
“Where, and why, did you leave them?”
“It was in one of the rooms while I was getting changed because the porter told me to.”
Another lingering look was the only answer Rick got.
“He said I could pick them up from the usual place so I didn’t think any more of it, but I don’t know where that place is.”
“Nor do I.” Brush said, sounding a little suspicious, as if he thought Rick was making a joke at his expense. “I’d guess reception is a good starting place though.”
“Yeah… sounds good. Thanks.”
Brush went back to idly turning his brush hand around and watching it reflect the candle light.
“So… um, when does this all finish?” Rick asked, continuing to push for information.
“Normally around midnight. After the show’s over.” Brush told him without looking up. Part of Rick suspected that the man was regretting engaging with him in the first place.
“Oh right. OK.” There was no way Rick would be staying stuck until midnight. Quite apart from anything else his last train home departed the station at quarter past and he was more than fifteen minutes from the station. If theft and fraud weren’t enough of a reason to leave, then the prospect of an extortionate late-night cab ride certainly was.
“Some folk like to keep the night going elsewhere, of course.” Brush added ominously, although the ominousness may have arisen from the implication that the time after midnight might hold anything other than bedtime.
“Yeah, of course.” There was a silence, which Rick felt unaccountably responsible to fill. “Do… you tend to go with them?”
“Not usually, no. After the whole evening here there’s only so much more I want to talk about arming the mobs. By the time I’ve closed the deal and the cash has been exchanged I tend to be burned out on the topic, so you can imagine how little interest I have in extending this” he waved his brush around vaguely “whole business.”
“Yes… yeah.” Rick agreed for the sake of appearances, whilst he screamed inside. He was making friends with an arms dealer. The irony that he was missing an arm of his own did not calm Rick’s nerves.
“And everyone likes to get into the details of who their highest profile customer was, how many cities have fallen to whose products, which regime is asking about what. It just gets very dry.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And none of them will match up to your record anyway, Tullick. Everyone else here is small-fry compared to you.” Brush continued, starting to get lost on a train of thought.
“Oh… I don’t know about that…”
“Well I do. Numbers don’t lie.” He looked up and saw how obviously uncomfortable Rick was becoming. “But I’m getting as bad as the rest of them with all this shop-talk, I’ll give it a rest now.”
“It’s fine…. But erm, I’d better just go for a moment.” Rick said, initiating his grand escape attempt.
“For a moment? Be back soon or you’ll miss the start of the show.” Moustache told him with mild surprise from across the table.
“Yep.” Rick replied dutifully. It must have sounded unconvincing.
“Disappearing again so soon? More Sudanese night-shift work?” Vulture butted-in.
“No… no not tonight.”
“Sit down, man. You’re already here and it’s going to start any minute. Give it a shot.” Moustache persisted.
“Well, er, yes that’s my point exactly. I have to go now otherwise I’d be leaving in the middle, and that would seem awfully discourteous of me.” Rick countered.
“Honestly, I think that supplying napalm to a militant group was probably further along the road of discourtesy than leaving mid-show.” Vulture snapped back accusingly.
“Oh my god.” Rick uttered involuntarily. Several sets of eyes locked onto him. “I mean, bringing that up at the dinner table is a bit… erm… you know.”
“I don’t think we do know, Mr Tullick. Why don’t you explain?” Vulture asked suspiciously, but she received no answer. Rick was too busy scurrying along between the tables, barely holding himself back from breaking into a run. Decreasingly hushed voices followed him as he pushed his way through the double doors at the end of the room, amid a sea of half-interested turned heads.
“Could I please have my clothes back?” Rick asked urgently at the reception desk.
“What’s the name, please, sir?” The receptionist asked with a brave expression of professionalism, trying not to look at the glistening sweat on Rick’s face.
“It’s Ri.. erm, Mr Tullick?”
“And do you have a first name, Mr Tullick?”
“Not that I’ve heard.” Rick answered honestly.
The receptionist kept his gaze downward and breathed an almost imperceptible but unmistakably heavy sigh. After some scanning of a leger in front of him, he evidently found what he was searching for.
“Ah, here we go. Clothes left in room 103 yes? We’ve burned them already, sir.”
Rick tipped his head to one side slightly.
“Bu…”
“They were so… out of keeping with everything else that we assumed them to be a disguise of some sort.” The receptionist told him matter-of-factly.
“One that I wouldn’t want to change back into to leave?” Rick questioned.
“That is the general custom sir, yes. No-one can match what goes in to what comes out.”
“But Justin said that I could pick them up from the usual place.” Rick complained, feeling betrayed by Justin’s dishonesty. It was a bit rich, following Rick’s prolonged identity theft, but the irony was lost on him.
“He’s new to the role, sir.” The receptionist explained. “We’ll admonish him for his mistakes and misleading you. I can assure you that whatever is left of your clothing cannot be picked up from anywhere, excepting with the use of a dustpan and brush.”
“Oh…” Rick said, defeated. “OK. Can I keep this suit?”
“We’ll add the cost to your tab, sir.” The receptionist said with a mirthless smile.
“Works for me.” Rick said. “Well, er, bye.”
The receptionist looked back down at his books, and Rick fled from the hotel.
Rick half-ran along the dark street, popping in and out of pools of illumination from the streetlights. Every car that sped by, every headlight that flashed past him, and every footstep behind him was pursuit to his panicked mind. That is, until they all petered out in a fizzle of underwhelming harmlessness. By the time he reached the train station the prospect of immediate pursuit had dulled down into negligibility. Taking a seat on the quiet coach after all the uncomfortable conversation he’d been forced to endure, Rick peered out of the window for a last double-check that he wasn’t being followed. The only person in a conspicuous dinner suit or ball gown was him. He was free.
Calmed by his train ride and the short walk afterwards, Rick entered his home, climbed the soft-carpeted staircase, and crept into the bedroom. Navigating the darkness by experience alone he padded to his own side of the bed, carefully undoing the unfamiliar buttons on his dinner suit.
“Hng, Rick?” came Carly’s bleary, sleepy voice. “Where have you been?”
“Hey. I, erm, got caught up having dinner unexpectedly.” He told her.
“Unexpected dinner?” she asked with a yawn. “With work friends?”
“No, not quite. With some strangers. It’s quite a long story.” He replied, deciding that the details would require far more thought before getting relayed.
“Right. Sounds lovely.” She said, noncommittally.
“I got a dinner suit too.” Rick added as he slipped beneath the covers.
“Why?”
“Because my other clothes got… well… they got burned.” He confessed.
Carly yawned again.
“Oh dear.” She assessed. Rick wasn’t sure that she was giving this conversation her full attention.
“And I think I met some war criminals, technically.” He said, getting it in whilst her attentiveness was low. That way he had technically already told her, so if he forgot to mention it again in the morning then he had plausible deniability.
“That’s nice. You can tell me all about it in the morning.”
“Yeah, alright. Will do. Night night my love.”
“Night, trouser-burner.”
Carly’s breathing almost immediately slowed and deepened, indicating her departure from wakefulness. Rick shifted and shuffled himself into comfort, his whole body relieved to be free from the fabric prison in which it had spent the night. His mind relived the details of the evening over and over, not in chronological order but in sporadic bursts of conversation, and always against the visual backdrop of a peculiar prosthetic brush hand. Whatever had been going on, he told himself, the main thing was that he’d got home safely. Amid questions of Mr Tullick and his international capers, Rick let his eyes close and drifted safely off to sleep, safe in the knowledge of who he was supposed to be.