Love You Dead

11 Wednesday 18 February

Shortly before 7 p.m., showered and wearing the most revealing outfit she had with her — a short black dress and black leather ankle boots — Jodie perched on a red chair at the long, darkly lit bar and ordered a Manhattan. She was slender and beautiful, with all the confidence to go with it. She had styled her dark hair in ringlets and was classily — if just a tiny bit too revealingly — dressed.

But her best asset of all had always been her eyes. They were wide, cobalt blue and crystal clear. You-can-trust-me eyes. Come-to-bed eyes.

Dangerous eyes.

She sipped her drink slowly, pacing herself. But sooner than she had anticipated, all that was left of it was the maraschino cherry at the bottom. Already she was feeling a warm glow from the alcohol. As she raised a hand to signal one of the bartenders, she became aware of a figure beside her, a man easing himself onto the next chair.

‘Allow me to buy you another?’ he asked in a richly charming voice that was part American, part mittel-European and part very drunk.

She shot him a glance. He was in his late thirties or early forties, with Latino good looks beneath short, black tousled hair and beautiful, almost impossibly white teeth. He wore a black jacket over a white shirt, with a gold chain round his neck. And he looked wasted, either on drugs or booze.

‘Sure,’ she said, smiling back. ‘A Manhattan, straight up, with two cherries.’

He ordered two, then turned back to her. ‘My name’s Romeo,’ he said.

‘Juliet!’ she replied, thinking on her feet.

‘You are kidding?’

‘Nope!’

His eyes widened in a smile. Large, hazelnut irises. With very dilated pupils, she noticed. He was definitely off his face on something.

‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon!’ he said, theatrically.

‘Who is already sick and pale with grief!’ she replied.

‘You know it?’ he said with astonishment. ‘You know Shakespeare?’

‘Of course!’

‘Well, I am impressed. Romeo meets Juliet in a bar! How often is that going to happen?’

‘Meant to be!’ she replied, locking eyes with his. ‘So what’s your full name?’

‘Romeo Munteanu.’

Their drinks arrived and he raised his glass. ‘That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.’

‘Be not her maid, since she is envious.’ Jodie tilted her head. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I think anyone would be envious of us at this moment. The two most beautiful people in all of New York seated in a bar together.’

‘So you’re a modest man, are you, Romeo?’

‘Truth before modesty!’ He clinked his glass against hers and they drank. ‘So what brings you to this city?’

‘Family business,’ she said. ‘You?’

‘Business, too.’

‘What business are you in?’

‘Oh, you know, import — export. That kind of thing.’

She picked up on his evasive tone. ‘Sounds interesting. Where are you from?’

‘Romania — Bucharest. Have you been there?’

Locking eyes with his again she said, provocatively, ‘Not yet.’

Their drinks slipped down easily and quickly and he ordered a second round.

‘So do you work for a Romanian company?’ she asked.

‘International,’ he said. ‘International company. I travel constantly. I like to travel.’

‘Me too.’

He lifted one cherry out of his glass by the stalk, held it up in the air and moved it towards her mouth with a quizzical look.

She closed her lips around it, pulled it clear of the stalk and chewed it, tasting the sweetness of the marinated fruit and the tang of the bourbon and Martini Rosso.

Twenty minutes later, as he drained his third Manhattan — and Jodie hers, too — he said, suddenly, ‘Do you do coke?’

She nodded, feeling reckless from the drink now. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’ve got the best stuff ever — like — I mean — the best, you know? Up in my room.’ He nodded at the ceiling. ‘That is — if you’re brave enough to come to a stranger’s room?’

‘Fortune favours the brave, right?’

‘Does that come from Shakespeare, too?’

She smiled. ‘Fortune and men’s eyes.’

‘Uh?’

‘Sonnet Twenty-Nine. When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state.’

He looked at her, bemused, for some moments. ‘Not only are you very beautiful, you are a font of knowledge. What else do you know?’

She stared back into his eyes. ‘I know how to drive a man I fancy wild in bed.’

‘Indeed? And I believe I know how to satisfy a woman.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, it is so.’

‘So show me!’