Three
Blaine wrestled with the key to the front door of his building and, after an eternity, managed to get inside. The stairwell was gloomy and damp. It smelled of rotten eggs, and led up many flights through a dark dingy twilight zone of urban squalor.
The sordidness and the stench increased with altitude.
By the fifth floor, where Blaine’s poky apartment was found, the filth was especially vile, as if painted on thick, like a theatrical backdrop.
Dressed in a grubby mackintosh, the belt tied in a knot at the waist, Blaine began the ascent in a slow trudge. In one hand he held an old fedora and, in the other, a TV-dinner furled up in a crumpled paper bag.
As he approached the narrow landing of the third floor, the door to 3A jerked open. The mousy hunched figure of a woman could almost be seen in the shadows and the grime.
‘What you got up there, Williams? A herd of rhinos?!’
‘Hello Mrs. Cohen.’
‘All that banging and crashing. Every day it’s getting worse. Any more of it, and I’ll get the Super up there!’
‘I’ve been at work all day, Mrs. Cohen.’
‘Sure you have. And I’m Mata Hari!’
‘In any case your apartment is two floors above you.’
‘So?’
‘So, goodnight to you, Mrs. Cohen,’ said Blaine, as he lumbered upwards.
On the fourth floor landing, he came across a young clean-cut couple standing outside a particularly battered door. They seemed uneasy, as if instinct were telling them to flee. Both turning at once, they smiled anxiously at Blaine.
Such was their fear they might have screamed.
‘Are you here to rent 4D?’
The couple nodded in unison.
‘Oh,’ Blaine replied. ‘I see.’
‘Whhhhhat’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing, nothing much at all... except...’
‘Except?’
‘Except for the rats, and the roaches... and...’
‘And?’
‘Well, surely Mr. Rogers told you...’
‘Told us what?’
‘About what happened to Mr. Wilson... you know... the business with the shotgun.’ Blaine paused, leaned back on his heels. ‘Made a helluva mess and...’
Before he could finish, there was the sound of city shoes and cheap pumps taking the stairs two at a time. After much scurrying, it was followed by the distant echo of the front door slamming shut.
A minute later, Blaine was sitting on the expansive furry couch that dominated his living-room. A Coors Light in one hand, a remote in the other, the Hungry Hombre platter balanced between his knees.
A few feet away stood a large screen TV, the centrepiece of an apartment that was a shrine to Casablanca.
Every inch was filled with memorabilia.
There were cabinets packed with Casablanca knick-knacks – mugs, albums, and snow-globes, miniature figurines of the leading cast, medallions and cheap plastic giveaways. There was Humphrey Bogart soap – still boxed, a stack of Casablanca playing cards, and a large-scale model of Rick’s Café.
The walls were covered in framed posters, each one emblazoned with the movie’s title and its cast. And, on the far side of the room, to the left of the couch, was an enormous neon sign in vivid scarlet. Every few seconds the cursive script came alive, bathing the dim room in a warm comforting glow.
Without thinking, Blaine clicked a fingertip to the remote, took a swig of his beer, and sat back as he did each night to munch his way through the Hungry Hombre meal for one.
The neon flickered on and then off, as the movie’s title sequence rolled in black and white.
And, with Blaine moving on to the Hungry Hombre dessert, there came the title of that inimitable destination – CASABLANCA.