Later that night I woke suddenly. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was or whom I was with. I was naked, as was this person sleeping next to me. Julia never slept naked, so how could this be Julia? I never slept naked, so how could this be me? I sat up—and that was when I saw her pajamas and mine tangled together on the floor. Wan moonlight filled the room. It made the furniture look as if it were phosphorescing.
I had no idea what time it was. I thought it must be very late, but when I checked my watch I found that it was only two in the morning. Ordinarily at two in the morning we would have just been getting back to the hotel, brushing our teeth. Then I remembered how early we had gone to bed the night before, and with that memory came a sensation of sinking, of being dragged down into a disturbed wakefulness deeper than sleep, stranger than dreams. As quietly as I could, I got out of bed. I dressed in the dark and went out. The light in the corridor hurt my eyes. All the doors were shut, even the one belonging to the woman Julia had dubbed Messalina, the woman who stood all day in her doorway, smoking, waiting for someone who never arrived … The lift was broken, so I took the stairs. I had to tip the night porter to be sure that he would let me back in. There was no one in the street. All I could hear was the distant rumble of taxis, the sleep-cooing of pigeons. I walked to the Rossio, where for a while I stood in front of the Francfort Hotel, looking up at the moon. A few lit windows studded the dark facade. None of these, I knew, belonged to Edward, for his and Iris’s room, he had told me, faced in the other direction, onto the market. And in that room—what was happening now? Were they naked? Was Daisy in the bed with them? There was so much more about them that I didn’t know than that I did.
How long ago had it been that I had taken the train to Estoril, and hoped that when I got there I would find Edward waiting for me, and then, when I had gotten there, he had been waiting for me? A week at most. So why did it now seem too much to wish for that if I stared hard enough at the door to the Francfort Hotel, it would open and he would step through it? And still I gave it a try. I focused all my attention on that door, willed it to open, willed him to step through it … But he didn’t. Considering the hour, the Rossio was tranquil. A beggar cried for alms, an old man sang a fado, from the Chave d’Ouro a couple emerged—the man in black tie, the woman in an evening gown—and made their way to the fountain near the statue of Dom Pedro, where they took off their shoes and stepped gingerly up over the rim and into the water. But then a policeman appeared, and they got out and skittered away. I saw that I had two choices—I could stay here all night or I could go back to my room—so I decided to go back. Despite the tip, the porter answered the door grumpily, and when I asked him if he could make me a sandwich, either he did not understand me or he pretended not to understand me. Back in the room, I tiptoed so as not to wake Julia. I took off my clothes and was about to put on my pajamas when I remembered that I had not had them on before I went out. Naked again, I climbed over Julia into the bed. She flopped around onto her back. It was only when I had the sheets pulled over my chest that I realized I had once again forgotten to close the shutters.