All That Man Is by David Szalay

will,’ Bérnard tells her.
    â€˜We love Cyprus,’ she says, moving on her stool. ‘Every year we come here. Don’t we? I’m Sandra, by the way. And this is Charmian.’
    â€˜Bérnard,’ says Bérnard.
    They stay there drinking for two hours, until the hotel’s shadow starts to move over them. They get quite drunk. And then Bérnard, whose thoughts have never been far from Iveta and what will happen that evening, notices the time and says he has to leave.
    The two women have just ordered another pair of Magners – their fourth or fifth – and Sandra says, ‘We’ll see you at supper then.’
    Bérnard is wading away. ‘Okay,’ he says.
    Showering in the locker room a few minutes later, he has already forgotten about them.
    *
    When he wakes up it is dark. He is in his room in the Hotel Poseidon. The narrow room is very hot and music thuds from the place nearby.
    It was about six when he got back from the Hotel Vangelis, and having a slight headache, he thought he would lie down for a while before supper. He must have fallen into a deep sleep. Sitting up suddenly, he looks at his watch, fearful that it might be too late to find Iveta at Jesters. It is only ten, though, and he lies down again. He is sweating in the close heat of the room. Last night he tried the air conditioning, and it didn’t work.
    He washes, as best he can, at the sink.
    The light in the bathroom is so dim he can barely see his face in the mirror.
    Then he tidies up a bit. It is his assumption that Iveta will be in this room later, and he does not want it littered with his dirty stuff.
    He spends quite a lot of time deciding what to wear, finally opting for the dressier look of the plain white shirt, and leaving the horizontally striped polo for another night. He leaves the top three buttons of the shirt undone, so that it is open down to the tuft of hair on his sternum, and digs in his suitcase for the tiny sample of Ermenegildo Zegna Uomo that was once stuck to a magazine in his uncle’s office. He squirts about half of it on himself, and then, after inquisitively sniffing his wrists, squirts the other half on as well.
    Satisfied, he turns his attention to his hair, combing back the habitual mop to the line of his skull – thereby disclosing, unusually, his low forehead – and holding the combed hair in place with a generous scoop of scented gel.
    In the buzzing light of the bathroom he inspects himself.
    He buttons the third button of his shirt.
    Then he unbuttons it again.
    Then he buttons it again.
    His forehead, paler than the rest of his face, looks weird, he thinks.
    Working with the comb he tries to hide it, but that just makes it look even weirder.
    Finally, impatient with himself, he tries to put the hair back the way it was before.
    There is still something weird about it, and he worries as he hurries down the stairs to the lobby and, in a travelling zone of Uomo, out into the warm night.
    It is nearly eleven now, and he has not eaten anything. It’s not that he is hungry – far from it – it’s just that he feels he ought to ‘line’ his stomach.
    He stops at Porkies and eats part of a kebab, forcing a few mouthfuls down. He is almost shaking with excitement, with anticipation. He tries to still his nerves with a vodka-Red Bull, and with the memories of how easily they talked in the morning, of how eagerly she had told him how to find Jesters – she practically drew him a map. The memories help.
    He abandons the kebab and starts for Jesters, through the heaving streets.
    He finds it easily, following a pack of shirtless singing youths to its shed-like facade, outlined in hellish neon tubes. The looming neon cap-and-bells, the drunken queue.
    Five euros, he hands over.
    Inside, he looks for her.
    Moving through strobe light, through a wall of throbbing sound, he looks for her.
    The place is solid flesh. Limbs flickering in darkness.