Anyway, I'm expecting an agenda and directions to a meeting room, not a bar invite from a mysterious Ramona. I rack my brains: Who do I know who's called Ramona? Wasn't there a song ...? Joey Ramone ... no. I fold the envelope and stuff it in my back pocket. Sounds like a porn spammer's alias.
I break out of the slowly shuffling coffee queue just in time to annoy the furiously mustachioed counter dude. Where the hell is the Laguna Bar?
I spot a number of dark, glass-partitioned areas clustered around the atrium in front of the check-in desk. They're the usual hotel squeeze joints, overpriced restaurants, and 24-hour shops selling whatever you forgot to pack yesterday morning at four o'dark. I hunt around until I spot the word LAGUNA picked out in teensy gold Fraktur Gothic to one side of a darkened doorway, in an evident attempt to confuse the unwary.
I peek round the partition. It's a bar, expensively tricked out in that retro-seventies style with too much polished Italian marble and sub-Bauhaus chrome furniture. At this time of evening it's nearly empty (although maybe the fact that they charge six euros for a beer has something to do with it). I check my phone: it's 6:15. Damn. I head for the bar, glancing around hopefully in case the mysterious Ramona's wearing a cardboard sign saying: I'M RAMONA — TRY ME.
So much for subtle spy-work.
"Ein Weissbier, bitte," I ask, exhausting about sixty percent of my total German vocabulary.
"Sure thing, man." The bartender turns to grab a bottle.
"I'm Ramona," a female voice with a vaguely East Coast accent murmurs quietly in my left ear. "Don't turn around." And something hard pokes me in the ribs.
"Is that the aerial of your mobile phone, or are you displeased to see me?" It probably is a phone, but I do as she says: in this kind of situation it doesn't do to take chances.
"Shut up, wise guy." A slim hand reaches discreetly under my left arm and paws at my chest. The bartender is taking an awfully long time to find that bottle. "Hey, what is this Scheiss"
"You found the shoulder holster? Careful, that's my Bluetooth GPS receiver in there. And that pocket's where I keep the noise-canceling headphones for my iPod — hey, watch out, they're expensive! — and the spare batteries for my PDA, and — "
Ramona lets go of my fishing jacket and a moment later the stubby object disappears from the small of my back. The bartender swings round, beaming and clutching a weirdlooking glass in one hand and a bottle with a culturally stereotyped label in the other. "Dude, will this do? It's a really good Weizenbock ..."
"Bob!" trills Ramona, stepping sideways until I can finally see her. "Make mine a dry gin and tonic, ice, but hold the fruit," she tells the barman, smiling like sunrise over the Swiss Alps. I glance at her sidelong and try not to gape.
We're in supermodel territory here — or maybe she's Uma Thurman's stunt double. She's almost five centimeters taller than me, blonde, and she's got cheekbones Mo would kill for.
The rest of her isn't bad, either. She has the kind of figure that most models dream about — if indeed that isn't what she does for a living when she isn't sticking guns in civil servants' backs — and whatever the label on her strapless silk gown says, it probably costs more than I earn in a year before you add in the jewelry dripping from her in incandescent waves. Real physical perfection isn't something a guy like me gets to see up close and personal very often, and it's something to marvel at — then run away from, before it hypnotizes you like a snake staring into the eyes of something small, furry, and edible.
She's beautiful but deadly, and right now she has one slim hand in her black patent-leather evening bag: judging from the slight tension at the corners of her eyes I'll bet hard money she's holding a small, pearl-handled automatic pistol just out of sight. One of my wards bites me on the back of my wrist and I realize what's come over me: it's a glamour. I feel a sudden pang of something like homesickness for Mo, who at least comes from my own planet, even if she insists on practicing the violin at all hours.
"Fancy meeting you here like this, darling!" Ramona adds, almost as an afterthought.
"How unexpected," I agree, taking a step sideways and reaching for the glass and bottle. The bartender, dazzled by her smile, is already reaching for a shot glass. I manage an experimental grin. Ramona reminds me of a certain ex-girlfriend (okay, she reminds me of Mhari: I admit it, try not to wince, and move on) done up to the nines and in full-on predator mode. As I get used to the impact of her glamour I begin to get an edgy feeling I've seen her before. "Is that your red Audi in the car park"
She turns the full force of her smile on me. "What if it is"
Glub glub ... chink. Ice cubes sloshing into gin. "That'll be sixteen euros, man."
"Put it on my room tab," I say automatically. I slide the card over. "If it is, you nearly rubbed me out on the A45."
"I nearly — " She looks puzzled for a moment. Then even more puzzled. "Was it you in that ridiculous little tin can"
"If my office would pay for an Audi TT I'd drive one, too."
I feel a stab of malicious glee at her visible disquiet. "Who do you think I am? And who are you, and what do you want"
The bartender drifts away to the other end of the bar, still smiling blissfully under her influence. I blink back little warning flickers of migraine-like distortion as I look at her.
That's got to be at least a level three glamour she's wearing, I tell myself, and shiver. My ward isn't powerful enough to break through it so I can see her as she really is, but at least I can tell I'm being spoofed.
"I'm Ramona Random. You can call me Ramona." She takes a chug of the G&T, then stares down her nose at me with those disquietingly clear eyes, like an aristocratic Eloi considering a shambling, half-blind Morlock who's somehow made it to the surface. I take a preliminary sip of my beer, waiting for her to continue. "Do you want to fuck me"
I spray beer through my nostrils. "You have got to be kidding!" It's more tactful than I'd rather bed a king snake and sounds less pathetic than my girlfriend would kill me, but the instant I come out with it I know it's a gut reaction, and true: 'What's under that glamour? Nothing I'd want to meet in bed, I'll bet.
"Good," says Ramona, closing the door very firmly on that line of speculation, much to my relief. She nods, a falling lock of flax-colored hair momentarily concealing her face: "Every guy I've ever slept with died less than twenty-four hours later." It must be my expression, because a moment later she adds, defensively: "It's just a coincidence! I didn't kill them. Well, most of them."