Likewise the next, and the one after that, and the one after that. It was only after he’d dragged out thirty-odd bottles that he found one that held anything apart from air: a 1968 Margaux contained a very, very small amount of crumbly red dust.
He put the bottles back where he’d found them, shrugged, hefted his 1932 Château d’Yquem and headed for the door. With his hand on the light switch, he paused and turned back. He’d left footprints in the dust, but there was a broom leaning up against a rack not far away. He walked back to where he’d been standing, took Pieter’s bottle out of his pocket and put it in the slot, the one empty slot in the entire room, where he’d taken down Mr Nordstrom’s bottle. Then, as carefully as he could, he paced out the distance from the door to the exact spot on the rack, and jotted down the number on his envelope. Then he swept about fifteen square metres of floor, to eradicate any helpful tracks. He put the broom back where he’d got it from, and grinned. If you want to hide a needle, get a haystack. He shifted the bottle into his visible left hand and started up the stairs.
By the time he got back to the reception desk he was exhausted; the long, long climb up from the cellar, followed by a frantic search for the kitchen, where he found, in a huge and otherwise empty cupboard, a single dusty wineglass. “Sorry to have kept you,” he panted, as Mr Nordstrom looked up from his copy of the Wall Street Journal. “One bottle of 1932—”
“Thanks.” Mr Nordstrom grabbed the bottle, forced it into his jacket pocket (Theo heard a seam ripping) and waved away the glass. “Put it on my bill.”
“Mr Nordstrom.”
“Hm?”
Theo took a deep breath. How to put this? “If the wine isn’t, you know, exactly perfect—”
“It’ll be fine.”
He must have noticed, Theo told himself, like I did, by the weight. He’d turned his back and was lumbering away towards the stairs. But then, Theo thought, wine’s such a transitory thing. It has no real existence in time. You open the bottle, you drink it, it’s gone, and such enduring pleasure as the experience holds lies in the memory, or the anticipation. You can, of course, soak off the label and pin it up on the wall to impress your friends, but that’s the only lasting trophy you get, like a stag’s head mounted on a board to remind you of the hunt. So; if the wine’s not actually there, does it really matter all that much?
Mr Nordstrom stopped and turned round. For a moment, he looked at Theo, as if noticing him for the first time. “You’re new,” he said.
“Yes, Mr Nordstrom.”
“Name.”
I mean, Call-me-Bill had said, what sort of a world would it be if we went around calling ourselves by our real names? “Pieter,” Theo said. “Pieter van Goyen.”
“Mphm.” Mr Nordstrom nodded and plunged through the door to the stairs. It took some time for the air to refill the volume he’d displaced. It occurred to Theo to wonder if he’d given him the right key, although somehow he doubted whether any locked door would delay Mr Nordstrom for very long.
Still, he thought, it’s a job; on balance, marginally better than the slaughterhouse. And Pieter had arranged it for him, don’t forget that; Pieter, his friend and benefactor. Even so; a million empty bottles, and Mr Nordstrom too. If he was still a scientist, if he cared, it’d be enough to drive him crazy. It’s supposed to be fun. Right.
“Hello.”
Not again, he thought, and looked up.
She really was very beautiful. But nobody’s parents would choose a name like Matasuntha. “Hello,” he replied.
She perched on the edge of the desk and smiled at him. “So,” she said, “how’s it going?”
“Oh, fine. I just met Mr Nordstrom.” She grinned. “He’s such a lamb.”
Maybe, he thought, but where I come from we don’t call them lambs, we call them rhinoceroses. “I fetched him a bottle of wine from the cellar,” he said. “I suppose I ought to make a note of it somewhere, so it can go on his bill.”
“Oh. Right, yes, good idea.” She reached past him and brushed the VDU with her fingertip. At once, a picture of a keyboard appeared on the screen. Oh, Theo thought, and felt vaguely ashamed of himself. “So,” she was saying, “one bottle of – what was it?”