“Sure,” the young man said. “All the same, it would be my pleasure.”
I shuddered inwardly. Unctuousness and neon-a killer combination I had thought would never make it this far up the peninsula, not to Pyongyang. I looked around. The lobby had a few chairs in one corner and a potted plant in another. Along the front wall, near the revolving glass door, was a single chair. Slumped in it was a man wearing a cheap suit and a vacant expression. He had the look of someone doomed forever to stare into morning fog off an empty coast. His eyes took me in, but I wasn’t sure what had registered. It was all getting to be unnerving-the streetlights, the lobby, this man staring into nothing. Maybe Li was right. Maybe I really didn’t know as much as I thought I once did. Maybe I didn’t know anything anymore.
Chapter Two
The young man in yellow came up in the elevator with me, opened the door to a room, turned on the lights, and stood next to the bed. “The TV is there,” he said. “The bathroom is there.”
It was a big room, but not so big I couldn’t have figured out either of those on my own. “Sure.” I looked around. “Classy place. Wouldn’t want to confuse those two.”
“You can get music in the bath if you like. There’s a TV screen there, too, if you get lonely. Don’t worry; it only goes one way.”
I nodded.
“Also, the drapes open electronically. Don’t try fooling with them by hand or you’ll break something. I can find you something if you get real lonely, better than the TV.” He rubbed the fingers on one hand together.
“Why don’t you go back downstairs and be slimy with your friends?”
He didn’t seem offended; at least, the grin he gave me looked real enough. “I could do that.” He held out his hand.
“I already shook with you. Is this a new hotel custom, shaking hands on every floor?”