MORNING SERIAL

IT made telekinetic overtures that came out like heat waves and sizzled across the sparse beams of light. These silences torpedoed out of sight, and there is nothing more accurate than silence.

Illie of course knew the people we needed to know to get in, and to secure a civilised corner with table service on the mezzanine above the Roman forum. Again his man on the door spoke in the knotted codes of the Russian tongue, and even though Illie seemed to assure him I was sound, he still spoke hushed and bent to Illie’s ear.

“I used to think this was not for me,” Illie said when we were sitting. “But when my wife died I decided it was important to keep in touch with the world.”

“This is the world?” I said. I ordered a scotch and coke but had no idea what came, perhaps some Cypriot version of scotch.

“I am an old man, although I don’t like to admit it,” Illie said. “I am not so special in that regard.”

I figured he came here because it didn’t matter – this was not a nightclub with any reference points. There seemed to be no cliques, no trends, no movements.

I wanted to ask Illie about the brief-of-sorts he had given me – I wanted to know what he meant by having me paint his dreams. I wanted to believe he was not a senile old man, trying to find some meaning in this strange existence he had carved out for himself in the aftermath of his wife’s death. But it never felt right to do so. Something about Napa, something about being around Illie, made it feel as if things would come about in their own time.

“You said Francis liked this place,” I said.

“Oh, yes. You see this is an exclusive club. The most exclusive in Napa. One thing gets you in here: notoriety. You think that would appeal to the Francis Benthem you knew?”

I said to Illie after a while that I was going to go explore, and he smiled generously and waved me away.

Never really one to go in for self-analysis, in the darkness and satanic pulsing of the tunnels and caves of The Castle, I nevertheless thought of something Clare had said to me when we had first started going out.

> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com