{Preamble}

breakfast mojito

i had never had

a mojito

before but: why not?

i was on my last twenty pounds of which i’d just spent fourteen on breakfast, so 

a cocktail at noon

seemed 

apt

i’d got to istanbul on my own after christoph and i parted ways

back in budapest: he’d had enough and wanted to go home, i

wanted to see

amsterdam.

how i ended up in istanbul i’m not sure, i

suppose

i must have got on the wrong train

different train: what can be

wrong

about a train that takes you to istanbul, a train that takes you somewhere

anywhere

you’ve not been before –

he’d sent over the waiter. that

in itself

was

brazen

i thought. he looked maybe forty, thirty-eight, forty?

i later find out he was pushing fifty; i wasn’t meaning to flatter him though

i went across to his table and all the while he was looking at me the way your uncle who hasn’t seen you in years or a friend of your mum’s who remembers you as a baby might look at you: a familiarity that says, you don’t know who i am but i changed your nappies when you were little.

maybe

that’s why i accepted his invitation to

mojito

in the first place: he felt harmless. forlorn, perhaps, and a bit quizzical, but nonetheless harmless.

i sat down and he said: ‘don’t tell me: it’s george.’ and that made me wonder.

‘isn’t it?’

‘yes.’

‘good to meet you george, my name is sebastian.’

i’d always liked

sebastian

as a name.

he looked at me with his nearly-a-stare that spoke of

curiosity, even

wonder

i asked him: what are you doing in

istanbul?

if only i knew, he laughed, and there was a silence

how about you?

soon

the waiter

ahmed

arrived

with mojitos