Vajk drew out a bag of cocaine from his pocket and signaled to Robi to follow him to the restroom. Alexandra joined them, leaving Luca alone at the table. She didn’t want to sniff cocaine, she didn’t want to drink more wine, and she didn’t want to sit either; yet she didn’t move. What if they came back and found her vanished like a pile of leaves in a storm? Would they be worried? Would they mount a search? Or would they go back to the bathroom to snort some more coke?

She waited for half an hour, then left the now-empty dining hall.

She didn’t even undress, just crawled under the blanket. She latched the door because she found the empty corridor disquieting.

She was dead tired, but she couldn’t sleep. From the other side of the wall sounds kept her awake: crying and screams, the sound of a fist pounding on flesh, and laughter. It was the laughter of room 303. She should have banged on the wall – the hotel was a wellness spa, after all, where people came to rest, and rest should be respected – but she didn’t. What if the room was actually empty? What if that emptiness spilled over to fill her room with screams and laughter too?

She was just about to fall asleep when Robi started banging on the door. He laughed because his nose was bleeding and he found it funny. He washed the blood off, threw himself onto the bed and fell asleep right away, snoring. She knew she wouldn’t sleep anymore. She never could when he snored.

The corpse was discovered at dawn, shortly before breakfast. It was floating in the outdoor pool like a ship adrift at sea, face up. He was a fat man in a red swim brief; Luca felt as if she had seen him somewhere before, then she recalled the man soaking himself in the thermal water. It was the same man. Luca had an irrational thought that made her shudder: what if the man was in fact dead even at that time? Now he had just decided to be dead somewhere else.

A crowd quickly gathered around the pool. The man’s skin was pasty white by then, so no one saw any point in dragging the corpse out. Some asked around whether anybody had known the unfortunate man, but everyone just shook their heads. The entire spa hotel was staring at the corpse of a stranger.