The Big Karl Marx Building
(At Irony Street in East Paradise)

Anton said he was in a hotel once in the middle of nowhere, listening to the sound of sex coming through the wall. Shifting over in the bed, those thin sheets, getting a hard on, the noise going on all night. Finally he walked out on to the balcony wrapped in a hotel blanket, and sat there and smoked until even his lungs got cold.

The next morning they were gone. No idea what they looked like: they sounded like a porn movie, but they might have been ugly, they might have been fifty years old. When he walked by, the door to their room was open. He could see the bed and a half-empty bottle of Tio Pepe on the locker. So he walked in, and lay on the used sheets, and drank it all.

"Tio Pepe?" she said.

"You know what it tastes like?" he said. "Metal."

Where was the lie in that? she thought. Which part of that is a lie?