He put down his book, stretched, and stood up. The key to his room was still on the picnic table, the large brass keychain standing upright in the circular hole designed to hold an umbrella. With his book in one hand, his index finger unconsciously holding his page, and the key in the other he walked past the bar. An ashtray with ice-cream ads printed on its bottom momentarily caught his attention, and he absentmindedly checked his watch. It said 5:45, although it was actually approaching midnight. The stars were obscured by a thin veil of clouds, and it was a pleasantly warm evening. The bartender and his wife were chatting incomprehensibly on the veranda which overlooked the playground on one corner and the lake on the other, while their son rocked side to side on the family motor scooter parked to the front of the building, imagining the wind in his hair.
He walked on into the large dining room, past two defunct radios from the seventies and several dozen bottles of alcohol on shelves to the left of the bar. The darkness of the eating-room combined with its emptiness and its warmth reminded him of his grandparents' house late at night, where the feel of warm linoleum under his feet and the single light above the stove were enough to make him feel comfortable. The only light in the room was the soft fluorescent glow emitted by the small dessert refrigerator.
He passed through the French doors onto the terrace and looked out across the lake at the tiny village high upon a hill, the steeple of the old church visible above all else. The countryside around the village was a uniform black, highlighted occasionally by the headlights of a passing car.
He reentered the building through the glass doors and padded across the springy floor to the stairs which he climbed one at a time, looking first at the pink curtains which glowed like stained glass when the sun hit them and made the stairwell hazy and ethereal, to the old wooden banisters held together by coarse black twine, and finally to the small rugs on each landing that always found their way into the corners by the end of the day.
He reached his floor and glanced down the darkened hallway to the bay window that overlooked the terrace, the lake and the village. Stars were beginning to poke through the cloud cover. He removed his finger from between the pages of his book, let it close, and tucked the large volume under his arm as he unlocked and opened the door to his room. He entered, and walked across the charmingly fake parquet floor to his bed. He sat, and after depositing his book on a nearby chair, listened to the calming sound of his ticking watch as he waited for the others to arrive.