Crystal Maze VII, Transformation Place

“The ground floor sitting room is connected to the rooms above by a stairway whose ramp is a shaky thing; you leap and fall from it; from it you speak up or take a running jump towards the chandelier. The first floor is reserved for the leads; it’s Olympus and the extras don’t venture up there. It’s up there that you pack your bags, where the gang meets, the mean tricks are planned out, and the hasty departures, too. The rooms afford access to the outside by an outdoor stair, or a balcony, a wall ladder, a balustrade that is easy to hop over at one go. When you go upstairs to this private club where the women decide which drama is to be performed (that is, when it isn’t shady financiers and their goons), it’s to decide on a raid, an abduction, a punitive expedition, or to take the next train, the last one, which might be the nonstop to Happyville, if you can consider yourself happy to have had your life spared, coming out of what looks like an American bar, the local jumping gin joint, the exchange house and house of ill repute, the geometrical locus of alcohol-fired quarrels whose outstanding balance will be settled in natural settings and backlot exteriors.”