“Please, please. I was only wanting things better for you, the sort of-er-contracts you really deserve. You’re a real artist and it’s high time you realized it! What’s Trekkersburg? There’s a limit here on what it could ever do for you. And, I agree, the same applies really to Maseru. But have you ever thought of London? Hamburg? Vegas?”
“I see-and you could be my manager?”
“Why’s this making you angry?”
“ Ach, because every five minutes some bugger tries that lot of smoothie talk on me. I’m sick and tired of it!”
“Is that how it sounded?”
“Yes!”
“Then I’m sorry, really sorry to have said the wrong thing, although I promise you that I meant it. Come on, have another drop.”
Typical. Do what you like, say sorry, and everything was fine again. All men stayed babies, when you came to think of it. Bit your finger and then went goo-goo. She was saddened but not surprised to find it all turning sour. Such was life.
But at least the champagne had not lost its sweetness. It must have cost a bomb retail. Sweet and tickly and gone in an instant down into a tummy kept empty for the more difficult positions. And from there, moving on to make her sore limbs feel better than a warm bath would have done, which the boardinghouse didn’t seem to own anyway, and her head so pleasantly muzzy that the bare light no longer hurt her eyes.
She let him refill her glass.
“There-watch it doesn’t spill! Can’t let any go to waste. You know what I’ve decided to do? Take a little holiday on my own.”
Plan B was being put into operation.
“Oh, ja?”
“Do you ever take a holiday?”
“Sometimes. When Clint has eaten a big meal.”
His eyes became fixed on the python.
“Clint doesn’t like being stared at,” she said, then finished the line from her family show: “He thinks you’re trying to hypnotize him.”
He laughed loudly. “What does he feel like, Eve?”
“Smooth and nice-not slimy.”
“How strong is he, really?”
“One his size can kill a duiker-even a buck much bigger. Touch him.”
His free hand went into his pocket, and he raised the other to show it held the mug. Baby didn’t want to.
“What’s the matter-do you want your mummy?”
“That isn’t like you, Eve,” he said, very hurt.
Then the fingers, with their bitten-down nails, reached out and just dabbed at the scales. Clint tried to escape from her shoulders. She pulled him back
“Not so cold,” he said. “Super.”
“Room temperature.”
“I see. And you feed him on…?”
“Guinea pigs.”
“Dead or alive?”
“I just chuck them in his basket. Sometimes nothing happens for hours, then you hear the squeaking. Only I don’t give him them often or he’d get even lazier. Wouldn’t you, you old bastard?”
And she held the python’s head with deceptive firmness as she nuzzled noses with him.
“Can I see him eat one?”
“Not feeding time.”
“ Please. ”
That was another of his magic words, like sorry.
“I’ll pay for it. Clint can have one on the house, so to speak.”
I’ll pay.
“If you can tear yourself away from this club some night, come down and see us in Durban. I’ve got a spitting cobra that eats when he likes.”
“Come off it, Eve! You know you’re the real attraction!”
Double meanings next-he was doing well.
“Oh, ja? I fascinate you, do I?”
“Well, in a way, yes-yes, you do.”
“And why?”
He shrugged, looking more thoughtful than she had expected.
“Because I play with snakes?”
“That might have been it to begin with-I thought it would be interesting talking to you-but I’ve also had this funny feeling…”
His sentence seemed to quite genuinely tail off, and his eyes left her as he frowned and bit his thumbnail. There was a job for him in show business as well, no doubt of that.
“My God, you’re not going to sulk, are you?” she said.
“Me?”
And he laughed softly, topping up her glass again, returning it to her with a flourish. The professional charm was switched on and off so suddenly you could almost hear the click.
“What exactly did you want to thank me for? I get paid for doing it, don’t I?”
“You. Your show. All of it.”
“Turns you on?”
“Does someone I know.”
“Hey! This is something new! Don’t tell me you’ve actually got a girlfriend hidden someplace?”
“Oh, she’s not here. She’s-she’s on holiday.”
“ Ach, I realize that she isn’t standing outside the door, man. I was just surprised because, after what you’ve told me, it hardly seems likely that your old battleship would approve.”
“I never take her home with me,” he said solemnly.
“Hell! As bad as that, is it?”
He laughed longer than she did.
Sick, that, him wanting to watch Clint gobble up a guinea pig. Things were now taking a little time to sink in, which was also nice. She’d never watched, even though it was just a fact of life like any other Clint had to eat, but nobody had to see him do it. Most people would think the same way she did, so he couldn’t be all that typical. He was weird.
“Are you weird?” she asked, sipping a little more.
“What a question!”
“I was thinking about you wanting to gawk at Clint having his num-nums.”
“I’d just be interested. What’s weird in that?”
Nothing, when you thought about how excited the same thing would make small kids. If they saw it happen in a game reserve, they’d love it and show no pity or other inside things. If the snake came for them, that would be a different matter, but their fear-like his-was an outside one. And she saw that happening all around her every night to grownups.
“What are you dreaming about?” he asked, making his voice friendly but not quite covering his nervousness.
“I was thinking.”
“Is it catching?”
As if able to read her mind, he reached out again to touch the python.
“Not too close to his head,” she warned.
“Pythons don’t bite.”
“Who told you that?”
“But they’re not poisonous.”
“Blood poisoning. You can catch blood poisoning from his teeth-they’re dirty.”
He winced. “Can’t it go in the basket?”
“Just now.”
So the girlfriend was away. Oh, yes, that began to explain a few things. Such as a bottle of champagne so big that two people could get very drunk on it. A bottle that had probably been shown to quite a few eyes in the club earlier on, and there had also probably been jokes about her. Even a few coarse bets laid. It was becoming clearer.
“You haven’t been to my dressing room before,” she said.
“I know. So?”
“It wasn’t so private at the table.”
“What-what are you hinting at?”
Quick as a flash, he was. Look at the innocent smile.
“You told your friends you were coming here?”
“What?”
“Friends, pals, closest buddies.”
He frowned, as if he didn’t understand.
“Am I right?”
“I don’t really have any,” he said. “Certainly nobody I’d tell this to.”
Tell this to.
She hesitated. This was the moment to kick him out. Yet she could still be the loser: he could go back and make up something filthy for his cronies that would have them all outside, banging on the door, waving bottles. Or waiting for her in the alley, or tailing her back to the boardinghouse. The bugger of it was she had allowed him to stay too long already, and so kicking him out wasn’t going to solve anything. If only there was some way she could stop him from telling anyone stories that could hurt her-make him run off home with his tail between his legs. If only…
There was a way! And by the time she had finished with him, he wouldn’t even want to think about it, let alone talk. She knew men.
“Equal shares,” she demanded.
“It’s not making you too… y’know?”