"We've never been introduced, actually, but she's been pointed out to me as one of the beauties of the town."
Suddenly Hamid was angry. "Perhaps, Mr. Lake," he said in a fierce whisper, "perhaps you've been gossiping too much with your Russian friend."
"Ah-you see!" Lake grinned. "Just as I told you. You do know everything, just as people say."
Lake turned away then, flushed with bravado. Hamid watched him chuckle to himself, then slip into his car. He was puzzled. The man had baited him. But why? What had he meant by it? Lake was not stupid, despite the odd way he babbled on, but there was something off center about him, something strange.
Hamid worked late that night shuffling through a stack of dossiers. He sorted out his cases, searching for coherence, but he could find nothing, no pattern, no sense of order in the town. A Nazi couple on the Mountain-Farid said they owned a Renoir. An American Consul General who leered at him like a fox. A Russian shopkeeper who begged him for respect. The streets were full of confusion. The summer was dry and hot. He was living with a woman, a foreigner, a cipher, whom he loved but could not understand.
Driving home very late, he noticed a car parked outside Heidi's Bar. Passing it, he had a quick look at a man inside, Inigo, the painter, shaking with laughter or perhaps in tears. As he drove farther, his headlights caught a pack of wild dogs running the deserted alleys near his street. In the flat he found Kalinka in bed, breathing gently, eyelids fluttering, safe in dreams and sleep. He stepped out onto his terrace and surveyed Tangier, listening to the clash of radios, each set to a different station, rebounding from the rooming houses all around. Dogs barked. The wind blew. Nothing was clear. The city was a labyrinth, a maze of pain and rage. He thought of people rotting away in decaying buildings, foreigners filled with violent passions, Moroccan children beating animals to death.
The Picnic
Robin ran his hands over his stomach and chest. His whole body was bathed in sweat. He sniffed around-there was a pungent odor in the room. Old cat piss, he thought, brought to life out of his soiled rug by the terrific Tangier heat.
He stumbled to his sink, grabbed a towel, flopped back onto his bed, and mopped off. The heat was terrible, had closed Tangier in. He couldn't see Spain anymore from the roof of the Oriental, and the Rif mountains were lost in haze. All the rogue cats of the medina seemed to be in heat. At night their cries echoed in the alleyways, reminding him of sex and love and pain.
He'd been miserable for two weeks because of the heat, and bored too with the town. There'd been nothing, not a glimmer of a scandal, no material for his column at all. This was a recurring problem, and Robin knew what he had to do: stir up Tangier, force the city to act itself.
A picnic. He'd give a picnic and see what material developed out of that. He owed everybody anyway. A picnic would be a good, cheap way to pay them back.
He snatched up a pencil and began to make a list. Barclay, of course-he put down his name first. He didn't like Barclay but felt he had no choice-the man, for all his faults, would give his picnic cachet. But to make some trouble he listed Patrick Wax and Inigo, whom Barclay despised, then added Darryl Kranker because he was devious and sly, and Larry Luscombe, who'd been in a deep depression since his humiliation in May. He could have Joe Kelly too, he thought-that would annoy everybody, because Kelly was so awful and low-but he rejected that idea and crossed off Luscombe's name as well, afraid that when the others saw these two they'd make excuses and leave. He put down Bainbridge, so that Barclay would have an ally, and Sven Lundgren because the dentist was close to St. Carlton, and he wanted to be remembered when the couturier came to town. He thought a while longer, dabbing at his pencil with his tongue, then added the writer Vincent Doyle and Herve Beaumont, who'd recently confided that he was thinking of turning queer.
The next thing was to draw the invitation-something Barclay and Wax couldn't resist. He set to work, revising to achieve the proper effect. When he was finished he read his draft aloud:
Robin Scott most cordially invites you to a picnic to celebrate the summer solstice. Date: June 21. Time: 1:00 P.M. Place: By the rocks near Robinson Plage. Bring a salad and a Moroccan "friend." Everything will be shared!
That, he decided, was irresistible. It was a stroke of genius to ask them to bring their bumboys. Before he went out to breakfast he scrounged up paper and envelopes and in an elaborate script wrote the invitations out.
He spent the morning delivering them, trudging up the Mountain in the heat. His last stop was Villa Chapultepec, where he also delivered a kilo of kif and persuaded Herve Beaumont to loan him glasses, skewers, and a tent.
That evening Patrick Wax stopped by his table at the Centrale.
"All chickenhawks, Robin?"
"With chickens too."
Patrick was delighted and blew him a kiss. Kranker came by a few minutes later and said he'd be there with his latest, Nordeen.
Over the next few days the others accepted-everyone except Barclay, but that, Robin knew, was his game. Barclay liked to create anxiety by being unpredictable, accepting and then not showing up, or not accepting and then arriving by surprise. He was the only man in town who could get away with that-the fault of the rest of us, Robin thought. Still, as much as he disliked him he desperately needed him to come, so he rang him up determined to get him and quite prepared to kiss his ass.
"Are you coming to my picnic, Peter?" he asked in an appropriately humble voice.
"Who's going to be there, darling? I know it's rude, but-"
"Everyone, Peter."
"Everyone?"
"Friends and enemies. That's the fun."
"With Mustapha too, you mean?"
"Of course, Peter. Of course."
"I'll think about it, dear, but forgive me if I don't turn up. I get headaches on the beach."
Robin thought then that he'd hooked him, but just to make sure he threw him another bone. "I really hope you bring Mustapha, Peter. It's so amusing the way Wax turns envious when he sees that boy with you."
Peter muttered something and rang off. Robin felt he'd escaped with his dignity intact, and without the gouged scar that was Barclay's usual price.
He was thinking hard then about saving money on the food. He considered buying horsemeat for the kebabs, but he knew the Moroccan boys would recognize it no matter how much salt and cumin he packed on. He decided against it, since one of them would surely tell, and then his more fastidious guests would retch.
He only wished he could invite his real friends-Jean Tassigny, the Beaumont girls, the Hawkins', Vanessa Bolton, Martin Townes. But his picnic was strictly confined to queens. The Moroccan boys would be prancing around in their skimpy shorts, and he expected biting insults and nasty repartee from his European guests. A mean and nasty social life was indispensable to his profession-a flaw, he knew, in his hugely flawed character, part of the aura of corruption he was trying to cultivate about his name.
On the morning of the solstice Herve Beaumont came by to pick him up. They stopped at a cheap butcher shop, picked up wine and bottled water, then drove out to Robinson's beach. It was such a searing day that they immediately took a swim, then worked to set up the tent. Robin was clumsy with the pegs and stakes, and finally, after everything collapsed, Herve erected it himself. Robin lay in the sun for an hour in a pair of cutoff jeans. He knew his guests would be late, vying to make spectacular entrances, so he waited patiently and with a hopeful heart.
Percy Bainbridge was first. The Australian inventor brought an English boy, an ordinary tourist he'd picked up at a bar. This boy, he said, ran a poodle-clipping service in Liverpool, which fascinated Percy, who had the notion of turning dog's fleece into yarn. "That way, you see," he explained, "a master could have a sweater knitted from the hair of his very own dog. Think of it-master and dog in matching coats. It's just the sort of thing that could catch on."