SENSH
Teresa thought, This is real! This is Shandy's life! 1 could stay here in her mind, follow her around, see how she lives, what she eats, where she sleeps.
She glanced back at Willem, who was still sitting at the table, waiting for her to return with the drinks, apparently stranded by her lack of interest in him.
The barman slipped Shandy a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it, and she took out her bag, found a diary and placed the piece of paper between its pages. just as Shandy was about to return the diary to her bag, Teresa
decided to have a look at it, and laid it on the counter. She flipped through the pages.
Shandy's real name was Jennifer Rosemary Tayler, Teresa discovered from the first page, where the young woman had filled in her personal details in disarmingly childish handwriting. She had an apartment in London NW10. The entries in the diary the year was 1990, which Teresa wouldn't have known otherwise were mostly phone numbers and amounts of money; on a whim, Teresa led Shandy across to the call box on the wall by the entrance to the toilets, and dialled one of the numbers.
* * * SENSH * * *
A man with a foreign accent answered, and Shandy said, reasserting herself, 'Is that Hossein?
Hi, it's Shan ... Listen, I'm at the Plume of Feathers in Rupert Street. Know where 1 mean? 1
wondered if you'd got anything for me?' A long silence followed, before Hossein said, 'You call me back at ten. 1 work something out.' Shandy said, 'OK,' and hung up. She went back to the counter, and wrote the time in her diary.
Willem was still at the table, patiently waiting. Teresa decided to leave him there, and left the pub. She walked back down Rupert Street to where it Joined Coventry Street.
To one side was an open space bounded by large buildings, full of trees and pedestrians: Leicester Square, she dredged up from Shandy's mind. In the other direction was Piccadilly Circus, which Teresa had not realized was so close. With all the curiosity of a tourist Teresa walked down that way, gawping at the sights. She stared at the statue of Eros for a few moments, then decided she would like to see where Shandy lived, so she walked across to the nearest entrance to the Underground station. She ran down the stairs, Shandy's steeltipped stiletto heels clattering on the
metal steps. At the bottom of the stairs was a brick wall. Shandy stared at it for a moment, then returned to street level.
Another entrance to the station was on the corner of Lower Regent Street and Piccadilly, so Shandy negotiated the crossing through the traffic, and tripped quickly down the steps.
Another brick wall. Determined not to be beaten by this Teresa led the way back to the pub, where Willem was still waiting for her.
* * * SENSH
She sat down next to him.
'Tell me where you come from, Willem she said. 'How do you live? What is the name of the place where you were born?'
'Ah,' he said, staring with habitual eyes at her cleavage. 'I from Amstelveen, which is a little way from Amsterdam to the south, on the polder. You know polder? 1 have two sister, who are both more old as me. My mother and father'
'Excuse me, honey,' said Shandy. 'I got to go.,
She left him there again, and returned to the street.
London spread around her, noisy and crowded. How did they do this? Teresa wondered. We were making a lousy skinflick, budget of zilch, and 1 walk through a door and out here is a whole imagined virtual city of millions of people, crammed with things going on and places to go.
No Underground station, though. Maybe they didn't get around to programming that.
* * * SENSH
As she stood there a doubledecker bus roared by, heading for Kilburn. lt said so on the front: Kilburn High Road. Teresa thought, 1 could get on that bus, see what happens in Kilburn.
People who have lives, share apartments, go bankrupt, fall in love, travel abroad, hold down jobs, get
thrown into Jail, make skinflicks. Is this scenario unlimited? From Kilburn, another busride to the edge of London, and from there into the country? What after that? Another blank wall at the edge of reality? Or the rest of England, out into Europe, then the world? The awareness of unlimited space dizzied her.
She caught the next bus that came along (it said on the front it was going to Edgware), but for an hour it drove around the West End, repeatedly passing the same buildings and stopping in the same places.
Willem was still waiting in the pub when she went back.
'Did 1 get that drink for you?' Shandy said.
'No, but is OK. 1 wait OK.'
She left Willem again, and returned to the street: the weather was as damp and cool as before, and the crowds continued to press past her. Shandy had a way of walking that made her skirt tighten against her thighs with every step. Admiring male glances were flashed at her from many quarters.
SENSH
'Doesn't that drive you crazy, Shan?' Teresa said on an impulse, thinking inwardly to her own mind.
'Doesn't what drive me crazy?' Shandy replied, calmly. 'The guys staring at my tits? That's my job, love. One of them's always the next meal ticket.'
'Not that. The goddamn computer logo that appears every minute or two. And the electronic music that goes with it!'
'You get used to it.' Shandy mentally played the jingle at her.
'Where's it coming from?'
'I think it's Vic. He's like that.'
'Who's Vic?' said Teresa. 'Is that the director? Mister Bad Breath and Zero Personality?'
'No, Vic! You know Vic, don't you? He's the mate of Luke's who does the script, right? Luke's the one who'
'I know Luke. Carry on about Vic. I'm interested.'
'Vic does the script. He's one of those computer geeks with a weirdo sense of humour. Thinks everything he does is funny. That's how Luke gets in, you see. He likes being in the movies, but he isn't, you know, like Willem. Willie with the big willie.'
'I know who you mean.'
* * * SENSH
'Course you do. Well, Luke likes a bit of the physical stuff with me, and 1 never mind, so Vic writes him in before the action starts. Always a small part, a warmup for the punters. Luke's been in all the videos I've done for Vic, and he enjoys a good old grope, but he can't, you know, get it up enough. He's a mate of mine, really. We always have a bit of a laugh about lt.
You've got an American accent. Is that where you're from?'
'Yes,' said Teresa.
'So's Vic. 1 don't know what he's doing in England, but he's into computers and that.'
'So how does he do all this?'
'Do all what?'
Teresa gestured with Shandy's hand.
'London! All these people! The noise, the rain, the crowds.'
'I dunno. You'd have to ask him. You can get cities for computers now, can't you?'
'Cities? What do you mean, you get them for computers?'
SENSH
'On disk, 1 think. Or you can download them, if you know how to do it. You get the whole thing, and just use it. Add it on, somehow. 1 mean, Vic's got all sorts of places he uses as locations. He's into cowboys and that, and so a lot of the programs he does take place out there in the West. you know that set we were just filming in? Well, if you go out the other way, the door at the back, it isn't London at all! It's somewhere in America ... you know, you've seen it on the movies. Where they filmed all those westerns. A lot of desert, and all them rocky mountains with flat tops sticking straight up.'