‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said.
He washed and dried his hands … Her subtle eyes pleadingly appraised him, then widened; then freshened and refreshened in what he took to be an accession of trust. And so his daubed fingertip sought the intima.
Billie gave a gasp of relief: it was a thing of the past. But she was staring beyond him now, and when he looked round he saw that Russia, her hair swept up in a turban and her dressing-gowned figure inanimately still, was watching from the stairs.
9. To Otherville
Rory McShane had quite enjoyed his dealings with Xan Meo, in the past. He had had him over to the house a few times, first with Pearl, then with Russia. But now that Xan’s career was evidently shot, Rory had transferred him to a different part of his mind: he belonged with all those who had to be humoured. Presumably there would be no good news to give him, ever again.
‘How’s Russia.’
Xan stopped scowling and said, as if to himself, ‘I go round there and she calls the uh, the authorities. Can you credit it. You go round to your own house, and your own wife calls the fucking filth. Can you credit it.’ And he started scowling again.
Rory wondered whether Xan was drunk: there was a kind of cruising hostility in him, and the promise of untoward personality change. But he decided that these emanations, plus the unvarying gaze and the embittered slur, were probably what you ended up with when you were smashed on the head. Still, Rory was being uncharacteristically careful not to give offence.
‘There are funds coming in,’ said Rory. ‘I’m checking, and there’s a few bob coming in.’
‘I’ve got a few bob. That’s not the point. I got a few bob, mate.’
‘Yes. That’s right. If you don’t mind my asking — and do tell me to fuck off if you like — where did it come from, your few bob?’
Xan stopped scowling and said, ‘Me mum. My mother. She died in a single room in a terraced house in Effley Road, E4. She was the sort of old woman who used the same teabag five times. But we knew she had a fair bit in the bank. When she died’ — and here he frowned, recalling Pearl’s third audit—‘it turned out she didn’t just own the house. She owned the street. Nineteen houses, full of nineteen hundred Patels, which is what the police call them. Bangladeshis. Slum landlady. But when we’d made it right, and we was … we were slinging money about in uh, reparations and that, there was still a tidy whack left over. She was a monster, my mum, but I adored her.’ He closed his eyes as he said it: ‘Fantastic businesswoman. It’s not the money, mate. It’s the employment. I can’t write and I can’t … perform. Act. I’m gone. But I’ll hump scenery, I don’t care. Give me employment.’
And he started scowling again.
‘You look uh, buffed up.’
‘I do the gym. Up down, up down. In out, in out. Go on then: Karla White.’
‘Oh yes. Karla White. I hesitated to impugn you with it. But yes. Karla White.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You’ve had a so-called offer from Fucktown … From Lovetown. Sextown.’
‘… Didn’t they have a sniper there?’
‘They still do. The Sextown Sniper. And she’s still at large.’
‘She?’ Then Xan remembered that this was one of Rory’s party-turns. To Rory (fiftyish, long-haired, much-divorced) all malefactors were playfully assumed to be female. Somebody’d say: We had a burglar last night. And he’d say: How did she get in? Somebody’d say: I was mugged on my way here. And he’d say: Was she armed?
‘And they’ll never catch her either. They can’t. You know about Lovetown? The porno people … When the Washington believers started cracking down on them, the porno people found a zoning loophole and moved the whole shebang to the San Sebastiano Valley, Little Hollywood, Southern California. It’s a state within a state. So the uh, SSPD, which consists of about one guy, can’t get federal help. And who cares if it’s just porno people who’re getting shot at? Who cares if — I don’t know — Casey Cunt gets winged in the arm? It’s God’s way.’
‘All porno.
‘All porno. Pornotown. Othertown. Now your so-called offer … They’ve been madly Anglophile for some time — long before the Princess business. A lot of the girls are English. English Rose, Brit Isles. Greta Britain, Unity Kingdom. And the men give themselves English stage-names. And knighthoods. Sir Phallic Guinness. Sir Bony Hopkins. Sir Dork Bogarde. What they like to do now is hire mainstream British actors to play so-called character parts. Some of my younger clients have done it.’
And here he named a few actors whom Xan was more or less aware of.
‘It has a kind of grunge cachet. Like with minor rockstars. It’s considered a blinding coup for a rockstar to have a porno girlfriend.’
‘What would be the work?’
‘Well you won’t be doing any fucking, and you certainly won’t be doing any acting. You’ll have to do a bit of watching, I suppose. You know: you learn your so-called lines in the cab to some Moorish villa consisting entirely of dens. They’ll have worked it into the so-called storyline that you happen to be present while uh, Brit and Bony have sex.’ He leant into his computer screen. ‘Mm. Usually it’s like a parody of a Hollywood offer: Prestige Economy, BudgetBower, three-figure fee. But this looks pretty reasonable. More than reasonable for one day’s work. Well it is Karla White. She owns Princess Lolita … It’s called Crown Sugar and you’re Rameses the Great. Know what I think you should do?’ said Rory dutifully. ‘Sit in on some workshops. Do some classes. Go easy. Get back to where you were before.’
Like the dark-clad others, those drawn into the city and then released from it at seven p.m., he returned to his flat with a plastic shopping-bag: provisions for one. He warmed and ate some savoury mess or other; and he drank the red wine — but not all of it. For nearly a week his afternoons, his evenings, had been journeys to non-consciousness; he woke up in a flat where (it seemed) thirteen or fourteen people had caroused the night before. Then, one morning, while he roiled in his own gases and acids on the benchpress, he thought: being drunk was a way of saying that, in your opinion, the universe was bullshit. No, more: it was a way of saying that you thought the universe was crap. And he didn’t think he did think that. So tonight he was sober as he sat there staring at the wall. He was sober when he went into the bedroom and looked out of the window at the house across the street: that was the status quo ante; that was where he was before.
‘Hello?’
‘Xan? Mal Bale. How are you, boy?’
‘Oh, you know. Mustn’t weaken.’
‘Uh, listen. About doing Snort. We can’t now. He’s just gone away for twelve years.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Still, that’ll learn him. What was it?’
‘Malicious wounding. Though by the sound of it Snort got as good as he give. We can have him done inside of course, but where’s the satisfaction?’
‘Yeah. No. So I’m still owed.’
‘You’re still owed.’
‘I’ve been going over something you said about — about our friend. You said I placed him. You said I “put him there”. Put him where? Put him on the page? Or put him in Los Angeles.’
‘No comment.’
‘Is he in Los Angeles?’
‘Uh — no comment. If you get my meaning. Uh, you fancy it, do you mate?’
‘Well it’s not up to me, is it? If I don’t do something, I’ll feel like shit for the rest of my life. Who’s Karla White?’
‘Karla White? … Nah, mate. So how’s your probation? You survived that, did you: the bird in the hotel?’