Xan walked around the room. Such a scene was not unfamiliar to him: the half-dozen technicians and handymen and general noisemakers, the girl with the clipboard, the coffee-urn, the pretzel-bowl. On a white sofa beneath a window sat a young black man of impressive, even heroic appearance: representatively heroic. He stood up and introduced himself as Burl Rhody: Karla’s bodyguard.
‘Charisma’s a noshow,’ she now said.
‘A first-timer noshows?’ said Dork. ‘What nextly? They noshow their fuck-tests?’
‘The girls are calling it a herpes sickout,’ said Karla, ‘but what it amounts to is a three-day strike.’
‘Charisma! Hello?’ said Dork loudly into the air. ‘There are other people on the planet, Charisma! Hello? Hello?’
‘Who can we get?’ asked the girl with the clipboard.
Karla said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it.’
For a moment Dork’s face was a mask of dental work. Then he assumed a solemn, almost liturgical expression, and rose to his feet, saying,
‘In all my many years I have served in the industry … never has it been bestowed upon me such an honour like this. A legend such as Karla White. I can assure you, dear lady, that I will master you with uh, with true sincerithy … and respecth.’
He shrugged off his robe and stood there … It wasn’t a bodybuilder’s pose, not quite. But the face was now nobly half averted; the right knee was bent inwards; the toes were flexed; the thumb and forefinger of each hand were joined in tight circles.
Matter-of-factly unbuttoning her jacket, Karla said, ‘I’m sorry, Dork. You’ll get your two-fifty or whatever it is and there’s a car outside.’ She turned on her heel. As she climbed the stairs she said, ‘Burl. Would you mind taking a quick shower?’
‘Sire, I crave a boon.’
‘Name it, plaything. But know that I could have you blinded for addressing me with your eyes, trinket, because I am as the Sun.’
‘True, O King … This youth who stands before you is not as other men are. He cannot speak and though his manly parts, as you see, are right and comely, he cannot spend. Do you understand me, Sire?’
‘Perfectly, fraction.’
‘So he must to the eunuchs. The milk of propagation is denied him.’
‘To the eunuchs he goes then, instrument. Him, pawn, no dynasty awaits.’
‘As the most skilled of all the whores in the slave harem, as the most schooled in all the nauseous arts, haply I can yet bring him to blossom.’
‘Do so, toy.’
‘Yet I have a further design, great sire.’
‘Speak it, bauble.’
‘As I serve this youth, so I would fain serve thee.’
‘Puppet, begin.’
Karla swung down not to her knees but her haunches, in a catsuit made of coins.
3. The principle of lullabies
The next morning it was all over the Journal, pushed down the front page only by a further strike from the Sextown Sniper (a middle-aged porno star called Hick Johnsonson had been shot in the foot while reclining poolside at his home in Fulgencio Falls): ‘Reports Of Major Cockout On Dolorosa Drive’.
Xan sat in the hotel restaurant with the Journal propped up against his coffee-pot. Two tables away a young couple, damply agleam under a coating of man-tan, were acrimoniously negotiating a full-scale dinner (with two kinds of wine), watched by a camera and a klieg light. He read on:
It was at first believed that the surprise Cockout was the handiwork of Sir Dork Bogarde, who has claimed several Cockouts in recent years, and that the Cockout was sustained by Charisma Trixxx, a first-timer, and so theoretically vulnerable to Cockout.
But sources have revealed that the attractive newcomer was not present yesterday on Dolorosa Drive. ‘I think I got my wires crossed,’ explains Trixxx. ‘I was expecting the work but my agent said the shoot had been postponed.’ Trixxx denies all knowledge of the herpes sickout called by Comptroller Dimity Qwest of the LUWA (see page 2). Dork Bogarde was unavailable for comment.
It appears, however, that the artists involved were Burl Rhody, an industry jouneyman who quit the business some years ago, and legend Karla White, now of Karla White Productions. ‘I swear on my mother,’ said a crewmember who prefers not to be named, ‘it was classic Cockout. Beyond hot. He totally cocked her out.’
page 5: Dolorosa Drive: A Community Comes To Terms With Cockout
Editorial: Suspicion Of Bullshit In Karla White Cockout
He had the chauffeur drop him off a short distance from the house. As he turned into the drive he saw that Burl Rhody (non-coincidentally, Xan would later decide) was halfway down it, at the wheel of a blue convertible. Burl pulled up.
‘She’s given me the day off. And the night.’
These words were spoken with apparently effortless neutrality. Xan noticed a copy of the Lovetown Journal on Burl’s passenger-seat.
Burl said, ‘It was Bullshit.’ He sank back for a moment.
Whether Burl was happier than usual Xan couldn’t tell. But now he smiled with torpid nonchalance and said,
‘You know what I was thinking, at the end? I thought, God I’m old. Porno … it’s not for lazy people. Dork Bogarde is a celebrated asshole, but in general they aren’t such a bad crowd. They look out for each other. Karla,’ he said, ‘Karla spends half her life on the girls’ rights and the health shit. That’s how fucked-up she is.’
Xan said, ‘He’s not here, is he? Andrews – Joseph Andrews.’
Burl didn’t answer, but his frown told Xan no. His rather too affronted frown – no, not here, not now, not yet. He slowly engaged first gear, an almost hectic act, it seemed, and said,
‘I’ve lived in the apartment over Karla White’s garage for five years. And yesterday was our first time. Not our first attempt. Our first time. You know what she does when she gets aroused? She weeps.’
‘She weeps?’
‘Hot tears. Then everything stops. She stops. Then you stop.’
She wore her usual white dress, her usual shallow sandals. The trouble was that he thought he loved her.
On the upper balcony she poured him another glass of the skull-chilling wine and said, ‘Don’t you think we’re all being incredibly cool about the comet?’
‘Cool?’
‘All women hate space. I hate space. I suppose you’ve taken an interest in it, the comet.’
He shrugged, in the affirmative. Before them lay the great beast of the Pacific Ocean.
‘Then the first thing you’ll have learnt is that comets aren’t like asteroids, and you can’t chart them. Because they’re subject to non-gravitational forces like explosions and sublimations. They say it’s going to miss.’
‘Or shear.’
‘Or shear. It’s the size of Los Angeles. And it’s going five times faster than a bullet. And the latest is that it’s going to miss by fifty miles. Fifty miles.’
‘It won’t hit. They wouldn’t have told us anything about it if they thought it was going to hit. They’ve done studies. Telling us about it would just add to the social cost. It won’t hit.’
‘If it does, the sky would ignite and then turn pitch black.’
‘… And you’d be pleased.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she said in a wronged voice.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh you mean the void and nothing mattering and everything being allowed. I don’t think nothing matters.’
Did he? Did the comet matter? Watching her shape move around from room to room made him think that it had already happened: the end of the thing which is called world. Every few seconds he thought about reaching for her, but his arms, his hands felt loth and cold.
‘Nobody cares about the comet because it’s not our fault.’ After a while she said, ‘I wish I hadn’t been quite so rough on that sap Dork Bogarde. Are you hungry? Nor am I. Say if you are.’
The trouble was that he thought he loved her. And love had not guided him well in recent weeks and months,
with his wife, his daughter. What kind of love was it? It seemed to have its life somewhere between what he felt for Russia and what he felt for Billie. The thing that further distinguished his love for Karla was that it persistently presented him with the cathartic emotions, those of pity and terror. In her presence, he was afraid and he was sorry. He wanted to protect her from all things – including things like himself. And his senses ached … The waves were for now holding good order, each one bristling up for sudden and ruthless and thrillingly opportune assault, and then pouncing, coming down hard, gnashing and frothing and enveloping with its teeth. And how bloodymindedly they came steaming into the boulders: the orgasmic impact, and then they shouldered their way into rockpool after rockpool, making waves that then had to be made again, after regrapplings, reslitherings.
Something was happening to him. It felt like a flow in the brain: rearrangements of currents and temperatures … Suddenly the sky went an olive colour, and the sea turned white.
‘Tormenta,’ she said.
‘I want to lie down. I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well. I’ll be all right if I lie down.’
She took him to her bedroom and left him alone to shed some clothes. He was already half asleep when she returned.
‘I’ll put this on you. The principle of lullabies – it’s not the song. It’s not that the song soothes and dopes you. The point is that you know the singer’s still there. I can’t sing, but I’ll go on patting this shawl so you know I’m still there.’
While he slept and turned he kept remembering the final minutes of the sex-act he had witnessed on Dolorosa Drive.
Karla was on her knees. She was about to complete a presumably ancient human activity. But it didn’t look ancient. It looked as though it had been invented earlier that day – or was now, in fact, in the process of coming into being. For the forward thrust the arms were clasped about Burl Rhody’s waist; his phallus, ideally black, seemed to constitute an obstacle: she couldn’t go past it, she couldn’t go round it. No, she had to go through it, as if her real goal lay somewhere within his loins. On the reverse thrust, her hands were placed flatpalmed on his hipbones, to achieve greater traction, and each withdrawal ended with a tremendous smack of the lips before Rhody was as vociferously reengulfed. Then all was speed; and after a while he found himself thinking of a child with a party-whistle. And then she was Billie, or even Sophie, with yoghurt or vanilla icecream all over her face.
Consciousness was upon him. Before he opened his eyes he heard the sound of breathing. More than this, he heard sleep – the economical downdraughts which were the sound that sleep made … He found he was some way down the bed, under the sheet and the shawl; and the thing between his legs was a harsh concentration of gristle. He turned over: there was Karla’s apparently headless body, and the sleepless and incorruptible interrogation of her breasts. He moved towards them.
Soon he heard her somnolent sigh of approval and felt her hands on his neck and hair as he squeezed and kissed. Time passed.
‘I love you, I love you,’ she said.
And when she started to weep, he paused, expecting her to stop (then he’d stop). But she didn’t stop. Like Billie when she wept (faintly incredulous, naïvely eloquent), he thought. Her thighs were apart, and now his hand loomed. But then he reached out to her face and found that her cheeks were dry. Their eyes met. All was subtracted from him; and he turned away.
After several beats of his heart Xan said, ‘See? … Love doesn’t like fear. Size zero.’
‘Oh, I suppose you mean it should be tucked in nicely while you sprint for your life down the beach … That’s what they never say in the books or anywhere else. With a little girl you’re big, even when you’re little. You ought to go ahead with Billie. We get over it.’
‘No you don’t.’
‘No we don’t,’ she said. ‘Obviously.’ And with a whip of the sheet she was gone.
When he was woken again, this time by the storm, he got out of bed and reached for his clothes as if they were items of body-armour. The thunder was escalatory: fusillade, cannonade, heavy artillery, the fundamentally egregious cataract of tactical nuclear strike. He opened the bedroom door. There was a figure on the balcony, smoking.
She said, ‘God has got the movers in. There will be breakages. No, we don’t. We don’t get over it. Obviously. In bed we don’t know our rights.’
And he thought: obviously. Because that is what you do, Daddy, when you do that, when you play that game, when you go down that road. You place them in another dimension where they’re always one step behind, one step beyond.
‘Do you want to see Jo now?’ she asked. ‘You still want that?’
He said yes, but with a reluctance, and a sadness, that he took to be a failure of courage. ‘Are you my enemy?’
‘I used to be your enemy.’ And she told him who she was.
‘… Jesus Christ, Cora.’
Beyond, arthritic feelers of lightning were lancing out, sideways, upwards, forming coastlines with many fjords. There was a repeated jumpcut effect, and shifting blocks of nightscape.
Cora Susan waited with the keys.
4. Anger of the just
‘Come in, dear. Come in out of the wet. Xan … They’re waiting for you, dear, through there. Paquita’ll get you anything you need. Bit of business.’
Joseph Andrews pushed open a red-leather swing door with a porthole in its brow. Around a cardtable you could see a fat hot man in braces, a small natty figure in a borsalino and a chalk-striped suit, a Chinese woman with a pair of sunglasses lodged in her quiff, and the set of a pair of unknowable shoulders. Cora went inside and the door swung shut behind her.
‘You’ve got some arsehole coming here, haven’t you mate? Are you daft or what? This way: follow me. Follow me.’
Xan was led into a long low room: its recreation of an English pub was not entirely literal, but there were damp beermats and glistening black plastic ashtrays on the round tables, as well as a dartboard, and horsebrass and horsehair and prints of racing scenes. A log fire drew noisily in the hearth, like emphysema, with additional sputters and spatters.
‘First, the past,’ he said, and lengthily exhaled. ‘I’ll say this for Mick Meo: you’d have to hurt him. I’ll say this: you knew you was in a row when you was in a row with Mick Meo. You’d have to hurt him. A wall. A drop. We had it out the once back in them days, before he come on board. And it went on a bit but I done him. Six months later, when he’s up and about again, he come on board and there was no hard feelings whatsoever. Him and me, we’d have a drink. On several occasions he invited me to his home. Consistently. I’d have little Leda on me knee. This was before your time, son.
‘Then come the liberty. We was both in Strangeways. He’d pulled a three for grand larceny, whilst I was serving me six for uh … for malicious wounding. Now. Our mate Tony Odgers has lost remission for doing the two screws who’ve burnt a letter from his wife – in his face. I’ve said to Mick, “I’m not having that. I’ll do the Governor.” And Mick’s gone, “I’ll do him.” And I’ve gone, “No I’ll do him.” And Mick’s gone, “I’m not having that. No I’ll do him.” Deadlock.’
Said with a lingering stress on the last consonant, like the beginning of a cough, and joining all the other coughs in the log fire.
‘So we’ve had a word with the Chaplain. It’s arranged. A straightener, with gloves, in the main quad. It sometimes happened in them days. You sort it out, with the uh, permission of the Governor. The Governor didn’t know what it’s about, of course …’
Xan said, ‘What was it about?’
‘… About who’d do the Governor.’
‘Yeah but who’d do the Governor? The winner or the loser?’
‘Are you all right mate? … Well in the end they’ve had to drag us off ourselves. We was in the same ward in the hospital, but I’ve had it the worst because I’ve done one of the screws who’ve truncheoned us apart. Mick come out in the morning – and then come back that afte
rnoon. In an appalling condition. I could tell by the state of him what he’s done: he’s done the Governor! Well I’m not having that. In the middle of the night I’ve slid out of me bed and crawled across the floor on me hands and knees and started giving him a whacking. Then they’ve shipped me off to Gartree. And after that, it’s a funny thing: Mick and me was never on the out at the same time. And never in the same prison. And for them twenty years the liberty’s festered …
‘Then I’m over to London from Dublin: bit of business. I’ve heard he’s come home and I’ve gone to the yard and I’ve called him out. He’s said, “What’s all this?” “What’s all this? You done the Governor, you cunt.” Then he reckons that he’s worked that one off: “Me in me hospital bed and you clawing me fucking stitches apart.” So I’ve gone, “All right. You want a liberty. Here’s a liberty. Are you married to a fucking elephant?”’
Andrews paused. The log fire gobbed and hawked and retched. It, too, was like England: bus shelters, station waiting-rooms, the pub Gents on a Friday night.
‘When’s your birthday, cock?’
Xan told him.
‘No it ain’t. “Your wife a fucky nelephant needs thirteen months to have a fucking baby?” And I’ve took the piece of paper from me pocket,’ said Andrews, taking the piece of paper from his pocket – the zippered pouch of his oilblack tracksuit. ‘Registration of birth. And I’ve wiggled it in his face. “Where was you, nine months back from this? You was in fucking Winson Green, that’s where. I’ve stuffed your wife and I’ve knocked her up and all. Your boy, he ain’t your boy. He’s fucking mine.”
‘Now that was me mistake … I overplayed me hand, you might say. Because he’s like grim fucking death then he is, so that nothing … nothing … So he’s giving me what for on the bare boards of the shed. And as he’s putting me lights out I’m thinking, Well it’s not your day, mate. Should have stayed in bed. But, you know, fair’s fair. See, stuffing other villains’ wives, it’s like a statement. The right of señor you could call it. It says to the bloke: let’s have you. And if he does you he does you. And Mick must have still had the hump because five days later he crippled Damon Susan and went away for his nine, out of me reach.