How wd u do it 2 me if u cd?
TongueMan read the question from LadyFire without his usual surge of gratification. They'd been dancing round this moment for weeks, despite an initial—and inaccurate—assessment of her on his part which had suggested he'd have her ready for a go well in advance of CreamPants. It just went to show that you couldn't judge the outcome by someone's ability to engage in suggestive cyberchat, didn't it? LadyFire had come on strong at first in the descriptive arena, but she'd faded quickly when the talk shifted from fantasy fucks between celebrities (she'd been astonishing in her ability to convey a hot encounter between a purple-haired rock star and their nation's monarch) to fantasy fucks in which she herself was one of the partners. Indeed, TongueMan had thought for a time that he'd lost her altogether by pushing too soon and revealing too much. He'd even considered moving on to the next possibility—EatMe—and he was about to do so when LadyFire reappeared on the cyberscene. She'd needed some time to think, evidently. But now she knew what she wanted. So How wd u do it 2 me if u cd?
TongueMan studied the question and took note of the fact that his mind didn't kick into high gear at the thought of another supercharged semi-anonymous encounter with another cyberlover so soon after his last. He was doing his best to forget his last anyway, and especially to forget everything that had followed: the flashing lights, the barriers blocking off both ends of his street, the eyes of suspicion coming to rest on him, the Boxter—damn them—being hauled off for police inspection. But he'd handled it all well enough, he decided. Yes. He'd handled it like a pro.
The Met certainly weren't prepared for someone who was wise to their ways, TongueMan thought. They expected one to lie down, belly up, the moment they started to ask their questions. They reckoned that Joseph Q. Average Citizen—eager to prove he had nothing to hide—would jump onto the cooperation trolley car and ride it to whatever destination the cops were hoping to take. So when the police said, “We have a few questions, if you wouldn't mind coming down to the station for a chat,” most people sauntered right along without a second thought, assuming they had some sort of immunity from a legal system that anyone with a grain of sense knew could ride roughshod over the uninitiated in about five minutes.
TongueMan, however, was anything but a member of the uninitiated. He knew what could happen when one cooperated, blithely believing that doing one's civic duty was synonymous with demonstrating one's guilelessness. Bollocks, that. So when the cops said that his address had been in the possession of that woman in the street and could they ask him a few questions please, TongueMan knew which way the trolley ride was heading, and in short order he had his solicitor on the phone.
Not that Jake Azoff had liked being torn from his bed at midnight. Not that he didn't whine privately about “duty solicitors and what they are being paid by the Government to do.” But there was no way on earth that TongueMan was going to place his future—not to mention his present—into the hands of a duty solicitor. True, the representation wouldn't have cost him a penny, but a duty solicitor had no vested interest in TongueMan's future, whereas Azoff—with whom he enjoyed a rather complicated relationship involving shares, bonds, mutual funds, and the like—actually did. Besides, what was he paying Azoff for, if not to be ready when legal advice of any sort was needed?
But TongueMan was worried. Obviously. He could lie to himself about it. He could attempt to distract himself by phoning in sick from work and logging onto the net for a few hours of pornographic fantasising with utter strangers. But his body couldn't prevaricate when it came to unacknowledged anxiety. And the fact that he was enjoying no physical reaction whatsoever to How wd u do it 2 me if u cd? said it all.
He typed U wdnt 4get it soon.
She typed R u shy 2day? Cm on. Tell how.
How? he wondered. Yes, that was it. How? He tried to be loose. Just let the mind roam. He was good at this. He was a master. And she was certainly what all the others had been: older and looking for a sign that she still had what it took.
He typed Whr do u want my tong? in an attempt to get her to do the work.
She typed No fair. R U jst all tlk?
He wasn't even talk today, TongueMan thought, which she'd discover soon enough if they carried on much longer in this vein. It was time to get huffy with LadyFire. A break was called for till he sorted himself out.
He typed If thts wt u thnk, bby and logged off. Let her stew in that juice for a day or two.
He checked how the market was doing before he pushed back from the keyboard. He swung his chair round and left the study, descending to the kitchen where the glass carafe on the coffee maker offered him a final cup. He poured and savoured the flavour of coffee the way he liked it: strong, black, and bitter. Rather like life itself, he decided.
He gave a brief laugh devoid of amusement. There was a real irony to the last twelve hours, and he was sure if he thought about it long enough, he'd discover what that irony was. But thinking about it was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment. With a Hampstead murder squad breathing down his neck, he knew he had to maintain his composure. That was the secret to life, composure: in the face of adversity, in the face of triumph, in the face of—
Something flicked against the kitchen window. Roused, Tongue-Man looked out to see two roughly dressed, unshaven men standing in the middle of his back garden. They'd come in from the park that ran the length of nearly all the Crediton Hill back gardens on the east side of the street. Since he had no fence between his property and the park, his visitors hadn't encountered much of an obstacle in gaining access. He was going to have to do something about that.
The two men saw him and nudged each other simultaneously. One of them called out, “Open up, Jay. Long time, no see,” and the other added, “We're giving you a break, coming in the back way” with a maddening smirk.
TongueMan cursed. First a body in the street, then the Boxter towed away, then himself under the eyes of the cops. And now this. Always guard against thinking a day couldn't possibly get worse, he told himself as he went to the dining room and opened the french windows.
“Robbie, Brent,” he said to the men in greeting, every bit as if he'd seen them only last week. It was cold outside, and they were hunched against it, stamping their feet and blowing steam like two bulls waiting for the matador. “What're you doing here?”
“Ask us in?” Robbie said. “Not a very pleasant day for the garden, this.”
TongueMan sighed. It seemed as if every time he took a step forward, something came along to drag him two steps back. He said, “What's this about, then?” But what he meant was, How did you find me this time?
Brent grinned, saying, “The usual, Jay,” but at least he had the decency to look uncomfortable and to shift his feet.
Robbie, on the other hand, was the one to watch out for. Always had been and always would be. He'd throw Granny from the underground train if he thought he stood to gain by it, and TongueMan knew the last thing he could hope for was consideration, respect, or sympathy from the bloke.
“Street's blocked off.” Robbie cocked his head in the general direction of the bottom of the road. “Something happen?”
“A woman was hit by a car last night.”
“Ah.” But the way Robbie said the word declared that he wasn't learning anything new. “And that's why you're not at work today?”
“I work from home sometimes. I've told you that.”
“Might've, yeah. But it's been a while, ha'n't it?” He didn't go on to mention what hung between them unspoken: the time it had been since he'd last come calling and what he'd gone through to track down this address. Instead, he said, “But your office tol' me you had to cancel a meeting today and you phoned in with flu. Or was it a head cold? You remember, Brent?”
“You talked to my—” TongueMan stopped himself. This, after all, was the reaction Robbie sought. He said, “I thought we'd got that straight. I asked you not to speak to anyone but me when you phone me at work. You've got the
private line. There's never any need to talk to my secretary.”
“You ask for a lot,” Robbie said. “‘N't that so, Brent?” This last was obviously meant to remind the other man—possessing the lesser intelligence—which side he was supposed to be on.
Brent said, “Right. You asking us in, or what, Jay? Cold out here.”
Robbie added, as if superfluously, “There's three tabloid blokes down the end of the street. You know that, Jay? Wha's going on?”
TongueMan cursed in silence and stepped back from the door. The two men outside laughed, knocked hands in a clumsy high-five, crossed the flagstones, and came up the steps. “There's a boot scraper. Use it,” TongueMan told them. Last night's rain had made a swamp of the ground beneath the trees that formed the boundary between the houses and the park. Robbie and Brent had tramped right through it like farmers raising pigs. “I've a decent Oriental carpet in here.”
“Take the daisies off, Brent,” Robbie said cooperatively. “How's that, Jay? We leave our mucked-up boots on the step. We know how to be proper guests, me and Brent.”
“Proper guests wait for invitations.”
“Wouldn't want to stand on that sort of ceremony.”
Both men were inside, and they seemed to fill the room. They were enormous, and while they'd never used their size to intimidate him, he knew they wouldn't hesitate to use anything within their power to bend his will to theirs.
“Why's those tabloid blokes hanging about?” Robbie asked. “Far's I know, the only way tabloids get their stuff 's if someone rings them up with something hot.”
“Yeah,” Brent said, bending to peer into the china cabinet, which he used as a mirror to inspect his hair. “Something hot, Jay.” He jiggled the cabinet door.
“That's antique. Have a care, all right?”
“It looked dodgy, those blokes hanging round the barriers at the bottom of the road,” Robbie said. “So we had a word with them, me and Brent did, didn't we?”
“Yeah. A word.” Brent opened the door and took out one of the china cups inside. “Nice, this. Old, is it, Jay?”
“Come on, Brent.”
“He asked a question, Jay.”
“Fine. It's old. It's early nineteenth century. If you're going to break it, just get it over with and spare me the suspense, all right?”
Robbie chuckled. Brent grinned and replaced the cup. He shut the cabinet with the care a neurosurgeon might give to repositioning a section of skull.
Robbie said, “One of the tabloid blokes said the cops're interested in someone on this street. Said a snout at the station tol' him the dead bird was carrying an address with her last night. Wouldn't give us the address, though, me and Brent, if he knew it. Thought we might be competition.”
Small chance of that, TongueMan thought. But he anticipated the direction they were about to take, and he did what he could to brace himself for the inevitable course of the conversation.
“Tabloids,” Robbie said. “Amazing what they c'n dig up 'less someone tries to head them off.”
“Yeah. Amazing,” Brent agreed. And then as if he'd merely been playing the other man's stooge instead of living the rôle, he said, “Rolling Suds, Jay. It needs some bolstering.”
“I ‘bolstered’ it not six months ago.”
“Right. But that was then, in spring. Season's slow now. And there's this matter of … well, you know.” Brent glanced at Robbie.
Which was when the pieces clicked into place. “You've borrowed against the business, haven't you?” TongueMan said. “What is it this time? Horses? Dogs? Cards? I'm not about to—”
“Hey, you listen.” Robbie took a step forward as if to demonstrate the considerable difference in their sizes. “You owe us, mate. Who stood by you? Who gave aggro to every Tom and Willie who even thought 'bout whispering behind your back? Brent got his arm broke because of you, and I—”
“I know the story, Rob.”
“Good. So hear the ending, okay? We need some oscar, we need it today, and if that's a problem, then you best speak up.”
TongueMan looked from one man to the other and saw the future unrolling before him like an endless carpet with a repetitive design. He would sell up again, move house again, establish himself, change his job if necessary … and they would still find him. And when they found him, they would trot out the same manoeuvre they'd used with so much success for so many years. This was the way it was going to be. They believed he owed them. And they never forgot.
“What do you need?” he asked them wearily.
Robbie named his price. Brent blinked and grinned.
TongueMan fetched his chequebook and scrawled the amount. Then he saw them out the way they had come: through the dining room door and into the back garden. He watched till they ducked beneath the bare branches of the plane trees at the edge of the park. Then he went to the phone.
When he had Jake Azoff on the line, he took a breath that felt like a stab in the heart. “Rob and Brent found me,” he informed his solicitor. “Tell the police I'll talk.”
GIDEON
10 September
I don't understand why you won't prescribe something for me. You're a medical doctor, aren't you? Or will the act of writing out a prescription for migraines reveal you as a charlatan? And please don't produce that tedious commentary about psychotropic medication again. We're not talking about antidepressants, Dr. Rose. About antipsychotics, tranquillisers, sedatives, or amphetamines. We are talking about a simple pain killer. Because what I have in my head is simple pain.
Libby's trying to help. She was here earlier and she found me where I'd been all morning: in my bedroom with the curtains drawn and a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream tucked into the crook of my arm like a Paddington bear. She sat on the edge of the bed and loosened my grip on the bottle, saying, “If you're planning on getting blitzed on this, you'll be hurling chunks in an hour.”
I groaned. Her style of language, so bizarre and so graphic, was the last thing I needed to hear. I said, “My head.”
She said, “The pits. But booze's going to make it worse. Let's see if I can help.”
She put her hands on my head. The tips of her fingers, resting lightly on my temples, were cool and they traced small circles, small fresh circles that diminished the pounding in my veins. I felt my body relax beneath her touch, and it seemed to me that I could easily fall asleep with her sitting there so quietly.
She moved and lay next to me and placed her hand on my cheek. The same gentle touch of the same cool flesh. She said, “You're burning.”
I murmured, “It's the headache.”
She turned her hand so my cheek felt the backs of her fingers, then. Cool, they were so wonderfully cool.
I said, “Feels good. Thanks, Libby.” I took her hand, kissed her fingers, and placed them back against my cheek.
She said, “Gideon …?”
I said, “Hmm?”
“Oh, never mind.” And then when I did just that, she sighed and went on. “D'you ever think about … us? I mean, like, where we're headed and all?”
I made no reply. It seems to me that it always comes down to this with women. That plural pronoun and the quest for validation: thinking about us confirms that there is an us in the first place.
She said, “D'you realise how much time we've spent together?”
“A great deal of time.”
“Jeez, we've even, like, slept together.”
Women, I have also noted, have a marvelous command of the obvious.
“So d'you think we should go on? D'you think we're ready for the next level in all this? I mean, I've got to say I feel totally ready. Really ready for what comes next. What about you?” And as she spoke, she lifted her leg to rest her thigh against mine, crossed my chest with her arm, and tilted her hips—just the ghost of a tilt, this was—to press her pubis against me.
And suddenly I am back with Beth, back at that point in a relationship when something more is supposed to happen between the man and
the woman and when nothing does. At least, not for me. With Beth the next level was permanent commitment. We were lovers, after all, and had been lovers for eleven months.
She is the liaison between East London Conservatory and the schools from which the conservatory draws its students. A former music instructor, she is also a cellist. She is perfect for the conservatory in that she speaks the language of the instruments, the language of the music, and, most importantly, the language of the children themselves.
I am not aware of her at first. Not until we must deal with a parent whose child has run away from home, seeking a shelter that the conservatory cannot provide. The child, we learn, has been prevented from practising by the mother's boyfriend, who, we also learn, has other activities in mind for her. The girl has become little more than a servant in their squalid home. But that little more is defined by sexual favours she has been told to perform on both of them.
Beth is Nemesis to this pathetic excuse of a human couple. She is pure Fury. She waits for neither police nor Social Services to deal with the situation because she trusts neither police nor Social Services. She deals with it herself: with a private detective and with a meeting between herself and the couple during which she makes it clear what will happen to them both should this child come to any harm. And to make sure that they understand, she defines harm for them in the explicit street terms that they are accustomed to.
I am not there for any of this, but I hear of it from more than one of the other instructors. And the ferocity of her devotion to this student touches something within me. A longing, perhaps. Or perhaps a chord of recognition.
At any rate, I seek her out. We fall into together in the most natural fashion I can imagine. For a year all is well.
But then as it happens, she talks of having more. It's logical, I know. Pondering the next step is rational for a man and a woman, although perhaps more for a woman who has her basic biology to consider.
When the subject of next comes up between us, I know I should want what follows those professions of love we've made for each other. I realise that nothing stays the same forever and to expect that she and I will be forever content to be fellow musicians and ardent lovers is a form of delusion. But, still, when she broaches the idea of marriage and children, I feel myself grow cool. I avoid the topic at first and when it can no longer be shunted to one side with the excuse of rehearsals, practises, recording sessions, and personal appearances, I find that the coolness within me has increased in proportion and now has iced over the idea not only of a future with Beth but also a present with Beth as well. I can't be with her as I was before. I feel no passion, and I have no desire. I attempt to go through the motions at first but it's just not there for me any longer. Whatever it was: desire, fervour, attachment, devotion.
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