“Thank you very much.”
The door closed behind him. This was my chance to find clothes that might fit me better. I pushed an OFF button and opened the door to what turned out to be a dryer holding a load of laundry mixed in with kitchen trays, cafeteria-sized cans of Heinz ketchup and beans and, well, just about anything one might find unbolted on a glamorous TV network yacht. Good on my Samoan friend for getting a bit of fun out of his sack-of-shit life situation.
What now? I went back down to my floor. None of the keys worked in my door, so I embarked on a fishing expedition along the hallways to see if any of the keys worked in any of the doors, and I was richly rewarded. At the front of the boat, I entered a stunningly designed glassed-in area that stopped me with its beauty: perhaps Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might live in a place like this. Rare woods and sleek crystal light fixtures, exotic potted ferns and expensive-looking canvases on every wall. A tray rested on a polished marble side table, and on it sat several bottles of chilled Sauvignon Blanc and six glasses. Time for a toast to myself, I quite reasonably thought, for having navigated yet another level of the TV network lifestyle.
Raymond, you’re a survivor, you are.
Why, thank you, Raymond, I was just thinking that myself.
Delicious wine, isn’t it, Raymond?
Why, yes it is, Raymond, yes it is.
I think we all need quiet little moments like this to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come in life. The moment didn’t last long, however. An American male voice came from beyond a set of glass doors to a patio area on the deck, intruding on my almost religious state of bliss.
38
“Oh, fuck me ragged!” A squash racquet narrowly missed my wineglass. “Herry Fuckbuddy Potter, what the hell are you doing in my suite? And dressed like the Hillside Strangler. Get out now, before I call security. How did you get in here?”
“Stuart, calm down. The door over there was open,” I lied. “I’m just doing some reconnaissance. A mutinous Samoan has just trashed the ship’s laundry. I wanted to make sure he didn’t go further.”
“He what?”
“Stuart? Stuart, honey? Who’s that?” Sarah’s voice.
I called out, “It’s just me, making sure the ship is all shipshape.”
Sarah came in through the glass doors, magnificent in a knit bikini, her limbs glistening from a recent application of tanning oil. “You’re on your legs again! I’m so glad. Have a glass of wine with us.”
“Sarah, what do you possibly see in this pathetic English gimp?”
Sarah stared sternly at her loathsome boyfriend. “Raymond has rescued me twice from dangerous situations with highly menacing men. You should give him a handshake, Stuart, not your scary outdoor shoo-the-raccoons-away voice.”
Stuart could only acquiesce to his goddess. “Right. Pour yourself a fucking drink and then leave.” He stalked out, vibrating with rage. My wineglass became a goblet filled with my enemy’s tears.
“Just ignore him,” Sarah said soothingly. “He’s in a state because so many of the locals have abandoned ship and the production. We’ll never get the series shot at this rate. But at least the cast arrived, although your ex-wife had to go back and find some replacements.”
It was most unlikely that Fi would screw up on her job, the one thing that meant anything to her. “Were some of the contestants unfu—inappropriate?”
“No, she did a great job, but a bunch of them caught a wicked strain of norovirus in the LAX waiting lounge while it was shut down.
I’d forgotten the nuclear war. “Right, right—nuclear war—how’s all that going?”
“Nothing new, just all these countries being childish.”
She topped up my glass.
Ahhhh …
I felt statesmanlike discussing important current affairs with Sarah. I wondered how far this magic moment would take us until … fucking hell, I remembered waking up to LACEY in the fuck hut beside that ghastly poo-ous lagoon, the woman’s eyes like two drainholes sucking everything good and joyous from the world.
Sarah chose that moment to add to my pain. “You’ll be happy to hear that your LACEY is fine. She’s in the South Island camp. You must be aching to see her.” She sipped her drink. Were her eyes actually filled with regret? She raised a glass. “To you and LACEY and a future of perfect sex and happiness together with no one else except just the two of you, forever and ever and ever and ever.”
“Uh, it really wasn’t like that at all, Sarah. In fact, I don’t remember what happened.”
“Just a minute, Raymond. I’m buzzing.” Sarah removed the tiniest and slenderest mobile phone from her lady’s region. “Hmmm. Right. Okay. Not to worry. See you in five.” She hung up. “Raymond, want to come with me to the North Island camp?”
O.
M.
F.
G.
Thong Kong.
“Why, um, yes. Neal’s over there, isn’t he?”
“Indeed he is, poor fellow.”
“Poor fellow?”
“Sprained his ankle. It must hurt like the dickens. Come on. We have to meet the Zodiac right away. Chug the rest of your drink and we’re off.”
I chugged, then grabbed the bottle.
39
A minute later we were climbing into the Zodiac bound for the North Island—me!—a man of the world on a speedboat, squiring such a glorious humpcrumpet as Sarah to a turquoise lagoon populated by TV industry bigwigs and Neal’s own personal sex ranch. Yessiree, nothing could possibly go wrong on a beautiful day like today.
And then we landed and … nothing went wrong!
The North Island camp was largely empty. Fiona had delivered the replacement contestants, and shooting had begun on the South Island.
Sarah vanished to do her urgent business, leaving me to search for Neal.
Hmmmm. If Neal had injured his ankle, he couldn’t be working on the shoot. Wait a second: Neal had no actual job here on the island. I was the one the network had hired.
I looked up a small hill (elevation: 3 feet above sea level) and noticed a lovely little bungalow in the Bahamian style: solid typhoon-proof construction tastefully camouflaged in turquoise paint with pink storm shutters, graced by butterfly palms and a zoo of flowering plants. A chill ran down my spine: That fucker.
I stormed up the rise and banged on the door. “Neal, I know you’re in there. Don’t try to pretend you aren’t. This is me, Raymond.”
The door was opened by some lopsided gronk who I could tell immediately was a cameraman.
“Yes?” The gronk’s burliness shielded the house from my entry.
“I’m Raymond Gunt. Tell Neal I want to speak with him.”
The cameraman called over his shoulder. “Some guy here says his name is Raymond Cunt. He wants to talk to you.” There came a muffled reply, and he turned back to me. “Right. You can come in.”
I entered the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen. Cut flowers, sofas upholstered with the hides of near-extinct animals, marble floors. The walls dripped with paintings of Tahitian birds offering you their melon breasts on a plate along with hibiscuses and mango wedges. But by far the most overwhelmingly desirable aspect of this house was the utterly silent and stunningly effective air conditioning. Fuck me. This was heaven.
I headed off in the direction from which I’d heard Neal’s voice. I found him in a room at the back. The sunproof shades on the windows were drawn, and the room was rather dark. Neal was in striped pajamas adrift on a duvet surrounded by massive pillows while a muted TV set displayed a compilation of Australian rugby brawls. On his bedside were magnums of undrunk champagne and platters of sliced cold cuts and French cheeses.
“Raymond. You finally made it.”
“Neal, good God. What’s happened to you?”
“A bit of a sprain in my ankle, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all?”
“You know, Ray, you could have a little empathy for a friend in a bad situation.”
“Oh, that.”
“What do you mean, ‘Oh, that’?”
“It’s not just the ankle, Ray.”
“Oh?” Suddenly I felt like a bit of a shit as I pokerfacedly waited for Neal to tell me he had inoperable leprosy or one of those no-hoper diseases with its own dedicated coloured lapel ribbon. “Go on.”
“I’ve got pussy fatigue, Ray.”
My eyeballs exploded.
“It’s what happens when you have too much sex too quickly, Ray. Surely you’ve had it before.”
“I have never in my life even heard of pussy fatigue, Neal, and I seriously doubt it exists. You have no idea how hard I worked to get here to Thong Kong from the yacht, and now you tell me you’re pussied out?”
“It’s a real condition. Google it.”
“You know darn well there’s no Internet because of the nuclear war. You just don’t want to share.”
“That’s a bit harsh, Ray. I’d be happy to share, except the ladies have all gone off on a healing retreat this afternoon.”
I was so stricken by this news that tiny convulsed dinosaur noises emerged from my choked larynx.
Neal went on. “I don’t think they had dick fatigue—I think it’s more of a spiritual cleansing. Glorious girls, though. So giving. So concerned about my pleasure, never theirs. And their energy! Boundless. When they’re not servicing me, they’re off in the kitchen making me snacks or giving me foot rubs to get me through the worst of my sprained ankle. Oh, look.” He pointed to the TV screen, which displayed the messy aftermath of a particularly forceful brawl. “You can see the bone sticking out of that bloke’s leg there. Poor fucker. Good thing he’s not in Bonriki, though. He’d be on the spit in seconds. Care for some champagne, Ray?”
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40
“Well, Neal, you certainly seem to have landed on your feet here, even with a sprained ankle. How, exactly, did you sprain it, anyway?”
“Come on, Ray, don’t be a dick. You could even move in, if you wanted. There’s a nice little hut out back I use as a storeroom. It’s a bit small, and you’d have to move some tinned goods and a deep-freeze to fit in a cot, but it’s a big step up from one of the tents in the crew village. Those tents give me the chills. Hermit crabs’ll come in at night and eat your face off.”
I remained disgusted. “How the fuck did you manage to become Boss Hogg here? How the fuck do you manage to bag the only decent air-conditioned accommodation between Guam and Bora Bora?”
“This house is a legacy of the people’s princess, it is. Brings a tear to my eye.”
My attention was temporarily sidelined by some truly astonishing Brie and a mound of pâté, while Neal fast-forwarded through the DVD. The sight of so many Australians rankled me. “Fucking Aussies. Fucking Kiwis. Smug, smug, smug. We’re so violent! Look at us! Fight fight fight! We have vibrant little economies shielded from pollution and immigration, and our restaurants are really good. Fucking Kiwis. Fucking Aussies.”
“Mind your language, Ray.”
“Have you turned into a fucking American?”
“Ray, we’re in Princess Di’s house.”
“What?”
“This was going to be Princess Di’s sanctuary from the world. One of her many rich boyfriends built it just for her. The most perfect house on the planet, as far away as it is geographically possible to be from intrusive cameramen.”
I looked at Neal with my coldest death-ray eyes. “Neal, are you rubbishing my occupation? My very way of making a living?”
“Ray, I’m not saying it was you in particular who murdered Diana.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m glad you hold me in such high esteem.”
“But every time I make love in here, I can’t help feeling a pang in my heart. She was so young. So good. Murdered by the media.”
“Neal, I hate to break the news to you, but you don’t have pussy fatigue. You have displaced royal bang syndrome.”
Neal stared at me goggle-eyed.
“I’ll explain it to you: you live in a cardboard Samsung box in a West London alley and yet you really want to get it on with some rich titled piece. Except you can’t—you live in a cardboard fucking box—so instead you bang every restaurant hostess from Heathrow to Shepherd’s Bush who takes pity on you. But it’s not the same. Is it? Is it, Neal?”
Neal, of course, was now bawling. “You’re right, Ray. It’s not. I don’t want to fuck non-royals. Not in my heart.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No. I want to fuck the people’s princess. Except she’s gone. It’s like since 1997 I’ve been adrift on an asteroid, being bombarded by non-royal pussy at every turn, and it’s driving me mad! Mad, I say.”
“Excellent.” I rubbed my hands. “We’re making progress here.”
Right then Sarah walked in. Christ, just what I needed: Sarah to see Neal all vulnerable and needy in precisely the way women find irresistible.
“Neal, how’s your ankle?”
“Oh, hi, Sarah,” said Neal from within his silk sheets, looking nauseatingly like a puppy. “I’m getting by, I suppose.”
Sarah glanced at me, her expression saying, Is there something I need to know?
I shrugged. “Neal here is mourning Princess Diana.”
“Oh, Neal,” Sarah gently remonstrated. “That was so long ago. She needs peace now. She really does. And we all need to move on … individually and as a society.”
“You think so?”
“I know so, Neal.”
Neal wore a face of profound sadness. “You’re American, Sarah, so you’ll never know what it was like to have Diana as your princess … your very own princess.”
“But I do read magazines—at least, I used to, before the Internet. And if Di’s wedge-cut hairdo didn’t change the way the women in my hometown looked at both themselves and at royalty, then nothing did. She was a force of nature.”
“Seriously? In the United States, too? Her hair was her trademark, you know.”
“Oh, I know. People think Americans are morbidly obese Wal-Mart shoppers who willfully undereducate their young people just so they can save a few extra dollars to pay for their five-ton recreational vehicles, but Americans are more than that, Neal.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Americans are …”
I swear that if real life could ever break into a song and dance number, that would have been the moment.
“Americans are …”
Neal was staring at Sarah wide-eyed, as if waiting for her to confirm whether fairies were real.
“Americans are … basically Englishmen with the English part removed.”
“Yes?” Neal sat up on the bed, clearly still in suspense. “What else?”
Sarah paused to think. “Americans are …”
Needy glances were exchanged in all directions.
Her face brightened. “Americans are the people who watch the TV show we are currently producing on this very island! Isn’t that something
?”
Silence. Neal slumped back on his pillows.
Sarah looked crushed by her failure—and touchingly demure. “I don’t know what to say about Americans, Neal. They’ll do anything for no reason whatsoever and go down in flames smiling at the TV camera while doing it. It’s kind of awesome, but it worked much better when there were only a few million of us instead of 350 million. There’s not much left to consume. In fifteen years, we turn into India. We’re a catastrophe in the making.”
Neal looked unutterably sad—and sympathetic. Sarah looked like she was melting. Ho. Ly. Fuck. Neal and Sarah were having a moment of real connection. This was intolerable.
“Neal, about my Cure T-shirt …”
“What about it, Ray?”
“May I please have it?”
“I don’t have your shirt, Ray.”
“Now, now, don’t be coy. Just tell me where it is, and I’ll fetch it and pretend you never brazenly lied to me like you just did.”
“I didn’t take your shirt, Ray. You gave it to Sarah, remember?”
“Oh. Right. I did.” Fuck.
“And I gave it to Fiona,” said Sarah. “I hope that’s okay. She looked so sad, having to jet back to do the recasting. I thought the shirt would be a nice pick-me-up, although I had to Google the Cure to find out who they were.”
“I—” I was livid, but couldn’t let on.
“Fiona’s back,” said Neal. “She’ll probably be resting up in the tent city.”
“You should go visit her, Raymond. I know she still has strong feelings for you,” Sarah said.
“I’m sure she does.”
Mental images of Fiona’s warty face quickly made me remember why I was really there on the North Island: Thong Kong and the promise of unlimited pussy. I felt conflicted because I had genuine feelings for Sarah, yet I also still wanted a full-on highly lubricated orgy. I sighed. Life does throw us these cruel existential puzzles.
Worst. Person. Ever. Page 17