Marion stood in the doorway and watched, smiling to herself.
They cannot steal the land you have protected for me, Parjanya hissed in her ear. They are arrogant enough to think that their machines will make a difference, but they forget I control the Heavens.
Parjanya made the rains come. She looked up into the sky and saw it cloud over within a few seconds. The first bolt of lightning split the air and hit the cabin of the lead earthmover. A scream came from within. Men swarmed around the stalled vehicle as smoke billowed from its electrics.
It was the heaviest monsoon squall she had ever witnessed. The rain increased until nothing could be discerned from the door of the hut. She heard the ominous rumble of wet earth as a torrent of mud poured over the broken walls, punching the workmen’s legs from under them, swallowing them in thick brown effluvium. The men were all choked and drowned, or were crushed and buried. Their machines were overturned on top of them, hammering them flat, bursting their soft shells into the bubbling cauldron of mud. The monkeys stared out from the shelter of the palace, hooting in triumph. Soon the mud would dry again and it would be as if the workmen were never here.
A beatific smile crept over Marion’s face as she returned to make fresh tea.
Karan unknotted his tie and fanned himself in the blast-furnace heat. He watched Marion slowly retreat into the shadows, lost inside her visions. One of the workmen jammed his shovel into the hard dry earth, leaned back and caught his eye, grinning knowingly. Pāgala aurata. Crazy lady.
Karan wondered what was going through Marion’s head. It was a funny thing about those who came to stay; the ones who didn’t believe often ended up believing a little too much.
Let her keep her dreams, he thought. I’ll only take eighty yards from the garden. No-one will notice. If they ask, I’ll tell them it was a mistake.
Somewhere in the dense treetops behind him, the first cool breezes rose.
Beautiful Men
The Coast
Out in the bay, the last jet-skiers are looping past each other in the setting sun. Nearby, on Cap Ferrat, the summer parties are coming to an end. The mistral is rising, whipping petals and pine needles into the air, stippling the surfaces of sapphire swimming pools. This year the Russians have moved in, filling the hotels vacated by Americans. Everyone wants to know where the Americans have gone. They are fondly remembered; in past times they were generous and jovial, but now they have completely vanished. Restaurant owners blame politics, but only in the vaguest terms. The Riviera towns are safe havens, far from the threat of fundamentalist attack. Nobody here feels like the end of the world would affect them.
The hot winds are still bringing firestorms to the hills. Yellow Canadair seaplanes blast the flames with seawater, but already there are fewer people to witness the drama. Houses are being locked up for the coming winter. Entire areas are falling asleep, even though the temperature has barely dropped from the height of summer. Many slumber beneath the cliffs of the Massif Central, the great fold of rock that creates a microclimate so warm it is nicknamed ‘Little Africa’, perfect for growing figs and clementines, perfect for hiding from the world.
The light hurts Ryan’s corneas. The low sun on the sea fractures and pierces, but he will not don his glasses, for he must see everything now. Speedboats burn the last of their precious petrol cutting geometric patterns through the azure waves. A fierce golden light bathes the pink breast-shaped cone of the Negresco, and turns the slow curve of the Promenade des Anglais into a shimmering ribbon, studded with the rubies of homegoing brake lights.
Ryan checks his Rolex and begins the countdown in his head. Already the first neon strip lights are outlining the hotels of Nice. The last ferry of the evening is arriving from Corsica. The pizza restaurants in the port are preparing themselves for the extra business it will bring. The buildings have drawn in the brightness of the day and will feed it back as night energy. Everything is interlocked, as unstoppable as time, and will remain so until the very last moment.
Ryan leans against the warm stone of the seat and turns up the music in his headphones. He smiles at those who pass and waits for the vermilion dusk, patiently watching as the city goes about its business, tethered to routine, absorbing upset, heedless of harm, happy to exist at all.
And he thinks to himself, what a wonderful world.
The Girls
On June 13, exactly four months earlier, he is seated in much the same pose but further around the bay, in a pulsing basement nightclub with sweating red walls, like a chamber of the heart. He watches as three glistening girls with thick St Petersburg accents squeeze together for their web-cam interviewer, pushing for screen space.
They are being questioned about what they look for in a man. The interview is being projected on high-res screens all around the room, greedily repeating their behavioural tics in fierce scarlets and cyans, like coursework for anthropology students. The girls shriek that their guys need broad shoulders and firm definition and a sense of humour, but above all property, nice cars and lots of money. He studies them from the bar and thinks it odd that those who see the most beauty in the world are the least equipped to handle it. And those who see nothing at all are the best survivors, at least while their looks hold out.
Ryan examines these Russian dolls with a dispassionate eye, and tries to see what they want him to see. All he can find is what’s on display: bleach-cuts and cleavages and flicking hair, posing bodies, thrusting hips, tossed heads, sparkling jewellery, forced laughter revealing weirdly whitened teeth. He makes himself listen, because all he can really hear is a sort of hysterical high-pitched squeaking in the background while their sexual postures talk over them. Men only hear bodies in nightclubs.
Unravelling their logomania, he tries to form an opinion about what they’re saying, even though the effort nearly kills him. He thinks, That’s what you tell everyone you want, but I know you; you’ll settle for less, much less because eventually you’ll have to. Because girls like you are ten a penny here and beautiful men with lots of money might want you but only for a night, then they’ll throw you out without breakfast and drive away to someone else. Why? Because they can and you can’t without looking like hookers.
That’s not sexist, he thinks, that’s practical.
The girls of the Cote d’Azur ask for a lot but have to settle for very little. They’ll date a man who disappears for days at a time, who lies to them constantly, who’ll never hold down a job or have any money, who’s as fat and bald and ugly as a pig, who’ll let them down every single time. They pretend they want perfection, but their expectations are gradually reduced to such a low level that their men can get away with anything.
Ryan blames the Single Switch, a mutant autogenesis hardwired inside girls’ brains that trips one day, and suddenly a light shines behind their eyes telling them to find a man fast and have a child. This is the moment when their ideals carbonise and they behave like someone blindfolded for a party game, rushing about to grab the first shiny male who comes within range, no matter how venal, bitter and hate-filled they are. Because many men really hate women, hate them so much that they can barely prevent themselves from lashing out. But the Riviera girls have to pair off before they spend too much time alone and turn strange, devoting themselves to horoscopes, crystals and cat sanctuaries, and filling their homes with false memories.
That’s not unfair, he thinks, that’s realistic.
The One
Ryan knows this to be the case because he is the kind of man the desperate girls chase. He always goes after the silly, pretty ones because he ticks all their boxes. Youth? He’ll say he’s twenty-six when he’s actually twenty-nine. Job? He’s employed in broadband sales and marketing at Cap 3000, the vast shopping mall to the west of Nice. Looks? His hair is thinning, his gut stretching, but he has an olive tan and height is a big advantage. Sixty percent of all CEOs are over six feet tall, he reminds himself, and nearly all are men. Personality? He can make a girl laugh and feel that the
y have the measure of him. Brains? He graduated languages and new technologies, and is unusually well-read. Money? He’s on a good salary, has just been promoted, gets new cars and annual bonuses. Eligibility? He’s single! There are no ugly surprises and no hidden children.
Willingness to commit?
Ryan is dating an awful lot of women in this, the year before his thirtieth birthday, two or three at any one time. But in the nightclub that night, on June 13, he meets Lainey Gray, a tall, thin-shouldered American who teaches at a language school in Villefranche. She talks to him on the cancer deck, a rubbish-strewn stairwell at the rear of the building where the patrons once took drugs instead of sneaking smokes, and catches him before his psychic armour goes on. None of Ryan’s usual nonsense works on her. She studies him with detached amusement, a half-smile playing on crimson frosted lips, and he knows she can see right through him. But she sticks around, because she is waiting for him to exhaust his bag of tricks, and wants to see what’s left behind.
Smart girl.
Maybe too smart. There’s Ryan thinking he’s laying traps to catch her, and she’s already caught him. Over the next month they meet six times before she even lets him touch her. You can love a girl like that.
Their first six dates:
An unwatchable dubbed rom-com with Sarah Jessica Parker at the Nice Etoile. They reach a mutual decision to leave before the end and go for pasta in the Old Town. A Warhol exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by a brasserie meal in Place Masséna. She goes to his flat but only stays for coffee. His best friend Sean’s birthday party at the K Club. Ryan drops a couple of pills but doesn’t tell her. He genuinely believes she hasn’t noticed, until she stares hard at him and suddenly goes home on her scooter without saying a word. A crowded lunch in the Cours Saleya where they have to shout and mime across the table to each other. The afternoon is spent pushing through crowds of tourists on the Promenade des Anglais. He goes to her flat in Mont Boron, but she coolly kicks him out after an hour, explaining that she has to get up early next morning. Mesrine Parts 1 & 2 followed by icy steel platters of fruits de mer at the Café de Turin. He eats a bad oyster. A party for one of her work colleagues, Marisia, at the Chinatown Dim Sum restaurant. Ryan leaves her there with the intention of calling another girl, but something prevents him.
Then, a few days after that, the walls come down between them.
From date seven onwards they’re at each other like dogs on a hot Spanish street. Lainey can’t keep her hands off Ryan. Ryan doesn’t have time to look at anyone else, and isn’t interested anyway. A couple of his former girlfriends leave sulky messages but he puts them off, then deletes them from his mobile.
Over the next three months, Ryan and Lainey continue to grow closer. They have their first argument, then fuck like lunatics. Devastated by the thought of someone else’s happiness, many of their single friends stop bothering to call. Ryan meets Lainey’s parents on their first overseas visit. They’re sweet and totally confused by Europe. Ryan realises that he has been caught, but enjoys this strange sensation without understanding why. One day the pair find themselves in Habitat and think, Oh shit, we’re choosing furniture together. She must be The One.
The Chasm
Ryan knows what’s coming next, but finds the idea of a mapped and stable future depressing beyond all endurance. He has always assumed there would be more to life than just finding a mate and slowly turning into his father, but the odds are against him. He becomes depressed, and has no idea what it will take to excite and revitalise him, so he simply allows events to take their natural course. Like the girls being interviewed in the club, he sees little real point to life, which makes him well equipped to survive it. But surviving isn’t living.
Lainey does not share his pessimism, but senses an emerging pattern of hairline fractures between them. The gaps quickly expand until they join to form a chasm. Ryan knows that his girlfriend has a passionate, wayward spirit, but fears for the emptiness in himself. He has nothing to offer her. He never bares his soul because he’s not sure he has one.
And Nice has a raffish charm that takes away any sense of urgency, a sense of elegant disgrace that encourages bad behaviour. The town gave the world a healthy salad and the word ‘tourism’, but not much else. The rest of its pleasures have to be patiently uncovered. The English built its extraordinary coast road, where hookers in Barbarella outfits now cruise beside grannies, rollerbladers and pétanque players.
Whether he ends up staying with Lainey or not, Ryan thinks he’ll stay on. He feels more settled here than in England. This is the city he dreams of most; slightly disturbing, slightly surreal, filled with the sensual luxuries of wasted time. Watching the sunset liners returning from the south, he is so filled with the desire for tropical deceptions that it’s possible to not see the new poor; the McDonald’s outlets, the lost Algerian children, the tramps asleep in doorways. Like California, this part of Europe has become the place to head when you’re too rich, too recognizable, too stupid, too burned out to live anywhere else. It’s expensive and selfish, and no-one here cares whether you clean pools or once opened for Oasis.
Ryan marks time and watches the world, his compass spinning.
For all he knows, he might love Lainey. But he doesn’t love her enough.
The Beautiful Men
Then, something inexplicable happens that ends his former life.
Lainey has a loud friend called Lex, an EasyJet steward based at Gatwick who flirts and theatrically emphasises his words, punctuating his conversations with expansive hand gestures, and Ryan wants to argue with him every time they meet, so he finds excuses not to meet up with Lainey whenever she makes arrangements for them.
But one night the trio end up having a good time, mainly because Lex stops trying so hard to be liked. Three days later Ryan meets the pair of them at a new bar in the port, and that is where he first notices them, standing right in the centre of the room.
The beautiful men.
Ryan assumes they’re gay; anyone would. He figures that the new acceptance of gay men gives them permission to be as ordinary as everyone else, and now most of them are. The flamboyant clothes and outrageous behaviour of the past have been relegated to old photographs, the former ghettos have been decimated by rent hikes and invading coffee shops. The bars which were once the exclusive province of Riviera queens are now as blended as the wines served in them. But, just as one would occasionally spot a small flock of stunning, unattainable girls, as attenuated and exotic as African flamingos, Ryan starts to notice the beautiful men, half a dozen of them, each so ridiculously perfect that he can’t imagine what they ever looked like as children. He wonders if they have been conjured into existence by a coalescence of pure atoms, or perhaps they are man-made and spend their nights floating in amniotic fluids being recharged.
Each night they drift into Lex’s favourite bar, Le Six, and order cocktails, standing apart from everyone else, not even looking around, just quietly talking to each other, so unreal that you want to pinch their flesh for reassurance.
Lainey notices them and Lex definitely notices them, and everyone assumes they’re models because their expensive clothes are casually immaculate and their hair and skin look retouched. They are all in their early twenties, tall, dark, thick-armed and slender-waisted, with an otherworldly presence that rises above traditional notions of beauty. Nicois men are naturally dark and beautiful, so it takes a lot to stand out.
It is strange that Ryan should even notice them at all, but the simple truth is that they disturb him. They are the wind in the tops of the pines, the tremble of the seismometer needle before a quake. They ruffle still waters and scatter seagulls, they part crowds and make cats cower. They appear shallow to the point of absurdity yet are somehow the opposite, as if they are magnetically connected to life, as if they are the essence of life itself.
The Seventh
As soon as Ryan sees them, he starts seeing them everywhere he goes, throughout the b
ars and restaurants and art galleries of Nice, on empty night streets and at busy midday intersections, the same six beautiful men, all in dark glasses, all standing a little apart from one another, never touching anyone else, moving aside so that they don’t come into contact with mere mortals, as though something cataclysmic would happen if they did.
And then one day, they are joined by a seventh, the most perfect one of all.
Ryan cannot describe him without sounding infatuated. The object of his obsession is well over two metres tall, with tousled black hair and clear dark skin, a wide jaw and the strangest blue eyes Ryan has ever seen on a real human being. He never wears shades. He is muscled and long in the thighs, wears a steel and leather bracelet on his right arm, skinny jeans and shiny black boots, a jet shirt open at the neck. And when he has occasion to smile, something astonishing happens. He draws down the stars. The air fills with errant electricity, and seems in danger of igniting.
‘They started turning up about six weeks ago,’ says Lex one night when the three of them are at the bar. He eyes them with a combination of lust and fury. ‘They always hang around together. Never talk to anyone else. Probably nobody’s good enough for them.’
‘And you’re staring at the tall one,’ Lainey tells Ryan.
‘No, I’m not,’ he lies indignantly.
‘Yes you are. You may not realise it but you can’t take your eyes off him.’
‘He’s wearing a great shirt. And you’ve got to admit he’s hot, for a guy. I’m comfortable with my sexuality. It doesn’t make me gay to say that.’
‘No, I guess not,’ Lainey sighs. ‘You’re not being judgemental, which is a good thing.’
Red Gloves, Volumes I & II Page 40