Sin City (63 page)

“You sure are miles away.” Danny's sounding peeved. The pinger kindly blurs my lame excuses. We both get up. I help him with his clothes as a sort of extra-cum-apology – tartan trousers, two-tone shoes. He smells of sweat and aftershave; his skin is tacky damp. Both smell and dampness seem to have transferred themselves to me. It's as if I've lost my cover, or Victor's peeled it off. That makes me still more nervous. I keep inanely chattering as I pass his shirt and jacket. The jacket feels quite heavy, weighed down with wallet, bankrolls, silver cigarette case. I dress myself, smooth the frilled gold bedspread, retrieve the velvet cushions. Suzie's room is daunting. The ruched and pleated drapes exactly match the thick gold satin padding round the mirrors which reflect more silk and frills.

I usher Danny to the door, try to use the few remaining minutes to blank out the last hour, so he'll leave with happy memories. There's also the small matter of a tip. Usually he stuffs a wad of dollar bills down each cup of my bra. It's a little joke between us, to keep my breasts warm, as he puts it. Lots of clients slip you extra. It's a way of saying thank you, a sort of bond between you. My breasts stay cold this evening. Danny says goodbye, but nothing else. I start to worry. Supposing he reports me? That could really lead to trouble, cost me my whole job.

I return to my room via Angelique's. She's not there, so I leave the note and a cartoon drawing of Danny with a massive body and a tiny cock. I open my door as quietly as I can. If Victor's snooping, he deserves to be surprised. He's not. He's sitting on the stool, head down, sad slumped back towards me.

“Victor.”

He swings round, relief and resentment fighting in his face. Neither of us speaks. The moment's too embarrassing. I'd like to scour Danny off, shower three times, soak in disinfectant. Impossible with Victor there. He clears his throat, mumbles something about leaving when I'm ready.

I'm not ready. I need a respite on my own just to quieten down, change my knickers, change my mood. Yet it seems cruel to ask Victor to hang around outside when he's already had one agonising wait, and is now hovering around me with that anxious hangdog look. So I simply grab a toothbrush and a sweater, let him lead me to his car. I'll wash in his hotel. He seems to have forgotten his pressing need for privacy, takes me out the front and public way, almost flaunts me as he settles me in front. The Jan who sat there just two weeks ago is dead and buried. All except her name. Every time he uses it, I feel a pang of guilt, but I daren't explain things now, when we're both so nervous still, so unsure of one another.

I'm surprised to see it's dark. It was only afternoon when I stripped off to have my bath, and the time with Danny could have been bright dawn or spooky midnight for all the notice I was taking of trivial things like time of day. We seem to have plunged straight from sunny daylight to black night, with no dusk or twilight in between. The powerful headlamps light up the dirt road. The rest is shadow; blurry shapes surging into focus, then disappearing as we swoop away. I've been closeted indoors every evening since I came here, confined to bluebird walls or cosy chintz. The dark gape of the night seems raw and threatening in comparison. Carl has failed to tame it, rig it up with spotlights, soften it with drapes.

Victor switches on some music, a cassette of marching tunes. I'm grateful. Talking isn't easy. Danny's come between us, is still there in the car. I'm leaking his semen, smelling of his Aramis, and I know how Victor hates that. He seems turned in on himself, driving too fast along the bumpy pitted track. The music lurches with us – oompah-oompah, angry clash of cymbals.

At last, we reach the main road with its decent concrete surface. A jaunty trumpet blares out my own relief. We're almost at the highway. Victor stops before we reach it, turns the engine off.

I tense. What now? He's changed his mind. I'm not worth all that cash.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I've been wondering all this time where to go for dinner. I thought I'd take you somewhere special, Jan. There's this Persian place with a real unusual menu and little boys in turbans who bring you finger-bowls with flower petals floating on the top. Or there's a tiny French one, very chic, with a chef who trained in Paris, or there's always Caesars – the Palace court or the Bacchanal. Except we've been to both of those. In fact, we've spent too much time in restaurants. What I'd really like is …” He breaks off, seems embarrassed.

“Yes?”

“To take you home to my place.”

Home? He used that word before – an hour or so ago –“scorching home at a hundred miles an hour”, he said. I didn't even know he had a home. Everyone in Vegas is a tourist, staying in hotels, and Victor seems more rootless than the rest. He's never married – I asked him that, and he said “no” rather sadly. He grew up in Kentucky as a country boy, moved to New York where he lived ten years or so, then moved again when the firm he was working for merged with a competitor and poor Victor was bought out. I never quite discovered exactly what he does, or where he does it. He was always a bit cagey, as if he didn't like me probing, or there was something he was hiding; encouraged me to talk instead. I knew he'd trained as a construction engineer, working chiefly on state highways, but he doesn't seem to do that now, and he can't have retired yet, surely, at the age of forty-two. Perhaps he works for some big armaments firm, and is scared I'll disapprove. Nevada's full of bombs and things. They test them in the desert. Is that where home is? Some godforsaken rocket-launching site?

“Where do you live?” I ask.

“You won't have heard of it. It's tiny. Just a store, a gas station and a few small houses tucked beneath the mountains and sitting in a lot of empty space. I chose it for the peace and quiet, the solitude. I've always been attracted by the desert. I don't know why. I guess it's just so … basic. No facades. I'm never all that happy in big towns. Okay, Vegas isn't big, but it's twenty-four-hour neon and a real suspicious city where no one trusts their own best friend and all the women are hookers and …” He stops, embarrassed, realises what he's said. I remember our first meeting, how he took me for an escort girl. I still suspect he's something of a hypocrite, pitching into hookers when he buys their time and bodies; running down Las Vegas where he wins all his spare cash.

“You can't play poker in a stretch of empty space.”

“No.” He grins, accepts my veiled rebuke. “I like to be near Vegas for the cards, of course, even for the restaurants or a show or two – but not that near. My home's about sixty miles north-west. We're closer to it here, just twenty miles or so. The only problem is I can't lay on finger-bowls or frogs' legs. But if you don't mind scrambled eggs …”

“Sounds fine,” I say. I'm nervous. In a restaurant, there'd be lots of other people; bustle and distraction. In his home, just silence and the two of us.

He starts the engine, pulls away. “At least it's early yet.”

“Yes.” It seems like the middle of the night. Time is rushing by like the frightened stretch of road bolting out of darkness just ahead of us. The sky is dark as well – bruised clouds swelling round the moon's already half-closed eye. I ought to be making conversation. Out-date means just that. I'm his date, his companion for the evening, a charming sympathetic ear, who'll relax and flatter him, listen to his problems. Always before, it was him who did the listening, me who got the sympathy, attention.

“Er … do you have a house or just a flat?” I ask. It sounds lame and over-formal. Out-dates can be tricky, last too long.

He laughs.

“What's funny?”

“Flat. Your English words crack me up. No, it's not a flat. It's a clapboard house with three bedrooms and a garden.”

“All for you?”

“All for me. Are you a gardener, Jan?”

“No. I've never grown a thing. Except mustard and cress on Aertex vests at school.”

Victor's looking puzzled. Language again. They probably don't have Aertex over here, and vest means waistcoat in American. I'm too tired to do translations. “Is your garden big?” I ask instead.

“No. Though even a small one needs a lot of work. The soil's real dry and sandy here, and the guy who owns the store said all he'd ever harvested were stones and tumbleweed. But I was kind of keen to be a country boy again, grow my own vegetables and fruits. So I really worked at it – bought bags of mulch and peat-moss and loads of fertiliser, made my own compost, fixed up a sprinkler system and invested in some hoses, then planted a row of athel trees, for shade. Now I grow zucchini, peppers, egg plant, maize, tomatoes …”

A sports car flashes past, pulps the other vegetables. A police car follows, sirens wailing. We're on the highway now, have joined the busy world again.

“What?” I shout. “I missed that last bit, Victor.”

“I said, ‘Do you like fish?'”

“To eat, you mean? Not specially. I'd rather have the scrambled eggs.”

He laughs again. “I couldn't let you eat my fish. They're buddies. I built myself this salt-water aquarium. We're three hundred miles from the ocean here, at least, but I've got my own bit of brine, right inside my living room.”

I can hear the excitement in his voice as he describes his surgeonfish, his clown fish, his saffron-blue damsels, his ozonisers, corals, zebra morays. I feel just a trifle peeved. He's paid to spend the night with me, and what's he doing? Giving me an inventory of sea-snails, pointing out the dangers of pathogens in South Pacific seawater. I'd rather hear (again) how much he missed me, how beautiful I look in blue.

I let my hand stray over to his knee, feel him tense. He was always very wary about anything too intimate. I felt hurt before, rejected, because he never seemed to want me as more than just a friend. A special friend, admittedly. I haven't forgotten the cuddles and the stroking. But that's always where it stopped. I suppose I should be grateful that he's sensitive, respects me, appreciates my company instead of just my cunt. And yet …

“You need real patience, Jan, when you're building up a tank. It's best to start with hardy breeds, tough guys like my damsels. I started with just saffron blues – waited for a while before I bought my batfish and my angels. Then I got a second tank, just had to have some lionfish. They're a real majestic breed, with huge fins like lions' manes. Have you ever seen one, Carole?”

“No,” I say. “I haven't.”

“Mine are beauts. We'll have a guided tour when we get in – first the garden, then the tanks, and then the cacti and the orchids. Or maybe supper first. You hungry?”

“No,” I say again, remove my hand.

I stare into the eyes of a sharp-spined Hawaiian lionfish. It seems to look right through me, disregard me. Its own body is transparent, striped brown and cream, with the most amazing showy fins like sword-edged lace – delicate and frilly, yet with these huge great lethal needles sticking up on top. Strange how Victor dotes on such a bully-boy. He said it stung him once and his arm swelled up to twice its normal size. He announced it with real pride as if he were boasting of the ferocious creature's genius. Apparently, they gobble up all smaller fish – snap, gulp and they're gone. That's why he keeps two separate tanks: one for the peaceniks, one for the Huns.

Both tanks are colossal, seem to dominate the room. There's not a lot else in it – one armchair, a tiny portable TV, small bookshelf, smaller table. Victor's house is not a home, not really. No photographs, no clutter, nothing personal at all, unless you count the fish. The house itself is nondescript – just one storey, and rather flimsy-looking as if it might blow away in the first bad storm. English homes have roots, deep and clutching roots which go down for miles and on for years. This place seems sort of instant and disposable, something from a supermarket which came with ten cents off.

It's his garden that's the showpiece. We saw that first, before we went inside. Victor switched the lights on, so everything looked sheeny and quite magical, a shimmering silver trellis on the green. We stood there breathing in the smells – musky hothouse scents from exotic flowers I'd never heard of and which were only blooming on account of Victor's skills. And then he showed me all his fruits and vegetables – which were like his brood of children, proudly introduced, their biographies fleshed out, their weights and heights and progress lovingly compared, their personal idiosyncracies explained. I was really quite impressed. He'd created an oasis in a stretch of stony wasteland – turquoise water, green and leafy plants. Beyond us rose the brown and jagged mountains, above us soared the coldly distant clouds; everything dark and vast and barren save his own enchanted tiny patch. He saw me shiver, took my arm, seemed nervous as he fumbled for his key. I wasn't that relaxed myself, especially when the front door closed behind us and I felt a sudden twinge of fear.

It was the fish which saved us, actually, broke the tension. They were so dazzling, so dramatic; such brilliant neon colours – zingy yellow, violent orange, a really startling blue. It was as if they'd been enamelled for the latest Show Spectacular in Vegas. I left Victor at the door, rushed straight up to the tank, stared in fascination. I've never seen breeds like this before, such amazing shapes and colours, never even realised they existed. If I say “fish”, the word conjures up dead grey hunks of flesh stinking out the market stall in Bristol; men in dirty aprons sharpening up their sales-talk as they slice off heads and tails. These heads and tails are real collectors' items – bewhiskered tawny mouths, striped or tigered snouts; rainbow-coloured tail-fins sweeping behind streamlined silver bodies; tails like muslin skirts.

I lean forward in my chair, tap my fingers on the glass as some swinger cruises past, zigzagged blue and beige with a gleaming turquoise underbelly; brushes bodies with a smaller spiky punk-fish. I can't remember all the names. Victor went too fast. Even the orchids and the cacti are all jumbled up together in my mind. But I was touched by his enthusiasm, the way he seemed to want to share it with me, share everything with me. He kept pressing me with coffee, cocktails, titbits, English tea; kept fretting that I was cold or tired or hungry; settled me in this chair with cushions at my head and a footstool at my feet while he went to fix our supper in the kitchen. He's still there.