That proved it! 'Oh, yes I am...' A snot bubble only made things worse, until he handed me a hanky. 'And now I've ruined all my job's work.'
'No you haven't, Angela.'
Angela. Desirée was dead.
'You are as beautiful as you feel.'
What had he been reading??? At least, that stupidity pulled me out of it. 'You know that is crap!' And to make sure he knew in the way he would prefer to put it: 'Balderdash!'
He wasn't insulted, but he did put a finger to my mouth. 'Listen to me. You will get your figure back in no time, if that is what makes you feel beautiful. I am sure you will. And in the meantime, I can tell you something that you might not know about yourself.'
What would
he
know!
'Have you ever looked, um, down there?'
His circumspection was so hilarious, I giggled.
'Down there?' I repeated, wide-eyed. 'Like...'
'And in the, uh, anterior region.'
Ah, I needed this. I'm afraid I spattered him in my helplessness. His face and his pointing were so delicately diplomatic. And it was lovely that he wasn't insulted.
'I'm laughing with you, if you could only see yourself, Brett.'
He smiled tolerantly while he waited.
'Thank you,' I said finally. 'Please forgive me. Do go on.'
He dipped his horns. 'Now, in my experience, I happen to know much about your various orifices.' And he hastened to add, 'Your, by the way, being not you personally.'
'Yes?' I could imagine. A Bosch scene in particular.
'And it has always struck me ... since a personal gestalt (what had he been reading???) a long time ago, that no matter what state the rest of your body is in—
your
not being personal—fat or thin—two places remain the same.
I pointed down. 'This? ... and then turned around and pointed again, keeping a straight face. 'And this?'
He nodded solemnly.
But, really, so what? It is no gestalt to know that we can still pee, fuck, and shit through the same places whether we diet or not. 'And so?'
'Do you not see?'
Well, duh, but ...
'They, one being especially special, are the centre of your beauty, Angela. The physical side. They were, and they still are!'
An aesthete of the highest, or lowest order!
'Would you like to see?' he asked. 'I'll turn around.'
I nodded this time, enthralled.
He waved his hand and in it was a beautiful silver mirror, its carved back glinting sinuous, almost recognizable shapes.
'I'll be back,' he said, and before I could reply, he added, 'soon' and disappeared.
I examined myself from every angle. As an anti-post-feminist, I had always ignored these regions precisely because of the pressure to gaze upon them in goddess worship. Yet, what a marvel they are, this 'cunt' and 'arse' when looked at from an apolitical perspective!
I had just emerged from the shower and was wrapping myself in some mothball-reeking relic when Brett returned.
Like any tourist, he was laden with bags, and like any modern tourist, most of the names on the bags were the same as stores in the city where we came from before coming to this one to escape.
I watched as he took out the contents and laid them out on his bed, which hadn't been slept in. Clothing, and a bag. I had felt funny about Kevin's 'bag' creation—a beaded lily-shaped thing made to hang from a belt. Kevin didn't understand bags. They didn't go with his creations. But where was I? Clothing, down to a proper shoulder bag big enough to pack a cat in, not that I had anything to put into the bag, but ... And toiletries, even down to the minty dental floss I like.
He was pleased at my exclamations, and I was amazed that everything fit. As to the styles, they were the ones in all the big window displays. There was no full-length mirror in this room, but without seeing, I knew. What I looked like now I had regarded for most of my life as Impossible Wish Fulfilment.
Except for my hair, which needed a cut. I pointed to it. 'Brett? Do you think?'
He swirled his hands. One now held a pair of hairdressing scissors, and the other, a comb.
'Monsieur Brett!' I giggled.
One hand dropped the comb and the other hand caught underneath his hip as he crashed to the ground. His eyes turned up and foam bubbled through his lips.
I rushed around the room, and back to his side. Of medicine for him, I knew nothing. What had I done?
I put out my hand towards him, but this produced a thin scream. 'Dooon.'
Backing off, I waited, watching.
This was the worst attack yet—that I had seen.
After a few minutes, he recovered. Rather stiffly, he thanked me for my concern, and wanted to talk of anything but his health. Frankly, so did I.
It was almost noon anyway. Time to meet Kevin.
Kevin didn't come.
~
For dinner that night, I sniffed out a tiny hole of a place in a back street that was even better than the sausage restaurant. The meal here was steak, delightfully rare. Brett said it was horse. You could have fooled me, though the meat had a sweetness I'd never tasted in beef. He wasn't hungry—I think he moonlight ate—but he was impatient to leave after a shiny-headed crone emerged from the kitchen. Not that she did anything. She just stood in the shadows and eyed Brett, though if he had been a breadroll and the lights had suddenly gone out, I would have been alarmed.
'Perhaps her granddaughter's too shy to come herself,' I laughed.
But Brett fidgeted, so I humoured him. Besides, carrying my steak and eating it out of hand was easier than cutting it with their toothless, Sputnik-decorated knife.
That evening I was bored. The streets were loud with 'revellers', as they are called. Our room was comfortable enough, but there was nothing for me to do, unless I wanted to listen to carollers belting out 'Rule Britannia' till they chundered, or this serenade:
Balls to your partner,
Arse against the wall.
If you've never been fucked on a Saturday night,
Then you've never been fucked at all ...
which lasted till liquid tinkled and glass crashed and the revellers staggered off. Of course I didn't lean out to watch, or toss them flowers or boiling oil. But the spring breeze wafted their scents up through the Romeo-and-Juliet window—and their boots weren't ballet slippers.
I found a TV in the guards' room. The chairs were hard, so I lugged the TV upstairs to our room and perched it on a convenient Dark Ages whatnot chest. I don't think I was the first to get this idea. Behind that hideous thing, a power point lurked. I climbed up to bed, carrying the remote.
A game show. Possibly Czech.
A German game show.
An Italian game show. I was just going to change channels, when this got interesting—strip poker in front of millions. She was unreal. Too unreal.
I turned off the TV.
Brett was deep into his paperback, so I climbed down for a peek.
It was in ... 'Czech?'
'But of course, my dear.'
'What is it? Some Czech writer?'
'Mm.'
He was humouring me. He wasn't paying me any attention. Actually, was he really reading? He turned a page. A pose? Yes indeedy. I let him know. 'Just because you can read every language, you don't have to rub it in.'
He glanced up at me, mild as milk, and then went back to his book.
He turned another page.
Because I was one part bored, two parts exasperated, I bent the front of the book up toward me.
'Well,
quell surprise!
Barbara Cartland!'
He closed the book, but his finger was in the page he was reading. He really had been reading!
'What's wrong with Barbara Cartland?'
'Other than that she's trash? Nothing!' I laughed.
'But isn't she the best-loved author in the world?'
'Of course—'
'The queen of romance. That's what she's called, you know. Or don't you?'
'Uh—'
'Her sales are numerous as the glittering gems of morning dew. Simply awesome. Hundreds of millions. In France alone, over twenty-five million.'
A walking, talking, flying-through-the-air encyclopaedia. 'Are you quoting? How do you know that?'
'The BBC. Her obituary. You asked. But why didn't you tell me?'
'Tell me more.'
'The world's most prolific author. And according to the Guinness Book of Records ... Do you know it, my dear?'
I curtsied, ready to smack him.
'The world's top-selling author. Which means she must be the most loved. Or am I perhaps suffering a delusion?'
My head moved back and forth, at which he happily nodded.
'Seven hundred and twenty three books,' he droned on. 'And you have to do just one. Total sales of Cartland books estimated at over one billion. Translated into practically all of your modern languages ... You, of all people,
should know
.'
He could really rub it in, but instead of continuing, he returned to the book. Good.
I was standing in front of him wondering what to do next, when he closed it again and looked at me. 'Personally,' he said. 'I want to be loved, adored, worshipped, cosseted, and protected.'
'You?' What a strange desire for him to have.
'Barbara said that. I thought you might want to know. Isn't that what you want, too?'
'Of course.'
He went back to the book, and I was stuck standing there, a coat rack without a coat. 'Is it any good?'
He turned another fucking page. 'I am enjoying reading it more than any book since I began.'
'Would I like it?'
'I do not know your taste.'
'Could I try?'
'Oh, alright,' he snapped. When I was a child and was called away from my fairy tale, I was just as irritated. But me as a child and he now, had different irritation capabilities when pushed.
He waved his hand, produced a book, and threw it at me.
I climbed up to bed to read quietly.
Where had he gotten this? It was another paperback. The publisher was unusually modest, in fact, incognito. The title was innocuous enough, but the text must have been a pirate swipe off another pirated translation, maybe of lower Carpathian. I can't remember exactly, but the text went something like
: 'I, despise? Until I fit your ardent magical, I was only a player of the card, eating the fried cheese each night.'—
page after page.
I stuffed my fist in my mouth to muffle the noise.
The story was, in spite of the translation, so engrossing that at one point I forced myself to put down the book so I could call room service. This definitely deserved Serge's Rocky Road.
Reality hit with a twinge in my gut. I picked up the book again, and escaped.
~
The next day, we again heard the noonday rooster as my eyes surveyed the crowd—and again, no Kevin.
We waited in that stupid clock-tower square till the rooster was lucky people were watching him, or I would have thrown something to shut the blighter up.
It was a nuisance, of course, but we had to put up with the delay. But damn and blast Kevin.
Get your arse here, boy! I'm bored!
'Standby' had been good enough for us. What was he doing? Trying to get some special lucky seat in First Class Qantas? Of him coming, I had no doubt. I was his ticket to happiness. But there was no time to waste. He had a whole collection to make again. And even more important, I think I had lost weight. I was bony as a gnawed chicken carcass, and desperately needed an extra-powerful shake.
~
The next day, after our fourth fruitless wait, Brett and I were walking in that aimless way tourists do when the fun and purchasing charm of a town has been exhausted, but you can't leave yet. We were in front of a kiosk that sold international papers, and there, incredibly, under the
Orlando Sentinel
, was a
Sydney Morning Herald
. There was no chance to ask about its freshness. I was jostled from behind and harassed from ahead—choose or get out of the way. I pointed to the paper, paid, and it was folded and thrust at me with the olde-world friendliness of a machine. I stuck it under my arm and backed out from the crowd.
The cafes were full and the pavements clogged with people looking for a place to eat. I was tired and bored, and though Brett accompanied me with no complaint, he looked like he could do with a foot-up, too. We wandered into the cemetery and sat with our backs resting against a convenient stone ...
Emanuel Porges
. At another time, names would have been interesting, but I was hungry for news from home. I unfolded the paper to page one, which screamed:
AUSSIE TOURIST TRAGEDY Cage those Pommy louts!
By Fiona Prith in Prague and Geoff Wyld in Sydney
A tourist operator in Liverpool has been blamed as accessory to murder, after a so-called "Piss-Up Tour" got out of hand in Prague just before noon yesterday, on an otherwise lovely summer day. According to witnesses, an empty beer bottle thrown by an unnamed member of a British stag party smashed against the head of a Australian man as he was crossing a street. The blow killed him instantly.
According to the Australian consulate, the man was identified as Kevin Shanahan, 35, fashion designer, of Surrey Hills, Sydney. Czech investigators revealed that this was Shanahan's first day in Prague ...
—26—
Finally, Brett took the paper from my lap, curious, I guess, to see why I had sat like a stone frog for so long after just glancing at the paper I had been so eager to read.
I wanted to cry, but felt a scooped-out emptiness in my gut.
'Your Kevin,' he said, in a commiserating tone, and then, with curiosity, 'He loved you?'
'No.' Though Brett could have thought so, from the worship Kevin paid to the dressed-up me. 'He loved his work. I was just his mannequin.'
Suddenly, I felt how alone I was. 'No one...'
'You were saying, my dear?'
Now I felt stupid. I don't know what had possessed me to tell Brett, but I had begun, so I got it over fast. 'No one loves me but my parents and Gordon.'
His eyebrows jumped. 'Gordon?'
'You might have met him,' I sneered, 'if you hadn't burnt down my home.'
Oh, hell! What good was talk now? I ruffled the newspaper. 'Please, Brett. I need a space for grieving.'
He bent dutifully to the paper.
What a waste!
'Shi . . it!' I yelled. A bird's wings made a wet-sheet sound as the bird fled from dangerous me. Although it had only been innocently digging for worms, its escape was perhaps a wise decision. The more I thought, the more absolutely skin-a-cat-and-fling-it-in-your-sweet-blind-granny's-face I felt.
Why why bloody
why
had all those newspaper accounts quoted people whose lives had also gone from flower-bud lovely to turd, whined, 'I can't believe this is real.'—why?
This was real, all right. My flower-bud life, my stunning debut—zapped dead as an electrocuted fly. Brett beside me, pretending to read the paper—hadn't been writing my novel. Out of the corner of my eye, I peered at him. There was an aura of guilt about him. He'd not only not been working. He'd been enjoying himself while I was ... and now, did he feel my pain or just wish he could slink off and find another Barbara Cartland novel?
I wanted to—
And then, from around a corner I heard sniggering laughter, a crash of glass, and a swaggering brag too indistinct to catch.
Just
what I needed. Ordering, 'Stay,' I jumped up and ran toward the sounds.
They were just outside the cemetery wall—five of them. Their boots were made for kicking, but they stumbled over the cobblestones of this otherwise deserted narrow street.
One started to sing, and they all joined in. Such rich, deep voices.
Cunt, cunt, cunt.
Yer mam's a blootered cunt.
Yer brover's a chutney ferret,
what gets it up the—'
One stopped, peeing a river over the steps of a brass-plaqued tourist site, some art nouveau apartment house. Wonderful! That made them only four.
I was rounding their side, sheepdog style, when one of them noticed.
He danced sideways in two clodding hops, and smiled into my face—'Eh up, choochie-face!'
He stroked a finger down my cheek.
I swung my right fist hard, straight for his swollen chunder-maker.
Got him!
He doubled over, choked and hurled, choked and wheezed, sucking vomit-clodded air.
Bloody marvellous—'You beaut!' I chortled—400 decibels, straight into his earhole.
No time to drink a beer on him. Three more left.
At my back, close, a bottle smashed, not with the soprano tinkle of thrown glass, but with that special muffled hoarseness when its neck is held.
I spun around, and 'Cunt!' spattered my face, so close that I tasted him.
My head jerked back, but hit something hard. Shoulderblade?
'Got the bitch,' I heard, just by my ear. Meaty arms grabbed me around my shoulders and held me against a hard expanse of chest.
Others would have screamed, but I was too experienced for that.
I looked to my left. The arms holding me were strong, but no one expected me to slip out from under and dance sideways. My left was clear, so I stretched my leg out, but I should have looked ahead instead.
That was where the attack came. His arm swung fast. The bloke in front that I forgot about. I was wearing frail pink capri pants, not suitable for broken bottles slicing up the crotch.
His spit French-kissed me.
Then ... a roaring in my ears as pain flamed from the centre of my beauty.