I was wearing the same outfit as before when I rang the bell at Ginny Ireland’s apartment, except that my shirt was clean, and I had the gun in a holster inside my pants around the back from my left hip. The bulge would show if I took my jacket off, but from what I’d seen of parties lately there was hardly enough light to see the cheese dip so a slight gun bulge wouldn’t be a problem.
Ginny opened the door and hurled herself through it, at me. I got her strong arms around my neck and a smacking kiss that almost put me down for a count. She was wearing red high heels, tight red pants and a blouse that looked to be made of gold leaf. She hauled me into the apartment.
‘You yummy man, yummy, yummy. That was so sweet of you last night. Most men would’ve… well, thank you.’
I waved my hand modestly and followed her through to the kitchen, where the gin fumes were competing with the sweet smell of marijuana. She picked up a long, fat joint, re-lit it and held it out to me after inhaling deeply herself.
I picked up the Beefeater bottle. ‘Later,’ I said. ‘I’ll start on this.’
‘Lush.’ She poured a hefty slug of gin, splashed in some tonic and just hit the rim of the glass with a slice of lemon so that the lemon dropped in. Then she forgot to give me the glass. I reached over and took it.
She giggled. ‘I was so smashed last night, and I’m telling you when I woke up and saw that aspirin and that water, boy, I’d have given you anything you wanted, there and then.’
I grinned. ‘Well, as I say, later.’
She seemed to find that the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She laughed and choked on her next drag. I patted her on the back, gently so as not to tear the gold leaf. Up close there was a synthetic quality to her that was dimmed by distance. Her hair was dyed and the big eyes were a product of pencil and brush more than something nature had given her. The skin along her jaw was beginning to sag and last night’s session had left slight pouches under her eyes that would deepen as she ran one good time into the next.
We finished our drinks and she went off to add some more touches to the art work. When she came back she smelled strongly and freshly of the perfume that had gone stale on her last night.
‘Okay, Cliffy?’
I pointed to the bag of grass on the kitchen bench. ‘Not taking the dope?’
She laughed. ‘To one of Dee’s parties? You must be joking. She’d be insulted.’
We trooped across to number seven. A big man in a white jacket and dark pants was standing by the door trying to look like a guest, but succeeding in looking like a bouncer. Ginny smiled at him and he gave her a quick nod, me a hard stare, and opened the door. The noises and the smells hit like a head-high tackle: insistent, driving rock music, a rush of voices and thick, spicy smoke. The apartment was similarly laid out to Ginny Ireland’s, except that the decor was more flamboyant: polished boards with tiger skins in the hall and woven beaded hangings on the wall that showed erotic scenes in a certain amount of strategic relief. The party was being held in a big double room with the dividing cedar doors thrown back: the ceilings were mostly mirrored as were the walls; the floor was a deep white cloud and there were two conversation pits, a number of low poufs covered with animal skins and a couple of things that looked like trampolines but were probably couches. In one corner of the room there was a well stocked bar. The topless attendant wore high heels and fishnet stockings and also had the job of feeding cassettes into the huge Sony tape deck.
About thirty people stood or lounged around talking, drinking, smoking, looking at themselves in the mirrors. A few swayed to the music; others just swayed. Ginny led me over to the bar, where there were a couple of shallow silver dishes filled with white powder; there was a tiny gold spoon on a long chain attached to each dish. Ginny dipped and conveyed the spoon to her nose with a rock steady hand.
‘Your motto seems to be fun is for later, Cliffy.’ She sniffed the powder up one nostril. ‘Mine’s fun is for now!’ She took a cigarette out of a box on the bar, held it for the attendant to light, puffed and drifted away. I looked along the bar at the dishes of powder and the bowls of grass with papers and filters; there were also little silver pill boxes and some small glass phials set out on pads of crushed velvet.
The barmaid’s nipples were painted black and she had some trouble keeping them out of the work area. Her eyes were bright and glittering under gold-dusted lashes.
‘Care for something?’
‘Water,’ I said.
She looked confused and took one long black-painted fingernail to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry, we haven’t…’
‘I was kidding. I’ll have a gin and tonic, light on the gin.’
She made the drink quickly and expertly and selected a long, silver cylinder from under the bar. ‘Care for a dash?’
I shook my head, took the drink and looked around for something to look at. The room was filling up fast, and I concluded that there must be other comfort stations in the apartment, because people came in through the doors with glasses full and joints aglow. I went out a door, after pausing in front of it to make sure it really was a door. The music and smoke, from other speakers and other throats, followed me down to the kitchen and into other rooms. The whole place was dark, and the decor gave it a dreamy, insubstantial quality: dark walls with deliberately shadowy corners, mirrors and leather and fibreglass furniture that seemed to writhe where it stood. Nothing was rectangular; day beds and divans were oval; the bath was a modular unit you had to dive into and curl up in; the toilet was a series of hoses with attachments moulded to fit the different private parts. One door off the main hallway was locked.
When I got back under the mirrored ceilings, the party was beginning to swing: the music was louder and the people seemed to be laughing more, and coming more often into minor physical collisions. In one corner a group of men in dinner suits had formed a sort of rugby line-out and was tossing a small woman aloft and passing her from hand to hand. A man in a long white caftan was dancing with a woman in a tail coat and all the fittings, and two women who looked like twins in identical lame dresses were inspecting a selection of their images in a mirrored corner.
I spotted Ginny through the murk, and went over to her. She was smashed to bits, but still riding high with energy and alertness. She grabbed my arm and we almost tumbled together down into one of the conversation pits.
‘Dee,’ she said, ‘here’s this fabulous man, Cliff somebody.’
‘Hello, somebody.’ Deirdre Kelly was a long, dark woman wearing a long, dark dress. She had black shiny hair and a creamy white skin. The dress left her, slim arms bare; she had wide expanding metal bands around her upper arms and metal bracelets around her wrists. When she moved her arms the muscles rippled and swelled like Lothar’s. I smiled at her and said something about it being an interesting party, while I waited for Ginny to drop me right in by saying I had business with her. But that information had dropped out for Ginny long ago; she got up to dance with a Jamaican in stretch jeans, who called her ‘Sugar’ and whose idea of dancing was to spread his big hands over her buttocks and press her hard into where the denim bulged the most.
Dee Kelly saw me watching the performance and frowned. ‘You seem a little out of place here, somebody.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
She reached for a silver dish and used the gold spoon expertly. She dipped and held it out to me. I shook my head. She smiled and took a brown cigarette from a box. I shook my head again. She took one of the little phials and held it between thumb and forefinger.
‘No again, huh?’
I nodded.
She took a disposable syringe from a pocket in her dress and pulled off the plastic caps from both ends. ‘See what I mean?’ She suddenly jabbed the needle into my thigh and pressed the plunger. I jumped and swore. She laughed. ‘You don’t fit in. What brings you here?’
I plucked the needle out and broke off the short, thin, metal spike. ‘What was that?’
‘Nothing. Water. Just a joke.’ She gripped my arm and pulled; I was struggling to get up but she seemed strangely strong. ‘Relax, relax.’
I didn’t relax; I felt frozen and dumb. ‘Ginny brought me.’
‘I know that! She’s stupid enough to do anything.’
‘Stupid?’ I got my thick tongue around the word and idea. ‘Stupid? Living like this? Having all this fun?’
She gave me a look that would have cut glass. Her face was boldly made up as if to be photographed or seen from a distance. Up close there was a grossness to her features: wide pores, large ears under the shiny hair and a suggestion of bad breath. Her mouth was loose and moist and she kept it that way by frequent use of her tongue which was purplish from contact with her lipstick. I sat down, heavily.
‘She’s stupid, all right,’ she said. ‘If you needed brains for fucking, she’d be a virgin.’ The aphorism seemed to please her; she leaned back and stretched. She had heavy, full breasts which rose and pushed out the front of her dark silk dress. She saw me looking and licked her lips, then she dipped the spoon again and sniffed the stuff down to her ankles.
I thought: Half-fucked, half-drunk, half-drugged. Dee Kelly was going all the way; she closed her eyes for a full minute and when she opened them they were alert and shrewd, beacons of her brain. ‘I’ll ask you again,’ she said. ‘Why are you here?’
English suddenly seemed like a foreign language to me. ‘To see Bill Mountain,’ I said thickly.
The name jolted her although she tried to hide the reaction. A sort of tremor ran the full, long length of her, and she drew her knees up and closed her eyes in a spasm.
‘Who did you say?’
The lassitude dropped away. Now I felt bright and chatty, communicative and in control. ‘William Mountain. He’s an amazing man. He’s writing a novel-and you’re in it, Mrs Kelly, in a starring role.’
She threw back her head and laughed in a sharp cackle. ‘Mrs Kelly! God, it’s been years since anyone called me that. What else d’you know about me?’
‘I don’t know anything about you and I don’t want to know anything. But I think you’ll lead me to Mountain.’
‘What’s your business with him?’
The music was louder still, and the party noise was mounting to a roar. I had to lean close to her to be heard, and that rank smell got stronger. ‘That’s between him and me. My feeling is he’s going to be here tonight and I’m sticking close to you just in case you’ve got some idea of warning him off. You could call your watchdog in from the door, but the noise we’d make between us’d finish off your party.’
‘I’m among friends here.’
I looked around the room: everyone I could see was drunk or stoned or both. A couple of the men looked big enough to be useful but one of them was just starting to slide down the wall and another man was staring into his own eyes in the wall mirror. I felt I could move very fast if I had to; I didn’t want to, but… if I had to.
‘I can’t see anyone here who’d give me too much trouble,’ I said, ‘and there doesn’t have to be any trouble in this for you. I just want to talk to Mountain when he comes. I hope I can make him see reason; if I can’t, some things might get broken but I’ll try to watch out for your mirrors.’
‘I’ve never heard such crap. Get the hell out of here!’
She started to get up and I got a grip on her biceps around the bracelet and pulled here down. She flexed the muscle and resisted, but I put on more pressure. ‘Listen, lady. I don’t give a fuck what drugs you peddle to who. I don’t care if you turn on the whole North Shore. I just want to see Mountain.’
She sneered at me, and the frustration and anger that had been bottled up in me for days came out; I needed to hurt someone and she was closest. I gripped her arm tighter. ‘I don’t care if you imagine people raping you and report it to the police. You can imagine me raping you if you like.’
She smiled suddenly and almost sweetly. It was as if I’d said the magic word. She tapped my hand with one long finger and I let her go. ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided that you’re an interesting man after all. Let me get you a drink.’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’ I spoke in what I thought was a firm voice, but I felt less dominant, and anchored to the spot.
‘No, no, of course.’ She waved in the direction of the bar and made a gesture with her hands to indicate a drink. It was okay by me; my throat was dry from the heat and the smoke, and Deirdre Kelly’s bad smell and sudden switch in mood had strung me out and made me nervous. The topless barmaid came over with a bottle of champagne and a glass on a tray. The party seethed around her, and she had to lift the tray to get it clear of grasping hands. Kelly cleared a hand aside with a swift chop and stroked a fish-netted thigh as she took the tray in her other hand.
‘Not bad, eh? What d’you think of her?’
‘She’s well-built,’ I said. ‘When’s Mountain due?’
‘He’ll be along.’ She dismissed the barmaid with a light slap and poured me out a glass of champagne. ‘I won’t do anything to stop you seeing Bill, on one condition.’
I didn’t answer; I didn’t fancy bargaining with her. I drank some champagne and looked at the angry red mark I’d made on her arm. I felt a burning in my stomach- champagne’s not what it was.
‘On condition that you let me listen to your conversation.’ She took the glass from me and sipped; her lipstick purpled the edge.
‘That’d be up to him.’
‘Oh, he’d let me. He lets me do anything I like.’
A man fell into the pit, and Kelly eased herself away from him and closer to me. There seemed to be just as many people in the room as before, but fewer of them were standing up.
‘When did you see him last?’
‘Today. This morning.’ She leaned closer and her odour was gamy, feral. ‘We made love all night.’
‘That so? When does he find time to write?’
She laughed, not the cackle this time but a fluid, oily sound. ‘Not when he’s with me, I can promise you that. His writing’s brilliant, like his fucking.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘No, but he’s told me about it.’
I knew she was lying, and she knew I knew. She took the glass, drank some wine and spilled some more on her dress. The stain showed black on the dark silk.
‘Consume myself, starting with my own brain.’ I sounded like Orson Welles. I smiled and said it again.
What?’ she gasped.
‘What?’
‘You said something.’ She shoved aside the man who had fallen into the pit and had rolled over. An arm flopped down from floor level and hung in space between us.
‘No, I didn’t say anything.’ I looked around the room for the nearest door, just in case of trouble, but there was no door. The mirror ran from the ceiling and down all four walls. I blinked and the mirror shattered into a kaleidoscope of colours that blinked back at me. The people changed into dwarfs and giants; I tried to focus on the nearest faces and the features went rubbery and all shapes went angular like in a Picasso painting. A huge nose grew out of a man’s rubbery face and pressed towards a woman’s swollen breasts. Then the breasts shrank and the woman’s chest went concave and the nose pressed in and in.
I tried to stand up but Deirdre Kelly pushed me down like a mother cat tumbling one of her kittens. The music shrilled and screamed; I put my hands over my ears to shut it out, and my ears felt huge, wet and terrifying. Kelly’s rank breath flooded over me.
‘You’re passing out, Mr Somebody. You’re going to be sorry you hurt me.’
I was sorry already, and wanted to say so. My stomach lurched and my head fell towards my knees and I didn’t care where it landed. It passed my knees and went on falling.