Altar Ego (11 page)

Rotty, having gorged his own meal, shoved an overloaded forkful of Zachary’s rejected steak tartare between his calamity of teeth and chomped with abandon, even though fleshy debris was spilling out in every direction and the rest of us were gagging into our napkins. ‘Yer can never be too rich or too fat,’ he chortled, spraying us with more half-masticated morsels.

‘Well,’ Julian turned to us desperately. ‘What are you two talking about?’

‘Love.’ Zachary replied. He stole a gooseberry from my plate and slipped it into his mouth. I imagined that
if
he kissed me the taste would be moist and tart on his lips.

‘I can’t envisage having sex with someone you don’t love,’ volunteered Julian. ‘Sex always begins in the head with me …’

Yes, I thought to myself, and ends there too, lately. Unlike the Man Who Took Women’s Breath Away, whose hand had just stolen up beneath my leather skirt.

‘People don’t want invitations to orgies any more,’ Julian added. ‘People want invitations to dinner parties. Sex is so, well,
early eighties
.’

‘Uh huh,’ I mumbled. Well, it’s hard to concentrate when your thigh is being caressed in long, silken sweeps by soft, warm fingers. I was rattled to realize that Rotterman was speaking to me. ‘Pardon?’

‘Get hubby here to set a court date soon. Jesus Willy Christ, I gotta holiday booked.’

‘Where?’ I asked in a jittery voice. ‘Broadmoor Psychiatric Centre for the Criminally Insane?’

Julian drilled me with a stare.

Zachary, however, threw back his head and laughed. ‘I prefer moister climates …’ he deadpanned, sliding his finger under my pants’ elastic.

I tried to picture him as old and decayed; losing hair on top and sprouting it from nose and ears. It was the only way I could summon the strength to push his hand away. I pinched him hard enough to make him cry out.

‘Is everything all right?’ Julian asked, alarmed.

‘Cramp’, said Zachary. ‘Totally unexpected, man.’

‘We’re going to go away too, after this case.’ Julian put his hand over mine. ‘Somewhere romantic. Then you may finally marry me, Beck.’

I gulped at my wine again.

‘No shit, you guys ain’t married?’ drawled Zachary, mock casual.

‘Unfortunately, Rebecca is maritally impaired.’

‘Oh, I thought you was married …’ Zachary flashed a radiantly white smile. ‘In-er-estin’.’ He ever so slowly licked his wandering fingers. ‘Great meal, by the way.’

I blotched fiercely. Blushing was not in my repertoire. My last blush was a pre-trainer bra. This was disturbing.

As Julian consulted the waiter about desserts, Zachary ostentatiously dipped an index finger into his glass, then slyly trailed a droplet on to my lap. ‘I think yer should come back to my crib and get out of those wet things,’ he whispered softly.

‘I’d like to see you naked too – preferably with a tag on your toe. Don’t ever speak to me again,’ I seethed, sotto voce, the colour in my cheeks fading from crimson to a less life-threatening pink. ‘And if you say anything I’ll deny it. I’ll sue, in fact, for defamation of character. I don’t live with a shit-hot lawyer for nothing, you know.’

Feigning an early-morning start, I pushed up from
the
table and made for the revolving door. While Julian and Rotterman loitered to discuss the size of the financial penalty if the case were lost, Zachary followed me out on to the street. He jammed the revolving door and pinned me to the glass. His groin torpedoed up against me, his lips a tongue’s length from my mouth.

‘See you after the “divorce”,’ he said coolly, before, smiling like a Cheshire Cat, he was swallowed by the dark.

As Julian’s Saab negotiated the contours of Park Lane, he slotted a tape of Zachary’s band into the deck. A filling-loosening cacophony haemorrhaged out of the speakers.

‘GOOD GOD! ANOTHER TALENTLESS TEENAGER ABOUT TO SEND THE NATION’ – he punched at the volume button – ‘into a frenzy of indifference.’

‘Oh, Jules. You’re just down on anything you’re not up on.’

‘I’m in touch! I have my finger on the pulse – I can tell the difference between Noel and Liam Gallagher.’ He rounded Hyde Park Corner, peeling off towards the Palace. ‘Music was so much bloody better when I was young. We had better lyrics, better clothes, better habits, better hairdos …’

‘Gee. They’ll be making costume dramas about you soon.’

From the Mall, he cut down to the Embankment.
Strings
of fairy lights flickered on the inky waters of the Thames. The boats’ square windows, lit from within, made them look like illuminated harmonicas.

‘Steak tartare!’ Julian hooted. ‘Waiter, I’ll have some Mad Cow Disease, medium rare.’ He slapped the steering wheel with mirth. ‘Sir! This spongiform encephalopathy isn’t cooked properly … You can just tell by his accent that he has rear-vision mirror ornaments. Dice probably. He no doubt drives a car with a bumper sticker advertising his illegal sexual practices. God only knows what other crimes he’s committed.’

The perfect crime, I though to myself. Seduction. ‘You’re right. He’s obviously into “rap” because it goes with his “sheet”.’

Julian laughed. ‘Yes. Rap-sheet music. Very good. You should come on my client dinners more often. You played the situation well.’

My mouth dried. I avoided eye contact. I scrutinized the Thames embankment with first-time-tourist intensity. ‘Julian, I really think you should give the case to someone else.’

‘Why? At least Rotterman’s a paying customer. I thought you’d be pleased! The firm certainly are.’

‘But it’s so beneath you, Jules.’

‘They’re only hot-jacuzzi-habitués. Nothing too sinister.’

‘Rotterman’s natural habitat’s a post-office tower with a machine-gun in his hand. He’s the sort of guy
who
does terrible things to small animals.’ I shivered.

‘The clients may be reprehensible, Becky, but the principle is important. Freedom of speech. That’s worth fighting for.’

I bit my lip. There was so much I wasn’t telling him. Some freedom of speech could be very, very expensive.

At the Temple, Julian pulled over. He often did this, detouring to his office last thing at night to check for fresh fugitives from injustice. I walked to the office by his side, our heels castanetting on the cobblestones; the antique oil lamps flickering, my hand cosily cocooned in his.

In his office, he unexpectedly turned and nuzzled my neck.

‘I have something for you,’ he said, handing over a piece of paper.

‘What is it?’

‘A written invitation.’

I skimmed the spidery Mont Blanc writing, laughed out loud and RSVPed with a kiss. ‘Turn off the light.’

As we made love on his desk, a prism of recollections put Zachary’s face before me in a thousand ways. Images of him jostled each other for the most prominent position in the eye of my subconscious. They thrust themselves forward; a carnal kaleidoscope. It gave the sex a heated, startling frisson.

Julian’s office has three arched windows, wide
panels
of leaded glass, that yielded a small amount of warm light from the Temple’s gas lamps. We lay for a while afterwards, the glow bathing our bodies a fiery gold.

Julian switched the desk lamp on, leant on one elbow and examined my face. ‘You’re thinking of somebody else, aren’t you?’

The dream dissolved and I splashed up to consciousness, gasping for air in uneven spurts. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘You’re going to leave me one day,’ he said ruefully.

‘I will if you keep saying that!’ I tousled his hair. ‘You’ll turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

‘Aren’t you worried
I’ll
leave
you
?’ he asked.

I thumped him good naturedly. ‘Who’d have you?’ He retaliated, tickling my tummy. ‘A plethora of female inamoratas awaits me. Oh, it’s such a bore being perfect. Makes me wish I hadn’t given up S and M.’

‘You? Into bondage!? Don’t make me laugh. You’re way too straight to try anything weird like that. Your condoms are practically pinstriped.’

‘
Do
you think I’m too straight? Is that why you didn’t marry me, Becky?’

As he hovered above me, I noticed he’d left on his socks and that his clothes, as ever, were neatly folded over the chair. ‘No.’

‘Do you want me to develop a few illegal sexual preferences of my own? … I could, you know.’

‘I like you just the way you are,’ I said. And told myself I meant it. Told myself that I didn’t want him to use ping-pong tables for purposes other than that for which they were originally intended; to have a definition of sexual athleticism that did not mean always coming first.

‘Having lived together so long, Beck, being “good in bed” means I don’t snore, right?’

‘Absolutely,’ I kissed his eyelids, reassuringly. But then why weren’t my reassurances reassuring me? If I’d known what my sex drive had in store, I’d have got some steel-belted assurances for greater traction, because, believe me, I was about to hit a very bumpy road.

10
Resting On Your Orals

I DETOURED ON
to that bumpy course about a week later when I got a note from Harrods. There was a package awaiting collection. I forgot about it for a day or two until I was on the way home from a meeting with a conceptual artist – she was a ‘holistic healer’ who, proving that there is no end to the inventiveness of weird women wearing natural fibres to make money in their spare time, planned an interactive exhibition in which women burnt their contraceptives and reverted to pessaries of honey, gum and crocodile dung, as favoured by the Egyptians. Couldn’t wait to promote
that
one.

As I was already on the Piccadilly Line, I got off at Knightsbridge – London’s retirement village for seriously rich Arabs – and entered the crenellated department store otherwise known as ‘Harabs’.

Because the one great difference between kids’
parties
and grown-ups’ parties is that kids always seem to know exactly what each other wants (you never see a child feigning delight over a Tupperware beetroot strainer or a coffee-table book entitled
Sweden – the View From Norway
) I shouldn’t have been surprised when I bumped smack bang into Anouska, returning all the presents she’d gone orgasmic over days earlier.

‘I thought you were in a meeting?’ I said. ‘I rang this morning …’

‘What? Oh no. I’ve just trained my Portuguese maid to tell callers that I’m in meetings while I’m out shopping. You know. So that I don’t feel so useless.’

Anouska had recently contracted Affluenza, a feeling of inadequacy and worthlessness brought on by wealth.

‘Hell. You can have my job. I’m dying to feel useless.’ I inquisitively prodded the sack she was carting.

‘Well,’ she said defensively. ‘What on earth did Kate think I was going to do with a melon baller and Mexican tortilla press? I hate cooking. And Darius hasn’t even
found
the kitchen yet.’

‘How
is
the Prince of Darkness?’

‘He cut short the honeymoon to go on a holiday to find himself. All he found out was that I’m mad and everything’s my fault. Oh dear, here I am talking and talking about me. What about you, doll? I want to hear all about everything, okay? … Only tell me in ten seconds.’

‘I saw my One-Lick Stand. At dinner. With Julian.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘No. Turns out he’s a rap star.’ I shoved her off the escalator at the second floor as directed. ‘Did Darius mention any rap stars to you?’

‘Maybe he came with the band? What’s the name of
his
band? Let me guess. ‘The Rock Hard Gonads … No … The Throbbing Gonads? …’ she teased, thrilled by her own crudity. I dragged her through haberdashery, homeware and bed linen to what turned out to be the pet shop. ‘I’ve got it. Pulsate and the Urgent Thrusting Gonads …’

I handed over the note to the sales assistant. He returned moments later with a small plastic bag containing one perfectly formed sea horse. Oh my god. The Knightly Quest. I burst out laughing. My rap star was obviously not content to rest on his orals.

‘Oh,’ Anouska trilled. ‘Isn’t it beautiful! There’s a note …’ She slit open the envelope with a neon-orange nail. ‘“Proceed to VIP florists”,’ she read. ‘Kings Road. A treasure hunt. Oh goody. Come on. I’ll drive.’

Even though driving around London in the late nineties amounts to the shortest point between two diversions, Anouska likes nothing better than putting pedal to metal. As usual, she was driving as though she was in the Starship Enterprise, i.e., warp factor ten. Tearing down Sloane Street, hand welded to the horn,
she
went straight through the red light at the intersection with Pont.

I adopted the brace position and Hail Mary-ed out loud. ‘You know, we have a funny little tradition here on planet Earth, Annie, where red means stop.’ We screeched into Sloane Square, running off the road at least six Land Rovers full of Sloane Rangers dashing to make their appointments for raspberry-flavoured colonics.

At VIP florists there was a rose waiting for me. Painted purple. And a note to go to Selfridges food hall.

Skidding around Hyde Park Corner at breakneck velocity, Anouska clocked my ashen visage. ‘It’s alright, doll. I always race through roundabouts to get out of the way of all the really bad drivers.’

‘Oh well, that’s okay then.’

At Selfridges, there were nineteen tubs of Häagen-Dazs ice-cream with my name on them. ‘I’m dying, doll,’ thrilled Anouska. ‘Who is this guy?’ This time the accompanying note advised me to look in my third desk drawer at work.

We were on our way back to the ICA, with me screaming ‘slow down’ every two seconds and Penelope Pit Stop explaining that she wasn’t speeding; she was just driving fast enough for the speed cameras not to be able to get a snap of her … when we finally got pulled over by a cop.

Anouska lowered the window of her Mercedes
sports
car, eyelashes on overdrive. ‘Yes, Officer?’

‘You’re driving at 80 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone,’ the cop informed her.

‘Officer, I wasn’t doing more than 75. I must have had a tail wind.’

‘And you went through a red light while I was pursuing you. I’m going to have to book you.’