Sin City (25 page)

I move my knees nearer to his crotch, glance around our table. There's quite a lot of talent – at least six or seven really classy men, and that rather adorable oldie who's sitting next to Norah, still struggling hard to get a word from her. The women aren't that great, though – a tedious redhead who answers to the name of Misty and keeps talking about her osteopath; a female wrestler in polyester leopard, with her depressive younger sister, Merry-Lyn, and a few nondescript fatsos who obviously resent the fact I'm younger, slimmer and Milt's Elect.

The waiters are all darling – lean and dark with peat-bog eyes and dressed in baggy scarlet pantaloons and gold Moroccan slippers, pointed at the ends. The whole atmosphere's exotic, with the swaying coloured lamps and the wild impassioned music blaring from the stereo, with its sudden dramatic pauses and crescendos. Ed says it's a ninety-nine-stringed Kanoon, whatever that is. Ed's been here before. He told me it's a tourist place, quite a favourite spot for celebrations. Well, you'd need to win a packet just to foot the bill. Dom Perignon costs a hundred and eighty dollars a bottle – I saw it on the wine list. Milt ordered some for me, but I must confess, I prefer the Sidi stuff, which is sweetish and sort of aromatic. I push my glass across, offer him a sip. He's drinking Seven-Up himself.

“No, alcohol's a stimulant and I'm not allowed to get pepped up. Doctor's orders, honey. That's why I drink this stuff. It's got no caffeine, see? Like they say on TV – ‘Never had it, never will'.”

It sounds a pretty dreary claim to me. I wouldn't go round boasting that I'd never had it, but then poor Milt's off a lot of things – has to watch his calories, his cholesterol count, his daily fibre intake, and something called his EFAs. Misty's not much better. She's describing a recent trip to Europe's capitals in terms solely of her bowels: bunged up in Amsterdam, fast and loose in Paris, laxatives in Athens, griping pains in Rome.

Wine's a laxative, I've heard, so I put my own glass down, squeeze Milt's chubby thigh, my eye still on that wallet. I'm its bodyguard, its watchdog, protecting it from pickpockets. No danger at the moment – except from Mustapha, who is bearing down on us with a gigantic sort of pastry thing, bigger than a car-tyre and snowed with icing sugar. The pudding? No. We've got five more courses still to go before we reach dessert. Mustapha is beaming. This is the
pastilla royal
, which in his native Casablanca is made to honour royalty. Milt is king, so Milt must break it open, let the aromatic steam escape. Mustapha's English leaves a lot to be desired, but I understand the gist of it. He's babbling on about the importance of this ceremony, which I gather is symbolic, and how the ingredients of the dish itself are loaded down with meaning – fertility, virility, friendship, immortality. It all sounds pretty heavy for what is basically a gargantuan cream puff.

No. Wrong again. There's no cream in it at all – everything else except. I see Norah's face fall further as he starts listing all the fillings: honey, almonds, chicken, scrambled egg. I doubt if she could face them singly, let alone all mixed and mushed together. Milt looks dazed as well, though he's trying hard, up to his wrists in grease and icing sugar as he tears apart the gigantic ring of pastry. The steam escapes, the waiters cheer, the ninety-nine stringed whatsit adds its wail of triumph. Then we all dip in, yanking off great hunks which smell sensational, but are impossible to eat. The strudel-type pastry flakes and breaks to nothing, dollops of the filling drop on laps and cushions, icing sugar wafts in sneezy clouds.

I feed Milt with a sliver. It's probably on his no-no list, but if he doesn't at least sample it, he may risk friendlessness, sterility, impotence and death. Wayne is feeding
me
, dribbling honey down my cleavage, which gives him an excuse to lick it up. His tongue is in the pro class, though it distracts me from the taste of the
pastilla
which is really quite extraordinary, very sweet and cinnamony, yet with sudden shocks of salty egg or spicy chicken jarring on the palate. I glance at Norah, who can't eat anything since she's bandaged both her hands in her soft pink Turkish towel. (We were all given these pink towels, which seem to be the Moroccan equivalent of paper serviettes, and much more useful when there's so much grease and gunge about.) I ease up from my cushion,
pastilla
chunk in one hand, wine glass in the other.

“You've just got to try this, Norah. It's power-food, quite amazing. You won't get
this
at Beechgrove. And have a sip of wine, love. You can't keep drinking all that boring water.”

The sweet old guy who's sharing Norah's pouffe looks quite relieved to see me, squeezes up one end to make room for me as well.

“Is your friend hard of hearing?”

I nod, suppress a giggle. His accent is deep South. Poor Norah probably hasn't understood a single word. Suddenly, Mustapha's huge belly is wobbling over us. He pulls Norah to her feet, whisks her through the curtains of the tent. God! What now? Norah needs a nursemaid and I'm too unsteady on my pins to fit the rôle. I stagger after them, catch my breath as sultan's tent gives way to steamy kitchen – the hottest, busiest kitchen I've ever seen: grills and gases flaring, whole tribes of dark-skinned boys stirring, chopping, kneading; sweat pouring down each face. The smell's delirious – cardoman and garlic mixed with buttered honey, sharp astringent mint. The boys all nod and smile as I slink in. I mutter a hallo, but the word's completely lost in the clash of pans, the whir of liquidisers, the chef's own voice lashing out at Norah.

“You no like our food? You no think our kitchen clean? I show you kitchen. Kitchen
very
clean.”

He picks up shining saucepans, gleaming ladles, shoves them under Norah's nose. He's obviously upset. Ed told me that it's an insult in Morocco to refuse your host's food and that anything under six or seven courses is considered parsimonious, hardly worth the name of meal at all. I'd better make sure I never win a holiday to Agadir or somewhere – or not with Toomey as my table-mate. The chef is close to tears.

“I cook for royal palace. I cook for Shah. I cook for Princess Anne …”

“My friend's not well,” I soothe him. “It's not your food at all. She was feeling lousy anyway.”

“Nothing lousy here. My food good, very good. I buy myself. I get up at blast of dawn …”

By the time I've calmed him down and reassured poor Norah and we've all three made it up with huge bear-hugs and free samples from the battery of pans, our party is two courses on, and Misty and a man called Doc (who's nothing medical) are fighting a mock duel with their two-foot-long kebab skewers. Wayne has saved me a kebab and starts wooing me with chunks of pork and mushroom.

“Where did ya get to, honey? I was worried you was throwin' up or somethin'.”

I can't speak for charcoaled pork, so I shake my head, then nod it, to show I'm quite okay. Wonderful, in fact. He's sort of massaging my mouth with a warm and buttery mushroom cap, running it round the insides of my lips. I lick his fingers as a small return. They taste delicious – honey-roasted he-man with a hint of spice and sweat. I just wish Milton wasn't watching. I like the guy, but he's not exactly a ball of fun. His seventh course is not kebab, but indigestion tablets – two Tums washed down with water. I suppose he likes the Tums commercial too: “Do without the heartburn
and
the sodium.”

He returns the carton to his pocket, pulls out something else – an airline ticket – starts to crumple it up.

“What you doing, Milt?”

“It's no good now, honey. The damn plane left six hours ago.”

“You mean you … missed it?”

He drains his Seven-Up. “I was shootin' craps. I'd had a real good run and was all psyched up; didn't want to interrupt my luck. Just as well. In the end, I lost at that damn crap table, but if I hadn't stuck around and started playin' the slots, I'd be twenty thousand grand the poorer now.”

I stare at him. He didn't
know
he'd win. He could have lost his bankroll, lost his shirt, be stranded in Las Vegas without even the fare for a Greyhound bus, once he'd let that plane go. Or maybe you can swap plane tickets over, re-book a later flight. In which case, why tear up the ticket? It must have cost a bomb. He lives miles away, way up near Chicago.

“But couldn't you have changed the ticket, Milt? Used it tomorrow or the next day?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess so, but it ain't worth the hassle.” He removes an ice cube from his glass, cools his forehead with it. “I've missed a lotta planes, hon. If you're on a winning streak, you can't live your life round airline schedules. You have to be ready to drop everythin' and jus' go with the flow.”

I'm really quite impressed. I'd put Jones down as Mr Ordinary, but maybe he's the real McCoy high roller I thought I'd yet to meet. I mean, I was wrong about Victor, imagined him swanning round Las Vegas, living off his winnings, when he's an engineer or something rather dull. I feel a sudden pang. Victor wasn't dull. He knew a lot of things, was always so … No. No regrets. Victor doesn't want me – he made that pretty clear tonight – and these guys do. In fact, the feeling's mutual. I need them. There's no one else I know now in this whole hard-hearted town.

I edge a little closer to Milt's bulge. He's having quite a turn-out of his pockets, looking for another unused plane ticket, so he can illustrate his point. He turfs out aspirin, low-sugar breath-mints, salt-free chewing-gum, a whole concertina fold-down of credit cards, and a larger card with a pink flamingo entwined around his photograph.

I pick it up. “What's that?”

“My VIP guest card. I've got a big credit-line with the Flamingo, so they look after me. It's like – well, a free pass, I guess. I don't pay for my room, or meals, or …”

Wayne's playing snap, has produced one of his own, this time from the Golden Nugget. Someone else is joking about the last free suite he had which was called Old Masters and had a mini Sistine Chapel ceiling in the bathroom.

“I cricked my neck keep lookin' up at all them dingers. I could have had a ‘Cave Man' room with real rocks and a fake-fur bath-robe, or ‘Tarzan' and a jungle, but I guess I felt too old to start swingin' from the trees to find my Jane.”

We all laugh, except Norah, who appears to be mesmerised by a blue-rinsed fatso lecturing her on the nutritional dangers of the Beverley Hills Diet.

“We just can't live on avocado, hon, or kiwi fruit. If God had meant for us to do that, He wouldn't have made doughnuts, especially not cream ones.”

I stretch right out, head in Milton's lap, feet nuzzling Wayne's right thigh; reward them both with dazzling smiles as they fight to light my cigarette. I'll make it up to Norah in the morning. For the moment, I intend to have a ball. These guys are true high rollers – free suites, free passes, missed planes, the lot. If they accept me into their circle, even for just a week, I could win enough to change my life. I've got to escape from Beechgrove, escape from dole queues, dead-end jobs, and I need cash for all of that. I shan't be greedy. Once I've got my basics like my mansion and my Rolls, I'll give the rest away. God! I'd really love that – writing out cool four-figure cheques to Martha Mead and Ethel Barnes; buying mink-trimmed incontinence pants for Lil; setting Norah up with her own private circus and her own portable super-loo which she could tow along behind her. I'd give massive bribes to governments to abolish all psychiatrists, or make cigarettes free-issue like infant orange juice. I'd buy a chain of florists, then offload them on to Jan, with the one small proviso that she dispatch a lorryload of marigolds to my father's grave each week. I'd …

“You're not drinkin' your champagne,” says Milt. “Would you prefer the sweeter sort, hon?”

I nod. What's another hundred and eighty dollars among friends? I like these friends. They don't keep counting every penny like my mother always did, or waste precious time and energy worrying about rainy days, or acts of God, or accidents, and all that other dreary, cautious, life-negating stuff which kept my poor father in its grip. His life was so damned dismal. Twenty years of working overtime, crawling to his customers, smiling when his feet hurt, getting out a hundred shirts or sweaters for some swaggering tin god who then walked out with nothing; folding them all up again till lunchtime, then spending his short break running errands for my mother, or eating a Spam sandwich on a bench. And any measly pound he saved went straight into some piggy-bank or death insurance policy, was never splurged on fun-things.

Sometimes, I worry that I'll turn out like my parents. I mean, genes are powerful, aren't they, and I'd hate to hem my life in with Post Office savings books, or long-service awards where they reward you only for dying still in harness. Men like Wayne and Milt don't bother with all that. They're free to win, free to buzz off where and when they want, free to waste their money, tear up airline tickets. Free to live.

The eighth course has just arrived:
Poussin ala Casablanca
– honey-basted, garlic-roasted hen, served with prunes and apricots. I dip my bare hand in the dish, relish the greasy warmth as I fish around for fruit. Who wants forks? Who wants clocks? There's enough of those at Beechgrove ticking out the steel-toothed timetable. No one gives a fig here. It must be three a.m. at least, but new guests are still pouring through the door, the music even wilder now, the new champagne cork popping. I think we're all affected by the drink. Misty's pawing every waiter she can reach, the female wrestler nibbling at Gabe's ear, as if it's a last and special course, and two old boys are almost nodding off.

Suddenly, there's a click of castanets and six Moroccan belly-dancers burst into the room, their naked stomachs undulating to the fanfare of the music, their fringed skirts whirling out to reveal honey-basted thighs. The whole restaurant is applauding, clapping to the beat. The plumpest of the dancers shimmies over to our table, offers her hand to Norah's dear old gent. Up he gets and joins them, trying to writhe his barrel stomach as deftly as their taut ones. Next it's Eddie's turn. Some black-eyed Jezebel scoops him onto the dance floor, shows him how to snake his hips. Merry-Lyn leaps up on her own, untucks her satin blouse, displays her bare and wiggling belly to rapturous applause.