The Grin of the Dark (20 page)

'Not much further.'

I assume that means we're almost at our destination, not barely on
our way. From the dashboard clock I gather we've been driving for
more than an hour. The edges of the beams catch rocks and dusty
cacti beside the unfenced road. The uniform hum of the wheels and
the monotonous unrolling of the road are more effective than any
number of sleeping pills, but do I glimpse an illuminated tent across
the desert? It could have been a kind of church, even if dancers inside
it were casting gigantic spindly shadows on the canvas. I'm trying to
decide whether it was a dream, unless I dream that too, when my
driver says 'Here we are.'

She withdraws her hand before I can be absolutely certain that she
laid her fingers on my crotch. The car is turning left at a sizeable rock
carved with the word
LIMESTONES
. In a moment I see why: at the end
of a concrete driveway fenced with spiky cacti as tall as guards, an
elongated single-storey house is built of the material. The headlamp
beams glare out of a long window curtained by a white blind as the
car veers into an open space that could hold about a dozen vehicles.
The house raises the door of a garage and closes it behind us with no
sound I can hear. As I climb none too steadily out of the car I feel as
if I'm still travelling. 'Ready for bed?' says my driver.

'Ready to get my head down,' I say, which seems less than ideally
phrased.

She retrieves my case and wheels it to a door into the rest of the
house. A corridor shaggily plastered in white and paved with large
grey stone tiles leads past four doors to an extensive lobby. My escort
opens the first door on the left and turns up the concealed lighting to
an intimate glow. 'Everything you need should be in here,' she says
and leaves the case at the foot of the lightly clothed double bed. 'Sleep
as long as you like.'

'I shouldn't say hello to Mr Hart, should I? I expect he'll be asleep.'

She halts in the doorway with her back to me. 'Mr Hart.'

The sudden flatness of her voice makes me feel as if I'm asking for
the late Orville. 'Willie Hart,' I say. 'The film director.'

She turns her head and then the whole of her front view towards
me. 'I thought you were a movie researcher.'

'I am. What do you mean?'

'Where did you get your information?'

'From the online database. He's the grandson of Orville Hart.'
When she gazes at me I insist 'He is. I've had emails from him.'

'You didn't read it right.'

'What?' It doesn't help that she has decided to be amused. 'I'm not
surprised, the way he writes.'

'Not the emails.' Her amusement wavers and returns, if more
wryly. 'I'm sorry if you don't like my style,' she says.

I feel as if the room has quivered like an image on a monitor, but
it must be my stance that has. 'You're...'

She gazes at me to be sure I've finished, and then she plants a hand
on her left breast. 'Wilhelmina,' she admits. 'I never liked the name.'

I have the impression that faces are moving over me, and when I
leave the dream behind I'm tied up. I can't move a limb. The sight
of pudgy pallid faces crawling over one another clings to my mind as
my eyes bulge open and I bare my teeth, which doesn't help me to
utter a sound. I'm tangled in a nylon sheet and clawing at the one
beneath me on the double bed. All this would be more reassuring if I
weren't adorned with an erection. Once it subsides beneath the
weight of my dismay with the nightmare, I fling off the clammy sheet
and drain the glass of water that I can't recall pouring. Also on the
bedside table is my watch, showing ten past eleven for a moment
before the digits grow identical.

Is it late morning or nearly midnight? I pad across the tiled floor
to part the slats of the blind. Outside are the other extended half of
the V-shaped house and an unlit building beyond the dim outlines of
cacti, and that's all except featureless darkness. I've slept through the
day, and I still haven't told Natalie that I've arrived. I would have if
I hadn't been overwhelmed by Willie Hart's identity and my lack of
sleep.

I hurry to my bathroom, which is as thoroughly stocked with
toiletries and towels as any in a hotel. I have a quick fierce shower
and grab clothes from my suitcase. Buttoning my shirt, I step out of
the room. The house is quiet except for a faint sound of lapping. The
corridor ends at a tiled lobby across which the outer door faces a
dining area occupied by a heavy table and twelve chairs, and beyond
them an extensive open kitchen. A further corridor leads to the rest
of the house, where the noise is coming from. It's the sound of
simulated waves on a computer inside the first room on the left. I
knock on the door and look in.

The office is deserted. Grey filing cabinets flank a white desk. The
walls are full of posters, or rather flattened sleeves from videocassettes
and DVDs.
Guy Hard
,
Star Prick: The Search for Cock
,
Rumpy
Young Women, Fun with Dick, A Dong to Remember, Guy Hard
with a Vengeance
,
Good Day at Black Cock
,
Star Whores: A New
Grope
... I venture to the desk and touch the mouse, and the screensaver
vanishes to reveal that the computer is online. I'm sure Willie
won't mind if I email Natalie. I log onto my account and find a
message from her.

Are you landed yet, Simon? Is everything as you expected? Let us
know you're safe. Mark sends a big grin.

I type so fast that my fingernails twinge.

Couldn't be safer. Sorry I didn't get back to you as soon as I
arrived. No sooner in my room than I fell asleep until just now.
It's breakfast time in London, isn't it? If you read this in the next
few minutes I'll probably still be at the computer if you want to
let me know you have. Meanwhile I'm being well looked after by
my host and hoping to start what I'm here for very soon. Love to
you both and a bigger grin back to Mark.

I'm not sure about the last comment, but I send the email before I
can change my mind about withholding the gender of my host – I
think the revelation is best kept until I'm home. I bring up the Internet
Movie Database, but it doesn't lack the information I was convinced
it did. Willie Hart's page shows her birth name as Wilhelmina.

Has it been added since I looked? At least there's nothing
unfamiliar on Tubby's pages. The newsgroups have been busy with
me while I was asleep, however. To begin with, Colin intervened on
my behalf.

Reverting to baby talk now, are we? Not much of a regression
when you've been flinging the contents of your nappy at anyone
you disagree with. Just because people read you on the Internet
doesn't mean you're worth anyone's attention. It's the biggest
slush pile in creation. A slush pile is where writers like you that
are never going to see print end up. Real writers like Simon have
real editors like me who haven't time to waste with illiterate
unpublishable ignoramuses like you. Have you caught on yet
that the last thing we are is jealous of you? I see your name
spells I'm Slime, Me. Good to see you writing the truth for once
even if you didn't know you were.

I can't help grinning at Colin's discovery, but my amusement
doesn't last.

No, it spells Me, I'm Miles. That's miles abbove you nipping at
my heels, except it's more like treading on an innsect. Don't
bother wonderring if it's my name any more than yours is Collin
Vernon. Do you really think you'll connvince anyboddy you're an
edditor by talking to us all like that? Real edditors help people,
they don't try to make us think we're no good and just you are.
We all know you wouldn't make such a fuss trying to deffend
yourself if you bellieved in yourself.

Other posters on the newsgroups have joined in the argument or
tried to end it.

What's any of this got to do with this group?...

Can't the three of you take your row outside?...

I don't know who any of you losers are and I'm sure nobody
here wants to...

However many of them there are, they're all as bad as each
other...

I think the last comment is especially unfair, but I'm not going to
be diverted. I address my reply to Smilemime.

I absolutely agree with everyone who's tried to stop this. Just
hush and we will.

Though I'm tempted to advise him to depart propelled by a jet of
his own urine, I post the message I've typed instead. I hope there will
be no answer, and there's none from Natalie. As I log off I become
aware of a sound at the end of the corridor. It's the rhythmic moaning
of a female voice.

It must be in a film. If it weren't amplified it would hardly
penetrate the door in the wall that terminates the corridor. It seems
to intensify as I venture closer. I ease the door halfway open, and then
my arm continues the action as if the spectacle ahead has taken
control of my brain. The room beyond the door is as wide as the
house, and much brighter. The subject of the brightness is an
unclothed double bed occupied by two slim naked girls. The one
whose face is visible looks dauntingly young. She continues to moan,
such an exaggerated sound I'm not surprised it was audible through
the door. The handle drifts out of my distracted grasp, and the
movement catches her attention. She lowers her head, which was
thrown back, and rests silver fingernails on her friend's shoulder. The
other girl lifts her face from between her friend's thighs and licks her
glistening lips. She appears to be even younger. For that reason
among others I'm hesitating in the doorway when both girls produce
smiles that age them several years – at least, I'd like to think so – and
stretch out a hand each to me.

How impolite would it be to refuse? I'm unable to look away. As
I pace forward they turn their supine bodies to me. I feel as if the
entire naked lengths of both of them are aware of me, a notion so
intensely stimulating that there's no question my no doubt foolish
grin originates in my crotch. I follow the swelling into the room, or
at least that's my excuse. I've no idea how many steps I take before
noticing the arc-lights and, already behind me, the camera. I'm in a
film until I grin sheepishly at the camerawoman. 'Cut,' Willie Hart
shouts beside her, twice.

The repetition is so clearly a rebuke that the embodiment of my
libido sags at once. 'Sorry,' I mumble.

'Okay.' It audibly isn't, and she adds 'For what?'

'For ruining your take.'

'And how do you figure you did that?'

I'm not sure even of the question. 'By being here?'

Each of the girls on the bed gives a sigh that Willie puts into
words. 'By looking at the camera.'

'I'm not a professional. I mean, I am, but not that kind.'

'Amateur is good too. Just be yourself. Mona and Julia would
show you how.'

'I know perfectly well who I am.'

'Then let's find out,' either Mona or Julia says.

'Looked like there was plenty of you before,' says Julia with as
wide a smile, unless she's Mona.

'Don't be offended, but I'm just here to write a book,' I say and
face Willie. 'And I'll be correcting all the errors on the net about your
grandfather.'

'Take a break, everyone. Which errors?'

The performers swing their legs off the bed, and I see that one girl
is wearing a ring through her right labium. As they catch me
watching, her friend gives the ring a gentle tug. I wince, not least at
the responsive pang that travels along my penis, and manage to
pronounce 'The descriptions of his films.'

'How do you know they're wrong if you haven't seen the movies?'

'I think this character specialises in writing rubbish.'

'Show me.'

I linger to ask 'You won't be including me in the film, will you?'

It's the camerawoman who answers. Her hair is cropped even
shorter than the other women's. 'What,' she says, 'as a joke?'

'Not even as that if you don't mind.'

The girls send a final sigh, mocking or otherwise, after me as Willie
ushers me out of the room. 'Don't mind Marilyn,' she murmurs. 'She
has quite a tongue when she uses it.'

I'm tempted to rejoin that the same is true of the performers.
Instead I say 'Don't think I'm prying, but how old are the girls?'

'Legal. Proof on file. Want to see?'

'Good heavens no. Of course not.'

As I open the door to her office she says 'Well, you seem to know
your way around.'

'I heard the screensaver before.'

'Really? I'll have to cancel the repairman. The sound card must
have fixed itself.'

The waves have fallen silent. Before they can prove me truthful,
Willie rouses the mouse. 'Where do I need to look?'

'The IMDb.'

'I'm not familiar with it.'

I lean over her to bring up the site. She's wearing the thinnest of T-shirts,
and the V of the neck is even more revealing. The heat of her
body seems to surge at me as I use the mouse to pull down the list of
recent online visits and click on the reference. At once I feel as if the
computer has tricked me into betraying myself. 'Sorry,' I blurt. 'I was
on here earlier. I couldn't find you and I wanted to let my partner
know where I was.'

'Hey, don't worry. Were you feeling lonely?'

I'm distracted by Mona and Julia, who are strolling naked past the
office. 'Not at all,' I say hastily. 'Just making sure she wasn't.'

'In case she was looking for company, you mean?'

'Not at all,' I repeat as a memory of Nicholas barring the way to
her flares up in my head. 'We don't do that kind of thing.'

'Gee, you Brits. You can have too much control, you know.' Willie
types her grandfather's name in the search box on the database.
'Okay, what's the son of a bitch been saying?'

I let Smilemime's comments speak for themselves. Willie gazes
longest at the claim that
Fool for a Day
helped destroy Charley
Chase's career, and I reflect that an administrator must have edited
the comments somewhat, since they aren't misspelled. Willie is
silent until she has read back as far as
Crazy Capaldi
, Orville Hart's
first sound film, and then she says 'So what am I meant to be
seeing?'

'Inaccuracies, I should think.'

'I don't see any. Where are they?'

'You aren't saying you can confirm everything this person wrote.'

'Sure, that's what I'm saying.'

The mirth I was affecting dies in my throat and deserts my face,
leaving it almost too stiff for me to ask 'How could he know about
your grandfather's last film when it was never released?'

'Read about it, I guess. There's always advance publicity. I don't
understand what your problem is with this guy.'

I mustn't treat her as a spokeswoman for Smilemime. 'Take a look
at the other titles.'

She checks the next three, starting with the unreleased
Tubby Tells
the Truth
. 'I'm still not seeing it.'

'The clown's making it up. I promise you the one I've watched is
nothing like his description.'

'Maybe you should see some more,' she says and stands up.
'Whenever you're ready.'

When I smile eagerly she motions me towards the middle of the
house. 'Unless you'd like something else first,' she says.

I could imagine that the girls are giggling at her suggestion or in
anticipation of its outcome. 'We're making sandwiches,' one of them
tells me.

'We can make you,' says her colleague, 'anything you fancy if we
have it.'

They're standing by a monumental white refrigerator, and both
have turned to me. Each torso puts me in mind of an amused face, an
impression hardly counteracted by the memory of one girl tugging her
friend ajar. I feel as if they've linked too many of my appetites – as if
my brain is close to overloading with them. 'Thanks,' I say, 'but I'd
better start work.'

'Don't you like our sandwiches?' Julia says, if she isn't Mona.

How would I know? Are we talking about food, or have they a
different arrangement in mind? I'm not here to prove myself. Even if
Natalie never knew what I'd done, that would only aggravate my
guilt. I won't use Nicholas as an excuse. Nevertheless I'm absurdly
abashed to admit 'I couldn't say.'

'Never tasted an American sandwich?'

'You don't know what you're missing.'

Perhaps we're discussing food after all. I'm distracted from reading
the girls' faces by the rest of them, and Willie's is unhelpfully neutral.
I have to gaze at her to make her say 'It can be sent out if you're
raring to get started.'

'Whatever you're having will be fine. There isn't much I won't put
in my mouth.'

This earns me a disconcerting burst of applause from the girls.
'And a drink?' Willie says.

'Something soft.' When the girls sigh at this I feel bound to explain
'I don't want to risk nodding off in a film.'