‘Really?’ said the girl. ‘Is that a fact.’
‘Yup,’ I said. Hair is one of the things I do know something about. I may not know much about anatomy, but I am rug-smart. It’s all those stylists, wardrobe girls and make-up technicians I’ve hung out with, plus my own pricey psychodramas on the topic. I nodded and drank my drink. I looked around. Where were the other candidates? Anyway, I assumed that this unit here in the white bikini was relishing the banter and the rug-wisdom. Chatting with me was presumably a lot more fun than going to bed with me for money — though less profitable, it had to be said. I too was pretty pleased by the way things were going. I was pleased to be sitting here with a strong drink, pleased that I wasn’t staked out on the basement floor, playing the romantic lead in a snuff movie. No, it was all very civilized, very civilized indeed.
Now her head dipped as she pried at the fissure of a half-split nail. With that backdrop of hair the small round shoulders gained in defencelessness and pallor— but come on, the Isles was no place for local contrasts. The girl, the lean teenager with W-shaped folds in the vent of her shut armpits, she would suit me right down to the ground. Being the being I am, though, and no other (not yet anyway), I wanted full brothel privileges, the old male deal of dough and careless choice.
‘Where are your friends?’ I said.
She shrugged, and surveyed the empty bower. Where were mine? Then she raised her face to me and said with sad seriousness, ‘Hey. What’s your name.’
‘I’m Martin,’ I said at once… I hate my name. I mean, you have a kid, a little baby boy, and the best you can do with it is to name it John? I’m called John Self. But who isn’t?
‘And what’s yours?’
‘They call me Moby. You married?’
‘No. I guess I’m not the marrying kind.’
‘What do you do, Martin?’
‘I’m a writer, Moby.’
‘But that’s really interesting,’ she said sternly. ‘You’re a writer? What do you write?’
‘Uh. Fiction. Stuff like that.’
‘John roar mainstream?’ she seemed to say.
‘Pardon?’
‘I mean are they mainstream novels and stories or thrillers or sci-fi or something like that?’
‘What’s mainstream?’
She smiled appraisingly and said, ‘That’s a good question . .. I’m fucking my way through college? English Literature, at NYTE? You write novels? That’s what you do? What did you say your name was?’
By this time I was more than ready to ask Moby what she did, and how much it cost — but then I felt the full-thighed waft of a new female presence. I turned. A big bimbo in cool pants and bra came swaying from the shadows of the rear corridor. She was built on the Selina model, with several dirty-minded enlargements, the emphasis all on protuberance, convexity. And I thought: I want. Me, for me. She sat with a sigh on a black plastic mushroom by the bar. A few seconds later a smug, exhausted man in an impeccable business suit went staggering past.
‘Take care now, She-She,’ he said richly.
‘You too, sir,’ said She-She, in the brisk commercial tones of hostesses everywhere. ‘I’d like to thank you for stopping by. See you again, sir.’
‘Oh yes.’
She-She’s trick staggered on. His slack, slaked face seemed about to drop off with sheer gravity of dissipation. He obviously hadn’t’ stinted himself with She-She back there. No. He had given his senses all kinds of presents and treats with She-She back there.
‘Hey, She-She,’ said Moby. ‘Martin here’s an English writer.’
‘Yeah?’ said She-She.
‘Yeah,’ I said. I stood up, in my grey skin, stacked gut and floral wraparound, my hair the colour of London skies — under the bam, under the boo.
——————
‘Aren’t you excited?’ I was asked, ten minutes later.
‘Yes and no.’
‘Come on. Ooh, you must be so excited.’
‘Well yeah,’ I said, ‘I suppose I am quite.’
True, I was now lying naked in a locked and candlelit cabana, alone with the industrious She-She, whose fleshy right hand made smoothing motions on the hair-dotted slope of my inner thigh … For a while, back there under the bam, I had hesitated before arriving at my selection. Perhaps little Moby would be hurt by my preference for her talented colleague — would walk out, burst into tears, commit suicide. But there doesn’t seem to be a self-pity problem in the Happy Isles. You know, I suspect I’m not cut out for brothels. I can’t help getting engaged on the human scale, minimal though this is, fight it though I do. I just can’t get off the scale … Moby and I swapped fond farewells as She-She led me away. I shadowed her down the tapering passage, all its planes carpet-covered, like four floors. She-She then parked me in the aromatic cubicle. Standing at the door with her knuckles on her hips, she bade me recline on the high wall bed, as if for a medical inspection. Yeah, that’s what it felt like: a much-dreaded, long-overdue and sinisterly ritzy visit to the dick-doctor. ‘Why don’t you make yourself more comfortable?’ she asked, with a touch of joshing indignation. Obligingly I leaned back an additional inch or two into the firm and furry pillows. ‘No — take off your sarong! Now I’ll be with you in just one minute.’ So I lay naked in the rinsed airlessness of the room, waiting for She-She’s return, and wishing pretty earnestly that Ihad taken my chances with Moby.