‘I’ve heard so much about you, John,’ said Vron.
‘Vron’s a very happy girl today,’ said my father huskily. ‘Aren’t you, my lovely?’
Vron nodded.
‘It’s a very special day for my Vron. Show him, Vron.’
Vron sat up, tightening the folds of her kaftan. She reached under the coffee-table and produced a pornographic magazine called Debonair… Now I know my pornographic magazines: Debonair belonged to the cheaper range, targeted at the manual worker’s handjob, with many a salacious housewife or spotty-bummed Swede twisting herself in and out of chain-store underwear. ‘Sit down, John,’ she said, and rubbed the seat beside her with her palm.
Wetting her fingertips, Vron plucked at the pages. With a sigh that was almost a gurgle of gratification, she found the slippery spread. She laid it on my lap in a soft caress. My father sat down too. I felt their arms on my shoulders and their ripe, expectant, human faces very close to mine.
I flattened the mag out in front of me. From the right-hand page Vron’s face stared me in the eye. Across her bare throat was the legend “VRON” — again the double quotes with their exotic, their impossible promise. ‘Go on, John,’ I heard Vron whisper. I turned the page. There was Vron, in the usual silky bonds and tapes, doing all the things that these chicks are paid to do. I turned the page. ‘Slowly, John,’ I heard Vron whisper. Vron on a steel chair, with a heavy breast in either fist. Vron lying with back arched and legs raised on a tousled white carpet. Vron stretched out on the haunches of a drophead Hyena. Vron crouched over a flat mirror. I turned the page. ‘There,’ I heard Vron whisper. The final double-spread disclosed Vron on her knees, her gartered rump hoisted towards camera, splaying the busy cleft with magenta-bladed fingers. Now I recognized her: Veronica, the talented stripper, here at the Shakespeare.
Vron started to cry. My father gazed at me manfully. I believe there was a tear or two in his eyes also.
‘I’m … I’m so proud,’ said Vron.
My father inhaled richly and rose to his feet. He slapped a hand on the cocktail console. He said explanatorily, ‘Pink champagne. Well, it’s not every day, is it? Come on Vron! Who’s a silly then? Here’s looking at you, my love.’ He flexed his nose indulgently. ‘There you go, John.’
‘Vron? Barry?’ I said. ‘— Cheers.’
——————
I drove home in my Fiasco, which, apart from the faulty cooling system, the recurring malfunction with the brakes and power-steering, and a tendency to list violently to the left, seems to be running fairly reliably at present. At least it starts more often than not, on the whole. I don’t think Selina exercises the Fiasco much when I’m in the States, and of course Alec Llewellyn has no use for it, now that he’s locked up twenty-four hours a day… The ride from Pimlico to Portobello took well over ninety minutes and it was gone midnight when I beached the car on a double yellow line outside my sock. Why did it take well over ninety minutes? A rush-hour style traffic jam at 12 p.m. Something to do with the fucking Royal Wedding. For the best part of an hour I sat swearing in a blocked tunnel under Westway. The Fiasco was overheating. I was overheating. Each car was crammed with foreigners and grinning drunks. The tunnel’s throat swelled like emphysema with fags and fumes and foul mouths. Then we edged into the blue nightmap of stars. Join the dots .. .London has jetlag. London has culture-shock. It’s doing everything the wrong way round at the wrong time.
Selina was sitting up in bed when I went through with my drink.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘Reading my book.’
‘Your what?’ She had a copy of Sugar on her banked thighs. There was also a TV-guide in there with her.
‘How was Barry?’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘Did you meet his new slag? He says he’s going to marry her. He made another pass at me the other day.’
‘He didn’t. What happened?’
‘He stuck his head up my skirt.’
‘What?’
‘I thought he was kidding until he tried to get rny pants off with his teeth.’