‘Isn’t it a tragedy?’
He looked at me with some care. Sadly I followed his eyes, and I too saw what he saw. My snowy cheeks and ruddy lids, the coin-slot of my mouth and its tannic teeth — and the rug, a dry rug, a drinker’s rug.
‘You still put your money on the evenings, though.’
‘Yup.’
‘And you feel like shit in the morning.’ He glanced with amusement at my wine. ‘And you feel like shit in the afternoon.’
‘Yeah, well I’m a nightowl,’ I said uneasily.
His food came—they don’t mess about here—and he reached for the salt. Then, as he started to eat, he said quietly, ‘I was in the newsagents’ the other day—when you had that set-to with the girl.’
‘Yeah?’ I said, and felt my blood give a sick lurch.
‘I thought you handled yourself pretty well, considering. Nasty business.’
‘Yeah, it was fucking embarrassing.’
‘Of course,’ he said, continuing to cut his food crisply, ‘you could have argued that the man was being exploited too.’
‘What man?’
‘There was a man in the photograph, wasn’t there.’
‘No. The girl just had this dick in her face.’
‘Well who do you think the dick belonged to, brilliant?’
‘Yeah but girls don’t think that’s exploitation. They think that, they think all men want to do that stuff anyway.’
‘Well, they’re wrong, aren’t they,’ he said mildly. ‘I wouldn’t want to do it. You wouldn’t want to do it. The men do it for money, same as the girls.’
‘There must be some guys who like doing it. When I was younger, I always thought it looked like money for jam. Some girls like doing it too, don’t forget.’
‘You think?’
‘Oh sure,’ I said. ‘I know one who posed in Debonair. She bursts into tears of pride at the very mention.’
‘Pride? . .. Yes, I suppose it figures.’
‘How?’
‘Yob art,’ he said, and wiped his mouth. ‘Hey look, I’ve got to run.’
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to let your meal digest. It’s not healthy. Have a drink.’
He shook his head. Before he left, he held out his free hand and I took it.
‘Nice talking to you, Martin.’
‘Be seeing you, John.’
John. What a name, eh? It means a can, it means a trick. I pushed my plate away and settled back with the wine. I lit a cigarette. I pondered. Yob art. .. Yeah. When Vron had sobbed it all out after showing her prospective stepson photographs of herself having a handjob with no clothes on for money, she explained to me — at throaty length and with hot tears still foiling the points of her lashes — that she had always been creative. ‘I was always creative John!’ she said again and again, as if I kept impiously insisting that she was creative only sometimes or not until recently. Vron confirmed that she had been good at art as a schoolgirl, often praised by her art master. She instanced her darning skills and her flair for interior design. ‘I always knew I’d be in a book one day,’ she said, reaching once more for Debonair, ‘and now, John, that dream has been realized.’ She flattened the spread comfortably on her lap: there was Vron, “Vron”, on all fours, at three-quarters rear angle, in stockings, stilettoes and a pair of burgundy pants peeled half way down her pocked haunches. ‘Beautiful,’ I heard my father gulp over my shoulder. ‘You see, John,’ said Vron, ‘if you have the creative…’ ‘Gift,’ said my father. ‘The creative gift, John, then I think you’ve got to — to give of your gift, John. John. Look at this.’ She turned the page. Here Vron reclined on a kittenish white carpet, one leg hooked over an elbow, one hand busy in the central divide, a look of appalled transport on the averted face. ‘You see how much I’m giving there, John? That’s what Rod kept saying to me, the photographer, John. He kept saying: “Give, Vron, give!” ‘… I left half an hour later. Vron and Barry were crying again by that time, crying gratefully, consolably, in each other’s arms.
And get this. I’m only going to say it once.