Marty pushed Curtsinger’s hand away a second time: the touch was horribly expert. He looked along the table to Whitehead, who was pouring himself another glass of wine. Dwoskin’s gaze was fixed on Emily’s nakedness; Ottaway’s on Marty. Both had given up slapping the table. The lawyer’s stare said everything: he was sickly pale, sweaty anticipation on his face.
“Go on,” he said, his breath ragged, “go on, take her. Give us a show to remember. Or haven’t you got anything worth displaying?”
Marty heard the sense too late to reply; the naked child was pressing herself against him, and somebody (Curtsinger) was trying to unbutton the top of his trousers. He made one last, ungainly lunge at equilibrium.
“Stop this,” he murmured, looking at the old man.
“What’s the problem?” Whitehead asked lightly..
“Joke over,” Marty said. There was a hand in his trousers, reaching for his erection. “Get the fuck off me!” He shoved Curtsinger back with more force than he’d planned. The big man stumbled and fell against the wall. “What’s wrong with you people?” Emily took a step back from him to avoid Marty’s flailing arm. The wine was boiling up in his belly and throat. His trousers jutted. He looked, he knew, absurd. Oriana was still laughing: riot just her, Dwoskin too, and Stephanie. Ottaway just stared.
“You never seen a fucking hard-on before?” he spat at them all.
“Where’s your sense of humor?” Ottaway said. “We just want a floor show. Where’s the harm?”
Marty jabbed a finger in Whitehead’s direction. “I trusted you,” he said. It was all he could find to shape his hurt.
“That was an error then, wasn’t it?” Dwoskin commented. He spoke as if to an imbecile.
“You fucking shut up!” Fighting back the urge to break somebody’s face-anybody’s would do-Marty pulled on his jacket, and with one backsweep of his hand cleared a dozen bottles, most of them full, off the table. Emily screamed as they shattered around her feet, but Marty didn’t wait to see how much damage he’d done. He backed off from the table and stumbled toward the door. The key was in the lock; he opened it and stepped into the hallway. Behind him Emily had begun to bawl like a baby just woken from a nightmare; he could hear her all the way down the darkened corridor. He hoped to God his jittering limbs would bear him up. He wanted out: into the air, into the night. He lurched down the back staircase, hand outstretched against the wall for support, the steps receding beneath his feet. He reached the kitchen having fallen only once, and opened the back door. The night was waiting. Nothing to see him; nothing to know him. He breathed in cold black air, and it burned in his nostrils and lungs. He staggered across the lawn, almost blind, not knowing which direction he was going in, until he thought of the woods. Taking a moment to reorientate himself, he ran toward them, begging their discretion.
46
He ran, the undergrowth dragging at his legs, until he was so deep in the stand of trees he could see neither the house nor its lights. Only then did he stop, his whole body thumping like one vast heart. His head felt loose on his neck; bile gurgled at the back of his throat.
“Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”
For a moment, his gyrating head lost control: his ears whined, his eyes blurred. He was suddenly certain of nothing, not even his physical existence. Panic crawled up from his bowels, raking the tissue of his gut and his stomach as it came.
“Get down,” he told it. Only once before had he felt so close to losing his mind-to throwing back his head and screaming-and that had been the first night at Wandsworth, the first of many years of nights locked in a cell twelve by eight. He’d sat on the edge of the mattress and felt what he was feeling now. The blind beast ascending, squeezing adrenaline from his spleen. He’d mastered the terror then, and he could do it again. Brutally, he stuck his fingers as far down his throat as he could reach, and was rewarded with a surge of nausea. The reflex begun, he let his body do the rest, throwing up a system full of undigested wine. It was a filthy, cleansing experience, and he made no effort to control the spasms until there was nothing left to vomit.