So we moved here to the States where I received my second leg-up in journalism, Blair’s father pulling some strings at a newspaper. But of course I remained twitchy and timid. I was quickly pushed into rewrites, cut-and-paste jobs or sprucing up the words of bolder journalists at the paper, those with some people skills, some get-up-and-go.
And all the while Blair tried to fix me. Tried and failed. But in reality the failure was all mine. Next came the divorce and Papa Blair rushed back to his strings. This time he did more than pull, he tugged and tugged with all his might. The newspaper fired me within days.
And so, you see, the Game has taken everything from me. My education, the career I craved, the career I had, my wife, my happiness . . .
And now if I want any contentment in life, there is only one thing to do. The only way out is to win. Death aside, I can see no other way out of this trap.
But before I return to my training, I must place in front of you a question. Because there are two opposites to consider and before my story is told you must judge me.
What am I? Murderer? Or innocent?
XX
XX She wore black. Jack looked disappointed. Although the dress did at least have some lace and frills. He leaned over to light her cigarette and asked her, ‘So what happened to the wedding dress, Cassie?’
Cassie looked at him blankly. ‘This is the wedding dress,’ she said. She drew on the turquoise cigarette that had come from a tin of cigarettes in various bright pastel shades. ‘But I had to dye it black.’
‘Interesting,’ said Jack. ‘Why’s that?’
Chad was sitting beside Jolyon on Jolyon’s bed. He looked at the black dress again and now he could just about see it had once been a wedding dress. Then he looked at her hair. It matched the dress, black and sleek as vinyl records. Last time he saw her, her hair had been brown.
She blew smoke from the corner of her mouth. ‘Well, I dyed the dress black because I’m no longer a virgin, Jack.’ Cassie batted her eyelids sarcastically. ‘So white isn’t appropriate any more.’
Jack swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jumping in his neck.
‘You should see the look on your face, Jack,’ said Cassie. And then she turned to Emilia. ‘He’s much prettier when he’s embarrassed, don’t you agree?’
Emilia shrugged, enjoying the spectacle.
‘I’m not embarrassed,’ said Jack. He leaned back in his chair. ‘So going back to your loss of cherry. What form did it take? Girl on top? Oral pleasure? Or a nice spot of anal perhaps?’
Cassie looked mischievous, she had a sly beauty about her. ‘With less than half a boat crew, one can enjoy all three options simultaneously,’ she said.
Jack laughed hard. ‘OK, OK, you win,’ he said, smiling at Cassie as if he was looking forward to many more battles to come.
Cassie rested her hand against her stomach and gave a bow, the gesture little more than an exaggerated nod. ‘Don’t worry, Jack,’ she said. ‘I’m not really into boaties. And I haven’t been a virgin for some time. I dyed the dress black because I felt like dyeing the dress black.’ She dragged on her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a thin stream. ‘Why do you do the things you do, Jack? Like asking rude questions under the guise of being supposedly funny?’
‘Because essentially I’m a cunt,’ said Jack. ‘Which is, to be fair to me, partly genetic. I come from a long line of utter cunts. And I suppose I have to admit, a little sheepishly, that I really quite enjoy being a cunt. Also it’s the fault of my upbringing. Hippy bullshit parents, the sort who turn all conservative once they near forty. Whereupon they decide to dissolve the commune. All four of them.’
‘You were brought up by four parents in a commune?’ Cassie looked doubtful.
‘It’s true,’ said Jack. ‘Now bear in mind that with four parents there exist mathematically six possible coupling combinations. And I know for a fact that five of those combinations took place. It’s complicated but if you ever want me to draw you a diagram . . .’
‘Everyone fucked everyone,’ Mark called out from the floor. ‘He likes to make the ins and outs sound more complicated than they were, he thinks it sounds more exotic. But essentially what Jack’s saying is everyone fucked everyone in every way possible, apart from his two dads. And if you get him drunk enough, he’ll admit he even has his suspicions about that.’ Mark tilted his drink to his mouth. ‘And this is how one ends up with the emotional wrecking ball we all know and love as Jack Thomson, no P in Thomson.’
‘Parents are too easy to blame,’ said Cassie. ‘And four parents might be called modest by some standards.’ The room fell silent as Cassie, looking down, turned the tip of her cigarette slowly against the edge of the ashtray. Its ash now in a neat cone, she resumed smoking again.
Chad felt bad for Cassie but also a little jealous. He had fantasised often about being an orphan, adopted as a baby. Not the pig farmer’s son but the secret child of an intellectual, a philandering writer, or a scientist who had died in an experiment gone wrong. It wasn’t unknown riches that had been concealed from him in Chad’s fantasies. He just wanted an explanation for why he was so different from his own family. At the very least he dreamed that one day his mother might tell him she had had an affair, the pig farmer wasn’t really his father, their obvious physical resemblance was nothing but wild coincidence. Anything but that man’s son.
Everyone else in the room was the product of divorced parents and Chad felt envious even of this. The exoticism of their broken homes, their splintered pasts. They had reasons to be interesting while he had excuses to be dull.
And then Cassie lifted her eyes, a cunning look spreading over her face. ‘They say if you blow smoke in a man’s face it means you fancy him,’ she said. She sucked on the turquoise cigarette and sent its smoke in a line of quick quivering rings toward Jack’s face. ‘Do you think that’s true, Jackie-oh?’ she said.
Jack affected a cough and waved his hand to break up the smoke. ‘Then if you shit in his hair it must be true love,’ he said. ‘So anyway, how’s the latest grand opus of Pitt’s most bohemian poetess coming along?’
‘Like pistons,’ said Cassie. ‘Fast as wild rutting stallions.’
‘And how many little verses are you up to now?’
‘Who’s counting?’
Jack now played his startled look. ‘Well, you are apparently, Cassie. Or so I’ve been reliably informed. Unless you’ve been telling lies to make yourself sound more interesting?’
Cassie wrinkled her nose, a thin nose and freckled. ‘I’m not interested in interesting,’ she said.
‘So is it true,’ said Jack, ‘that when you’ve written five hundred poems, you’re going to kill yourself?’
‘If I said yes, would it give you a big old hard-on?’
‘I’m just trying to separate the truth from the student bullshit. There’s so much of it round here you have to watch where you step. But then you are studying English Lit, so it pretty much goes with the territory.’ Jack waited to be challenged on this point but no challenge was issued. ‘So about this suicide pact with the Muses . . .’