“Isn’t it.”
They stood for a while, looking at each other. Between them, so nearly solid that it was almost visible, the question What were you doing in Vince’s ear? hovered in the air.
Somebody once defined Love as never having to explain what you were doing in somebody’s ear. It’s not a particularly accurate definition.
“Fancy a picnic?” asked Jane.
“Don’t mind.”
“Or we could stay in and I’ll cook something.”
Kiss smiled feebly. “Let’s have a picnic,” he said.
For want of anywhere better to go, they went to Martinique. It wasn’t the most joyous picnic in history — (For the record, the most joyous picnic in history was the time seven Force Fives decided to have a barbecue in the back garden of a house in Pudding Lane, London, in the year 1666. The genies had a great time and London got St Pauls, various Wren churches and a nursery rhyme or two by way of belated compensation.) — and after they’d eaten the sandwiches and drunk the champagne they sat in silence for a full seven minutes, looking at the dark blue sea.
“Jane,” Kiss said eventually.
“Yes?”
How to put it, exactly? How to explain that the ferociously passionate feelings they both harboured were nothing but a device contrived by a supernatural fiend as part of his plan to annihilate humanity? How to explain all that, tactfully?
“Nothing.”
Jane poured the last dribble of the champagne into her glass. It was lukewarm and as flat as a bowling green. “I thought that was very romantic,” she said.
Kiss suppressed a shudder. “What was?”
“You hanging around like that when Vince was there. I think you were jealous.”
Well of course, you would. “Ah.”
“Were you?”
“Sorry? Oh, yes. Yes, I was.”
“You needn’t be.”
“That’s good to know.”
Jane picked at the strap of her sandal. “The moment I saw him,” she went on, “I knew it was all over between us. In fact, I can’t imagine what I ever saw in him, really.”
“Can’t you?”
“No.”
Kiss breathed in. For some reason, he found it harder than usual. “I quite took to him, actually,” he said. “Not a bad bloke, when you get to know him. I expect.”
“Oh Kiss, you are sweet.”
That particular phrase, Oh Kiss, you are sweet, stayed with him the rest of the day and deep into the night, with the result that he couldn’t sleep. By two-thirty in the morning, it had got to him so much that he put on his coat and went to Saheed’s.
In the back bar he met two old friends, Nordic Industrial Components IV and Consolidated Tin IX. They were sitting in a corner sharing a big jug of pasteurised and playing djinn rummy.
“Hi,” he said, joining them. “Would you guys say I was sweet?”
Nick and Con stared at him. “Sweet?”
“You heard me.”
Nick shook his head. “To be frank with you, Kiss, no.”
“I’m very relieved to hear it. Same again?”
Three or four jugs and a game of racing genie later, Nick asked why he had wanted to know.
“Oh, no reason. Somebody accused me of sweetness earlier on today, and it’s been preying on my mind.”
“Ah.” Nick dealt the cards. “Well, my old mate, you need have no worries on that score. Who’s to open?”
“Me,” said Con. “Three earthquakes.”
“See your three earthquakes,” Nick replied, “and raise you one famine.”
“Twist,” said Kiss. “I think it’s a horrible thing to say about anybody.”
“Agreed,” said Con. “Who said it, and what had you in mind by way of reprisals?”
“My fiancée,” Kiss said. “Your go, Nick.”
“Your fiancée?”
“That’s right.”
“See your famine and raise you a pestilence. Since when?”
“Recently,” Kiss answered. “Can we change the subject, guys? I’m trying to enjoy myself.”
“Your pestilence,” said Con, “and raise you one. This is pretty heavy stuff, Kiss. She must be some doll if you’re thinking of packing in the genieing on her account.”
“Repique,” Kiss said (he was banker), “and doubled in Clubs. My clutch, I think.”
“Buggery.”
“That’s forty-six above the line to me,” Kiss went on, jotting down figures on a milk-mat, “and one for his spikes, makes seventy-seven to me and three to play. My deal.”
“I’ve had enough of this game,” said Con. “Let’s play Miserable Families instead.”
So they played Miserable Families; and two hands and a jug of pasteurised later, Kiss was ninety-six ahead and held mortgages on seventy-five per cent of Antarctica, which was where Con lived.
“No thanks,” Con said, when Kiss suggested another hand. “I get the impression your luck’s in tonight.”
“Tell me about it,” replied Kiss gloomily.
“This girlfriend of yours.”
“Fiancée.”
“Quite.” Con paused. Generally speaking, genies don’t kick a fellow when he’s down, just in case he grabs hold of their foot. There are, however, exceptions. “Lucky in cards, unlucky in love, they say.”
“They’re absolutely right.”
Nick grinned. “I take it,” he said, “you’re not overjoyed?”
“It’s that bastard,” Kiss blurted out. No need to say who the bastard was. “He hired Cupid to shoot me. It’s not,” he added dangerously, “funny.”
There was a difference of opinion on that score. When he had regained control of himself, Nick asked why.
“He’s going to destroy the world…”
“Not again.”
“…and he wants me out of the way first. I call it diabolical,” Kiss concluded, draining his glass. “He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.”
“Oh, I dunno,” Con replied mildly. “All’s fair in—”
“Don’t say it. Not the L word.”
“War,” Con continued. “You’ve got to hand it to Philly, he has brains. And vision. And that indispensable streak of sheer bloody-minded viciousness that you need to get on in this business.”
Kiss frowned. “Well, so have I,” he said. “Trouble is, she won’t let me use it.”
“Bossy cow!”
“Or at least,” Kiss amended lamely, “she wouldn’t like it.
And as things are at the moment…”
Nick winked. “Say no more,” he said. “What you need, I think, is a little help from your friends.”
Kiss looked up. “Really?”
“We might consider it,” Con replied. “Get a mate out of a hole. Can’t watch a good genie go down, and all that.”
Kiss’s frown deepened. “But what can you do?” he asked. “Philly’s a Twelve and you’re both Fives. He’d have you for breakfast.”
Con cleared his throat. “We weren’t thinking of that,” he said. “No, what we had in mind…” He looked at Nick, who nodded. “What we were thinking of was more by way of getting your beloved off your back. Weren’t we?”
“Could be fun,” Nick agreed. “How long have you got?”
Kiss shuddered. “Thirteen days,” he said, “before the papers go through. Any ideas?”
Nick poured the last of the pasteurised into his glass and chuckled. “I expect we’ll think of something,” he said.
Battered Volkswagen camper van speeding across the desert.
The Dragon King was beginning to get on Asaf’s nerves. After a long struggle, he had managed to jury-rig the primitive radio so that it could receive Radio Bazra’s easy listening music channel; but he needn’t have bothered, because he couldn’t hear a thing over the Dragon King’s Mobius-loop renditions of The Wild Colonial Boy. It would have been slightly more bearable if the King had known more than 40 per cent of the words. As if that wasn’t enough, the King had taken his shoes and socks off, and his feet smelt.
“Twas in eighteen hundred and sixty-two,” the King informed him for the seventeenth time that day, “that he started his wild career / Tum tumpty tumpty tumpty tum tee tumpty tumpty fear / He robbed the wealthy squatters and…”
“Do you mind?”
The King looked up. “Yer what, mate?” he enquired.