‘Angel.’ She dragged on a cigarette and blew smoke to the side as she discarded her name like a piece of rubbish. In contrast to Lucy, Angel’s make-up was heavy, hiding a row of spots on her chin.
‘Pleased to meet you, Angel.’ Her face was pleasant enough with its frame of black hair, whereas her body positively simpered in her dress. ‘Tell me, who would you rather spend the night with, Lennon or McCartney?’
‘Lennon,’ she said without hesitation.
‘I thought so.’ I leant forward and whispered in her ear, to which she nodded and walked to Bebe, who stood at the side of the party watching. Together they left. I’d marked her with the smallest nod at Bebe, like a cat marking a favourite garden post.
The party died an hour later. Near the end, Lucy left with George, glancing at me over her shoulder, pleading for an understanding. She knew Paul McCartney was the wrong answer and wanted—no, needed—to know why. Unfortunately I was in no mood to ease her despair. Once they left, only two groups of guests seated on opposite sides of the room remained, slouched in chairs, drinking wine straight from the bottle as they laughed at their silly slurred jokes. Bebe was in the doorway, hovering. He sought me out and casually told me he’d spoken to some people about Driesler and it was still looking good for me with the Nobel committee. I never asked Bebe how he knew these mysterious people: I just accepted that after all his years at Taikon it was natural. I thanked him with a stroke on the shoulder, which was warmly accepted with a grateful smile, and downed another tequila.
Angel was waiting in my hotel room. She sat in the middle of a huge burgundy sofa, holding a cigarette aloft in one hand, a drink in the other and her legs crossed, jigging her airborne foot to a secret tune. The sofa cushions were soft and she’d sunk deep, pulling her already short skirt higher to reveal a stocking top. She acknowledged me with a professionally indifferent nod and took a long pull on her cigarette. Without speaking I pulled a small bag of coke from a case in the wardrobe. We did two lines each off the glass-topped coffee table. I didn’t need to ask her agreement; Bebe would have ensured her willingness before issuing an invitation to the party. After so much drink, the coke was a bomb.
We had sex three times. I don’t make love now; I have sex. I do it because it’s there, just something else to fill the emptiness. I once saw a nature programme about some monkeys that engaged in constant and meaningless shagging. The males were at it constantly, copulating with total indifference that verged on boredom. And the males groomed their mates at the same time. Hips pumping, they would remove a flea and munch away. That’s how I am now: I just go through the motions. There was no excitement with Angel; in fact there never seems to be excitement with any woman these days. The joy is in the anticipation, the knowledge that I can have sex with no consequences and no effort.
I’d forgotten Angel’s name by the following morning. Such a situation should call for some cunning and guile, but I was past such a pantomime. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, without opening an eye to protect me from the pain nesting in my head after the drink and drugs.
She moved a bony knee into my back. ‘Angel.’ Her voice cracked from thousands of cigarettes and a dry mouth.
‘Real or professional?’
‘Didn’t worry you last night.’ She shifted sharply to find some yearned for comfort and grunted when it eluded her. ‘Shit, my head is thumping, that coke was some shit.’ The bed wobbled as she levered herself to her feet. It took several attempts to find her balance and she groaned when she took her first steps. ‘God, I need a piss.’
‘Classy.’
‘That didn’t worry you last night either.’
‘You got your rewards.’
‘Sure,’ she said with heavy sarcasm.
She walked around the corner of the bed and into view as I finally prised open my eyes. ‘Smart prick,’ she muttered in my general direction. I watched her pad her way to the bathroom, her feet lazily scuffing the thick pile of the carpet. She was slim and tall, but with enough flesh on her thighs and hips to nicely round her body. The skin of her buttocks was translucent, as though the tougher brown skin of her back was rubbed away by the demands of her job. Briefly she half turned as she struggled to find a light switch on the inside bathroom wall. I closed my eyes; not wanting to see what I suspected would be a face considerably less attractive than it had been in the soft lying light of the evening.
Several minutes later, accompanied by a toilet flush, she returned. Her breasts were heavy and swung in time to her walk. She slipped into bed and put her hands between my legs. I’m not much of a morning man, but I answered her invitation and entered a well-known and well-worn place.
Afterwards Angel propped herself up with a pillow, pulled the sheet up to her chin, which was a strange shyness given all we’d done, and lit her first cigarette of the day. What dedication to her profession: a fuck before a fag. Impressive. She took an enormous drag and blew out smoke like a geyser. Inevitably she coughed and then sighed with the relief of the nicotine. ‘So how come you haven’t married again?’ She spoke as she exhaled her second drag. This time smoke chugged out in little puffs on her words.
This was a conversation I wanted to avoid. ‘Just haven’t.’
‘Afraid of the commitment? Is that why you spend your time with girls like me?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Why did your wife kill herself?’
‘Sorry?’
‘I read about her in a Times article.’ She saw my look and rolled her eyes. ‘What’s with the surprise, the fact I read the Times or that I can read at all?’
‘Point taken.’
‘It said she hung herself. Why did she do that?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s forget this now, shall we?’
‘People don’t just hang themselves. There had to be a reason for her to do such an extreme thing.’
‘I don’t want to talk about this, Angel.’
‘Did she leave a note?’
‘Life isn’t like the movies. No, she didn’t leave a note.’
‘And there wasn’t a hint of what had gone wrong in her life?’
‘Look, she left no note, she said nothing, she had no fucking reason to kill herself, but she did—she hung herself and she left me alone. Satisfied? Now let’s move on.’
Angel took one long last drag of her cigarette and stubbed it meticulously in the glass ashtray, making sure nothing was left burning, and then she lay back and stared at the ceiling. ‘You blame her, don’t you?’
‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘You’ve no idea what went wrong for her, you don’t understand, so instead of facing up to the hard questions, you just blame her for leaving you alone. How self-centred is that?’
‘You know nothing about my wife, or about me. Don’t presume to understand.’
She got out of bed and gathered her scattered clothes, remaining silent until she reached the bathroom door. ‘I understand all right, Jack. I understand completely. And, what’s worse, I’m right but you can’t even admit it.’
‘That’s enough.’
‘Did you ever stop to think that perhaps, just perhaps, her death did have something to do with you? Stop blaming her, look in the mirror.’ She shut the bathroom door.
‘Too bloody right I blame her,’ I shouted at the closed door. ‘It’s her bloody fault for leaving me alone.’
What a relief once she’d gone. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated her time, but I could have done without the free self-help session. And worse, she had forced the impending return to New Zealand to the front of my mind. So many demons awaited me at home, I’d need feet as well as hands to count them. Perhaps there was a way out. I’d avoided going back twice before, so maybe there was a chance again.