Lionel sounded fine. For instance,
‘You watch. We’ll do you at Upton Park. Then we’ll come to your place and nick a point,’ he might say to Brent Medwin (we being West Ham United).
‘The important thing about fame? Don’t let it change you personality,’ he might say to Lorne Brown.
‘So that’s how you do it. You pick the bird you like and send one of you deaf roadies to go and bring her in,’ he might say to Scott Ronson.
‘I can get stun. I can get screw. But I can’t get deep screw. The white always jumps off the table!’ he might say to Eamon O’Nolan.
Or else Lionel was in the Los Feliz Lounge with Megan Jones, going through the interview requests (and the assorted business proposals) over a cup of cappuccino. Megan had a strategy for her client. Now Lionel. No one wants to see a multimillionaire with a scowl on his face. You’ve got a lovely sense of humour. Just let it shine through. And we’ll turn you into a national treasure. Lionel nodded absently; he was gazing, as he often gazed, at the plasma screen above Megan’s head. Uh, yeah. Okay, he said, and wiped the froth off his upper lip. They were occasionally joined by Megan’s number two, Sebastian Drinker. Drinker noticed the peculiar way Lionel reacted to the sound of nearby laughter: his head jerked round like a weathervane in a cross-wind.
Every suite had a balcony, which took pressure off the smokers (and gave all the parasuicides somewhere conspicuous to threaten to jump from). And anyway, there was the Sepulveda Cigar Saloon in the basement. It featured video games and pinball machines, a snooker table (the swerve Eamon could put on the cue balclass="underline" defied the laws of physics!), and a full bar (twenty-four-hour and self-service). The food was good, the waiters prompt, the pornography decent, the gym ever-empty. And though he continued to inspect certain properties (a Canary Wharf penthouse, a fourteen-room mansion flat in Chelsea), Lionel had no plans to move.
There were large screens in all the public rooms at the South Central — a soundless succession of clips and images, newsreels, silent movies, Miss World, Sputnik, 101 Dalmatians, chorus line, death camp, Bela Lugosi, Victoria’s Secret, goosestep, wet T-shirt, moonshot, Dumbo, what the butler saw, grassy knoll, catwalk bikini, Bikini Atoll …
‘Yeah, but I don’t use those girls,’ said Scott Ronson (he meant the frilly little half-clad fans who gathered daily in the roped-off area just to the left of the forecourt). ‘They’re too young, half of them. I use the uh, the in-house amenity. We all do.’
‘Eh?’ queried Lionel. The two of them were enjoying a few mid-morning Bloody Marys in the Beverley Bar. ‘What amenity’s this?’
‘On your phone there’s a button marked Companionship. Press that.’
‘Then what?’
‘They put you through to this chummy bloke at the escort agency. Then you give your specifications … You know. Blonde. Big tits. Whatever. Dead confidential. And bingo. It’s addictive, mind.’
Lionel said, ‘I’m not bothered.’
A day or two later he took his lunch in the Watts Diner — with Brent Medwin and Eamon O’Nolan.
‘Give it a go,’ suggested Brent. ‘I told the bloke, I want a woman with a bit of class. No tattoos. Next thing I know, I got fucking Snow White stood over the bed. For a flat grand!’
‘You give a tip?’ asked Eamon.
‘Service included. Goes on your bill. No questions asked.’
Lionel said, ‘I’m not bothered.’
A day or two later he finally admitted it. He was bothered. Well. How else do you get through all the hours before seven-thirty (when the casino opened)?
This, at any rate, was how Lionel put it to himself. Thereby evading a recurrent question, and one of enormous size. Why, with the exceptions of Cynthia and Gina (both, for different reasons, exceptional girls), had he steered so abnormally clear of the opposite sex?
Too busy with me career, he murmured. Workaholic, if you like. Earning a crust and keeping the old wolf from the door … But now? Resentfully Lionel twisted round in his chair. Load of bollocks, all that. Never paid for it in me life. More trouble than they worth. Stick to porn, mate. You know where you are with the porn. No, you can’t go far wrong with the …
A day later Lionel pressed Companionship and gave the bloke a reasonably unsalacious description of Gina Drago. An hour later he heard a tactful knock … She was called Dylis, she was twenty-seven, she was from Cardiff, she was dark and round. Very soon it became clear, even to Lionel, that he was the wrong kind of man to consort with prostitutes. Dylis took her leave twenty minutes later, trying to hurry but swaying about quite a bit and bumping into things …
That’s a turn-up, he said into the silence. Christ. Frighten meself sometimes. No, mate. No. Anyway, look at the time! A quick shower. Then off to the penthouse floor (have a steak sandwich around ten), the green baize, the little white ball gliding and then hopping up and down in the twirl of the spun wheel.
Lionel was shaving — he relied on the plastic razor provided by the South Central (and faithfully replaced every day). Becalmed for a moment in front of the mirror, he weighed the toylike implement in the palm of his hand … Hollow. Hardly there. Not like the bloody great spanner provided by Mr Firth-Heatherington (which Lionel had lost in the Castle on the Arch or the Launceston). They called the South Central the heavy-metal hotel, but everything was light, the cutlery, the glassware, the furniture, even the bedclothes (his white duvet caressed him like a mist) … Without warning the flow of water hesitated, paused for a mesmeric minute, gave a polite cough, and coolly resumed. Amazing how fast they patched things up and got them working again. That afternoon, a well-known vocalist on the floor above had dropped a kind of hand grenade into his toilet bowl …
That’s what I need, said Lionel. A fucking hand grenade in me toilet bowl. His insides had loosened, somewhat; but his crouched vigils bore little resemblance to the thoughtless evacuations of old. All the same he felt light, light, insubstantial, hardly there. Every time he went to the casino and the lift came to a halt on the penthouse floor, Lionel expected to keep on surging upward, past the helipad and the Century City Eyrie and out into the summer blue … The weightless world, the light limbo, of the South Central, where nothing weighed, nothing counted, and everything was allowed.
He peered into the mirror; it peered back at him; he raised thumb and forefinger to part his sticky lids … A process was under way within Lionel Asbo, within his head and breast. He was twenty-four — and he suddenly had time to think. Money, money (his sole and devouring preoccupation since infancy), was now meaningless to him. Lionel, a voice would say. Yeah? What you want? Then silence. Then, Lionel, mate. And he’d go, Jesus. What? What you want? Then they’d talk. Lionel was no longer merely thinking out loud. He was having a conversation with what seemed to be a higher intelligence. The voice was cleverer than he was. It even had a better accent.
Lionel dressed with slow care. He was going out to dinner. Table for one. Just him and his thoughts. Before he left he popped up to see Scott Ronson: they were going to have a little smoke on his balcony. That feeling again in the elevator. He stepped out and paused. Right floor — but what was the number? Lionel barged around for a bit. Ah, there he was. Scott had just sawn off the top half of the door to his suite, and he was standing there waiting like a horse in a stable.