“How was your meeting with Lou?” I asked.
“Not very productive. Possibly a good thing as I have to play tomorrow night.”
“They’ll love you,” I said. “I was going to go shopping with Katie to buy a dress. Want to go out? We haven’t been out for days, except for shows. I’m kind of glad you couldn’t get any more Purple.”
“Where is there to go? We’re past Pluto, Kim.”
“You’ll have to get back in time for your gig tomorrow.”
“Yes,” he sighed as if he didn’t like it much. “I could spit on them and they’d love me. Why do people worship celebrities?”
“I don’t know,” I said, wondering whether he was ready to hear me say he wasn’t much of a celebrity compared to Lou but thinking I’d wait.
“Where is there to go? We’re past Pluto, Kim,” he said again. “And the bars have closed.”
“Die Ruine’s private and open all night.”
“You’re not kidding.” Rudy laughed a little bitterly and took two dry-cleaned silk jackets off their hangers: one black, one mauve. At least the cuts were different.
A blonde with dark circles under her eyes told us she loved Rudy’s song about Kim and introduced herself as Fan. I recognized her as part of Leni’s group from the first night and when she asked us to join her we agreed; the place was standing room only. The three of us drank rye, which is odd as I generally hate it. We were glum and silent, maybe because of the whiskey.
I went to the bathroom; the atmosphere at our table was so claustrophobic I had to escape. There was a hole high in the crumbled wall. I stood on the toilet and looked through, saw two stars like eyes looking back at me, the eyes of God or perhaps the Devil as the tarot reader had said. One of them must be Sirius, I thought. My home planet. I half believed it; we were that far gone. It was an interstellar distance Rudy would have to take on stage tomorrow night but I figured it was almost a requirement in his profession. Lou had likely played from much farther out in space. I got back and told Fan and Rudy.
“There’s a dark twin to the Dog Star,” Fan said. “Want to go?”
“That’s where we’ve been the last week, since we arrived,” I replied.
“Ah. You must mean you have some of the new Purple. I’d like to join you,” she said.
“We’re lonely explorers. The arduousness of our journey through uncharted territory has caused us to go from love to hate in less than a week,” Rudy said.
It was true I wanted more than anything to get away from him; the problem was Purple impelled us toward one another: tiny electric trains about to crash, derail, explode. It always seemed worth it until afterwards. When Fan reached over and fondled Rudy’s thigh, I was thrilled at the possibility of dumping him off on her but she had other plans for the three of us.
Two days later, waking up, curtains pulled against the glare, I glanced at my watch.
“Shit,” I said, noticing the date, “we have three hours to catch our plane.”
“You go,” Rudy said, reaching over and cupping Fan’s breast in his hand. “I think I am going to stay here, with Fan.”
She nodded solemnly, extricated herself from his fondling, leaned over and submerged his unlit cock in her small mouth. Her long blonde hair veiled the act decoratively.
I put a few things into a suitcase, feeling neither jealousy nor even curiosity. I didn’t remember when she’d arrived, or why, and wasn’t sure I cared.
“Don’t forget this,” Rudy said, reaching over to the night table to pick up a silver choker we’d bought in an expensive jewellery shop on the Ku’Damm.
“Oh thanks, I almost did forget it.” I popped it into the suitcase. What had we been doing for the last forty-eight hours? The memories came, a little at a time. More or less what Rudy and me had been up to, only there’d been three of us.
“Oh no,” Fan said, “you should wear it.” She got up, having finished her job, and clasped the choker behind my neck. “Zo baby, you don’t think you will stay here with us?”
“No.”
“Why not? You find me beautiful, no? You seem to like it with a girl. I could teach you…”
I looked from her to Rudy, a statue in repose. A naked prince. A young lion. Purple did little for my vocabulary. It had seemed a good thing, once. “I think maybe I have had enough of beauty for awhile, you know?”
“Ah,” Fan said, “I never have enough of beauty. Never never never.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why you’re a junkie and I’m not.”
She laughed instead of taking offence, whispered in my ear. “I sense that you are a little bit tired of him and I understand. I have a girlfriend, Lucerne, who would be only too happy to take him off our hands. The thing is, we would have to take the credit card. You made him put it in your name too, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“But you can make his signature, yes? A girl could be a Rudy.”
“His name’s Rudolph,” I said, giving away his worst secret.
She sighed. “No good. How much cash then? And of course, we could sell the dog collar for quite a bit, that is unless you’re very fond of it.” She was forgetting to lower her voice but Rudy didn’t seem to hear, or maybe he didn’t care.
“Well, I’m thinking it will make a great memento of this bizarre chapter.”
“What? I do not always understand your Canadian English. I lived for a time in London but it is a much different accent.”
“Not worth repeating.”
“Between two women there is always all the time in the world.”
“It’s not personal.”
Fan wasn’t offended. In retrospect I’m not surprised. It was her job, after all, to understand such things. “You get sick even of the best sweets if you eat too many,” she said by way of analysis. “Now when we do Purple it no longer fulfils each desire like liquid light.”
“Did you write that down?” I asked Rudy. He didn’t answer, paging through a magazine.
“I know,” Fan continued, packing her own little patent leather case, “we get bored. Too much of the same is not good. There are many things I could teach you. Many different and new games you have not experienced before. We play to amuse ourselves.”
“Like dolphins,” I said, “or maybe dogs.”
She didn’t hear my sarcastic undertone, beamed widely. “Genau! Dolphins’ sexuality is so spiritual, no? Like us.”
I had to admit it had occasionally felt like that, playing like dolphins in a flooded old hotel room, sporting a baby grand and drawn mauve curtains. What is it about mauve? It was the only colour I wore then, if I wasn’t wearing black.
Fan took off one of her many scarves and pulled it tightly around my breasts. I moaned, wondering whether dolphins ever moaned. “Lie down,” she whispered. “Just once more.”
I complied.
Lying there, my eyes closed, I heard her charge Rudy two hundred and fifty dollars. “American,” she whined. I heard her get up and fish through the wallet he’d left on the night table. “What is this? Don’t tell me you don’t have any American?”
My eyes slammed open. “You’re paying for this?”
“Well, it’s actually the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Not true. You agreed to pay me before I came up, and you did pay me half last night, remember?” She winked at me. “It’s been amazing. Think of it this way, it’s half my regular rate because Ich finde sie beide sehr cool, very beautiful. Beauty always pays a lower price, in all things.”