Is it late morning or nearly midnight? I pad across the tiled floor to part the slats of the blind. Outside are the other extended half of the V-shaped house and an unlit building beyond the dim outlines of cacti, and that's all except featureless darkness. I've slept through the day, and I still haven't told Natalie that I've arrived. I would have if I hadn't been overwhelmed by Willie Hart's identity and my lack of sleep.
I hurry to my bathroom, which is as thoroughly stocked with toiletries and towels as any in a hotel. I have a quick fierce shower and grab clothes from my suitcase. Buttoning my shirt, I step out of the room. The house is quiet except for a faint sound of lapping. The corridor ends at a tiled lobby across which the outer door faces a dining area occupied by a heavy table and twelve chairs, and beyond them an extensive open kitchen. A further corridor leads to the rest of the house, where the noise is coming from. It's the sound of simulated waves on a computer inside the first room on the left. I knock on the door and look in.
The office is deserted. Grey filing cabinets flank a white desk. The walls are full of posters, or rather flattened sleeves from videocassettes and DVDs. Guy Hard, Star Prick: The Search for Cock, Rumpy Young Women, Fun with Dick, A Dong to Remember, Guy Hard with a Vengeance, Good Day at Black Cock, Star Whores: A New Grope... I venture to the desk and touch the mouse, and the screensaver vanishes to reveal that the computer is online. I'm sure Willie won't mind if I email Natalie. I log onto my account and find a message from her.
Are you landed yet, Simon? Is everything as you expected? Let us know you're safe. Mark sends a big grin.
I type so fast that my fingernails twinge.
Couldn't be safer. Sorry I didn't get back to you as soon as I arrived. No sooner in my room than I fell asleep until just now. It's breakfast time in London, isn't it? If you read this in the next few minutes I'll probably still be at the computer if you want to let me know you have. Meanwhile I'm being well looked after by my host and hoping to start what I'm here for very soon. Love to you both and a bigger grin back to Mark.
I'm not sure about the last comment, but I send the email before I can change my mind about withholding the gender of my host – I think the revelation is best kept until I'm home. I bring up the Internet Movie Database, but it doesn't lack the information I was convinced it did. Willie Hart's page shows her birth name as Wilhelmina.
Has it been added since I looked? At least there's nothing unfamiliar on Tubby's pages. The newsgroups have been busy with me while I was asleep, however. To begin with, Colin intervened on my behalf.
Reverting to baby talk now, are we? Not much of a regression when you've been flinging the contents of your nappy at anyone you disagree with. Just because people read you on the Internet doesn't mean you're worth anyone's attention. It's the biggest slush pile in creation. A slush pile is where writers like you that are never going to see print end up. Real writers like Simon have real editors like me who haven't time to waste with illiterate unpublishable ignoramuses like you. Have you caught on yet that the last thing we are is jealous of you? I see your name spells I'm Slime, Me. Good to see you writing the truth for once even if you didn't know you were.
I can't help grinning at Colin's discovery, but my amusement doesn't last.
No, it spells Me, I'm Miles. That's miles abbove you nipping at my heels, except it's more like treading on an innsect. Don't bother wonderring if it's my name any more than yours is Collin Vernon. Do you really think you'll connvince anyboddy you're an edditor by talking to us all like that? Real edditors help people, they don't try to make us think we're no good and just you are. We all know you wouldn't make such a fuss trying to deffend yourself if you bellieved in yourself.
Other posters on the newsgroups have joined in the argument or tried to end it.
What's any of this got to do with this group?...
Can't the three of you take your row outside?...
I don't know who any of you losers are and I'm sure nobody here wants to...
However many of them there are, they're all as bad as each other...
I think the last comment is especially unfair, but I'm not going to be diverted. I address my reply to Smilemime.
I absolutely agree with everyone who's tried to stop this. Just hush and we will.
Though I'm tempted to advise him to depart propelled by a jet of his own urine, I post the message I've typed instead. I hope there will be no answer, and there's none from Natalie. As I log off I become aware of a sound at the end of the corridor. It's the rhythmic moaning of a female voice.
It must be in a film. If it weren't amplified it would hardly penetrate the door in the wall that terminates the corridor. It seems to intensify as I venture closer. I ease the door halfway open, and then my arm continues the action as if the spectacle ahead has taken control of my brain. The room beyond the door is as wide as the house, and much brighter. The subject of the brightness is an unclothed double bed occupied by two slim naked girls. The one whose face is visible looks dauntingly young. She continues to moan, such an exaggerated sound I'm not surprised it was audible through the door. The handle drifts out of my distracted grasp, and the movement catches her attention. She lowers her head, which was thrown back, and rests silver fingernails on her friend's shoulder. The other girl lifts her face from between her friend's thighs and licks her glistening lips. She appears to be even younger. For that reason among others I'm hesitating in the doorway when both girls produce smiles that age them several years – at least, I'd like to think so – and stretch out a hand each to me.
How impolite would it be to refuse? I'm unable to look away. As I pace forward they turn their supine bodies to me. I feel as if the entire naked lengths of both of them are aware of me, a notion so intensely stimulating that there's no question my no doubt foolish grin originates in my crotch. I follow the swelling into the room, or at least that's my excuse. I've no idea how many steps I take before noticing the arc-lights and, already behind me, the camera. I'm in a film until I grin sheepishly at the camerawoman. 'Cut,' Willie Hart shouts beside her, twice.
The repetition is so clearly a rebuke that the embodiment of my libido sags at once. 'Sorry,' I mumble.
'Okay.' It audibly isn't, and she adds 'For what?'
'For ruining your take.'
'And how do you figure you did that?'
I'm not sure even of the question. 'By being here?'
Each of the girls on the bed gives a sigh that Willie puts into words. 'By looking at the camera.'
'I'm not a professional. I mean, I am, but not that kind.'
'Amateur is good too. Just be yourself. Mona and Julia would show you how.'
'I know perfectly well who I am.'
'Then let's find out,' either Mona or Julia says.
'Looked like there was plenty of you before,' says Julia with as wide a smile, unless she's Mona.
'Don't be offended, but I'm just here to write a book,' I say and face Willie. 'And I'll be correcting all the errors on the net about your grandfather.'
'Take a break, everyone. Which errors?'
The performers swing their legs off the bed, and I see that one girl is wearing a ring through her right labium. As they catch me watching, her friend gives the ring a gentle tug. I wince, not least at the responsive pang that travels along my penis, and manage to pronounce 'The descriptions of his films.'