out of your paycheck.” She looked at the receipt. “£790.”
I tried to call Freddie, but he didn’t answer.
Reluctantly, I called Jasper.
“Come and play,” he giggled. “We’re playing.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs. Up.”
I went back through the restaurant toward the slanting stairs that spiraled up the interior of the building.
The toad man shot out a toad hand as I passed. He held my wrist. He was wearing red-and-gold cuff links. “Please,” he said in a gentle voice.
I stopped.
His pond eyes looked up into mine.
“The restaurant’s closed now, sir. If you wouldn’t—”
“Sit with me for just one moment.”
I did.
We were alone, side-by-side, on the leather banquette. He plucked the single white orchid out of the vase on the table and gave it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. “But that’s restaurant property. They get put in the fridge overnight. There are cameras everywhere.”
His comb-over fell into his face. His scalp was slick. There were brown speckles on his forehead and veiny networks on his cheeks.
“My wife died last year,” he said. “Breast cancer.”
I frowned.
“Yes, it was a terrible, irreplaceable loss. We’d been married for thirty years.” He looked down. “I’ve been waiting for a woman like you. I’ve been waiting to impart jouissance to a woman like you. Do you know what jouissance is?”
I shook my head.
“It is the extreme of pleasure,” he said. “Where pleasure meets nonpleasure and life, existence, the cosmos becomes a black hole. It is the threshold of pleasure and pain, of sanity and insanity.” He paused. “Of Eros and Thanatos.”
I stood up and gave a sunny, American smile. “I do hope you enjoyed the salmon.”
“Where are you from?” he asked me.
“France,” I lied. “Paris.”
That tongue again. It was actually the color of beetroot. He extended it to maximum length, as though trying to catch a fly. He waggled it around. Then he put it back in his mouth. “Please come to the ASH Hotel bar after your shift.” He slid a business card toward me. “I will be waiting for you from midnight onward. I will wait all night.”
Jasper was shooting balls off the end of the billiard table in the private members’ club upstairs. Samuel had been ordered to stand at the end and catch the balls on the premise that the ball boy was an esteemed and essential figure in any game. “Play up and play the game,” Freddie was repeating, stupidly.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I said. “This is members only. Get out.”
“Why are you always telling people to get out?” said Jasper, sipping his negroni.
“And I want my money,” I said.
“What money?” said Freddie.
“For dinner,” I said.
Freddie laughed. “I want my money for the booze earlier this afternoon. Think I’d forgotten about that, did you? Nice little outfit you came home with.”
“I’ll call the police,” I said.
Now they all laughed—even Samuel.
“Tell Ann-Marie where you got that babygro, Samuel.” Freddie chalked his cue.
“It’s a onesie,” said Samuel. “I made it! Yeah ’cause I read this article on VICE that had the coolest headline ever—‘Please Snort Me!’” He gestured to his chest. “So I, like, copied it!”
“What was the article about, though?” said Jasper.
“I don’t know.” Samuel looked ashamed. “I didn’t read it.”
Now Freddie and Jasper nearly killed themselves laughing.
“I’m calling William,” I said.
“Ann-Marie.” Jasper tried to slink one well-moisturized arm around my shoulders, but I punched him.
“Ow!” He rubbed his gut. “You can take it as payment for all the times you fucked me and then left me and went back to your whirling dervish of a boyfriend. Like what about that time in Vietnam in the Agent Orange forest, where there were just stumps. That was fucking romantic. When Sebastian was supposed to be chugging that fucking dreadful cod trawler around the Thanet coast but he was off poking Allegra in Paris. Wasn’t she doing a summer school at Lecoq?”
“Yeah,” said Freddie.
“For that one night at least,” said Jasper. “You didn’t think about Sebastian. You didn’t care about Sebastian at all. Did you, Ann-Marie?”
“I always cared,” I said.
“But you fucking loved it. Didn’t you?”
“Can we talk about something else for once?” said Freddie.
Jasper positioned himself over the billiard table and fired at empty space; no balls clicked. He turned to Samuel. “You know, one thing I will say. The problem with your big sister Allegra as a lay was that she was too damn pliable.”
Samuel looked at Freddie.
“Jasper,” said Freddie. “Dude. Don’t.”
“Yah,” Jasper went on. “I mean, when I was fucking Allegra and I had her perfect fucking porcelain behind in my hands and I was squeezing her cunt, it was like trying to get blood out of a stone—”
“You’re disgusting,” I said.
“Wait,” said Jasper. “There’s a compliment for you.”
I waited.
“She was never really there, you know what I mean?” Jasper went on. “I felt like she could just be anything I wanted her to be like, like her buttocks were made out of melting wax and I could fashion them into anything I chose. I felt like I was crafting a woman!”
Samuel left the room.
Freddie followed him.
Jasper stared at me.
I stared at Jasper.
“But with you at least I felt like you were with me,” he said.
FIVE
