‘I don’t want to be famous. But I want the underprivileged women of this district to be famous, and I want to see the basic human rights of both sexes upheld.’
Perri reached up and kissed his cheek.
‘Don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘If you don’t love me now, I’ll make you so damned proud of me at this Woman’s Conference that you won’t have any choice.’
Father Leonard laughed. But after they had parted, and he was walking down the street towards the bus-stop, he was frowning to himself, and he paused for a moment outside a dusty pawnbroker’s window to gaze at the reflection of the man she had so regretfully dubbed a saint.
Twenty
She stepped out of the Las Vegas airport terminal carrying her white vanity case, teetering on gold high heels, her red hair back-combed into bouffant curls, her skimpy yellow T-shirt bouncing five different ways at once, and her scarlet satin jeans so close-fitting that the skycap who was hefting her enormous suitcase couldn’t keep his eyes off her rounded rump.
She peered out over the concrete pick-up area like a comical Ziegfeld interpretation of John Paul Jones staring out to sea.
‘I have a ride someplace,’ she told the skycap. ‘I was definitely promised a ride.’
The skycap, who was short and had a lot of bright red pimples, said, ‘That’s okay, I can wait,’ and made a show of looking around the airport, so that he could sneak quick glances at her breasts, as big as beachballs, and her tight scarlet satin mound of venus.
‘It’s so hot here,’ complained Lollie. ‘You wouldn’ve thought the guy would have gotten his act together and arrived on time. My lipstick’s melting.’
‘Well, uh, he’s, uh, bound to get here in a moment,’ said the skycap, wishing furiously that her ride would never arrive, and that she’d be stranded here, and have to accept an invitation to go back to his one-room walk up, and fuck him until his ears rang.
But then there was the brief hoot of a car horn, and a white Monarch drew up alongside them, and David Radetzky climbed out.
‘How are you doing, Lollie?’ he said, and opened up the trunk so that the skycap, whose dreams had now been crushed beyond repair, could heave her suitcase into the back.
Lollie got into the car, chewing gum noisily.
‘I’m okay. Do you want some Bubble Yum?’
‘No, thanks. Wasn’t there some kind of health scandal about that stuff?’
‘A dumb rumour, that’s all. It’s cataclysmic.’
‘Cataclysmic?’ asked David, raising an eyebrow, as he pulled away from the airport terminal and headed towards Interstate 15. ‘Where did you pick up a word like that?’
Lollie turned the car’s air-conditioning to cold, and tucked her sunglasses up in her red curls. The drop in temperature made her nipples rise up under her T-shirt, but David Radetzky either didn’t notice or wasn’t interested. He was still wearing his shiny Nixohite suit, and his chin was still bright blue, as if he shaved with last year’s blades.
‘Senator Chapman taught me cataclysmic. Lollie, he said, you’re cataclysmic.’
‘You’ll be meeting him again this evening. Maybe this time you ought to ask him what it means.’
They drove towards the skyline of Las Vegas, the sun shining hot and purple through the tinted car windows. The time on the Monarch’s clock was 4:45. Lollie looked out across the hazy desert, and chewed her gum, and wondered if life had any particular purpose at all.
‘We’ve booked you a suite at the Scirocco,’ said David. ‘We’ve had two cameramen and a sound-recording specialist working on it since six this morning, and there’s no place in the whole suite that anybody can go without being filmed and taped.’
‘Even the little girls’ room?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But supposing I want to go?’
‘Supposing you do?’
Lollie chewed, and blushed. ‘Well, I usually get paid a little extra for that, I mean, usually.’
David Radetzky sighed. ‘Okay, if you need to go, we’ll add twenty bucks to the fee. But that’s only if you go.’
They arrived at the hotel, a gleaming curve of white concrete with the name Scirocco written in scarlet neon against the afternoon sky. David led Lollie straight through the wide marble lobby into the mock-rococo elevator, and pressed the button for PH.
‘Is Senator Chapman here already?’ Lollie asked.
‘He arrives in about a half-hour. He has a meeting with some development people here. Something to do with hotel building in Minneapolis.’
‘So how do I get to meet him again? I don’t bump into him in some casino, do I?’
David shook his head. ‘You call Senator Chapman at his hotel, you can tell him you came to town because you heard he was here, and you’re just aching to meet him again. You can even tell him he’s cataclysmic, if you like.’
‘You don’t have to talk like a smartass,’ complained Lollie.
The elevators doors opened, and they stepped across the corridor to a pair of gilded double portals marked ‘Pompadour Penthouse.’ David unlocked them, and ushered Lollie inside.
The main room was high, bright, and decorated in a style which the designer had fancifully believed was French 18th-century elaborate. The ceiling was suspended with a tent of pale blue satin, hung with golden tassels, and the bed had a gilded head of carved cherubs, dolphins, naked nymphs, and oceanic billows. The carpets were dark blue, and thick; and all around were hangings and drapes and tasselled cords.
Two men in overalls had pulled up a corner of the rug and were tacking a wire along the skirting. One of them was squat and Mexican-looking; the other was lean and mournful, with a thin curved nose.
‘How’s it going, Duke?’ David asked, peeling off his coat and throwing it on the bed.
The thin man said, ‘Okay, I guess. We’ve just been testing the reception from the bed, and I’m kind of worried we may not be getting the best.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Well, it’s the noise of the sheets and the bedcovers. When you get two fair-sized people humping at full gallop, you’d be surprised how much extraneous sound you pick up.’
‘Duke used to work for Clay McCord, the porno film director,’ David told Lollie. ‘He’s the best in the business.’
Duke stood up, and let the rug fall back over the wire.
‘What we could do is conceal a transmitting microphone on the girl’s body. We did that once on a movie called Hard As Nails, when we had about six people on one bed, and the sound came out pretty good.’
Lollie wrinkled up her nose. ‘You want to put a microphone on my body? Like, where?’
‘Well, it won’t be up your snatch,’ Duke said caustically. ‘These things cost a hundred and fifty apiece, and we wouldn’t like to lose it for ever.’
Lollie turned to David Radetzky and said, ‘Who is this asshole?’
‘Will you calm down?’ asked David. ‘We need to get the best reception possible, and if that means planting a microphone some place on your body, then that’s what well have to do.’
‘The navel is okay,’ said Duke. ‘We push the transmitter in, and then cover it with flesh-coloured latex. Then the thing to do is encourage the mark to go down on you. And when it’s all over, get him to rest his weary head on your stomach, and engage him in conversation.’
‘I have to get him to talk into my navel?’
‘He doesn’t have to talk directly into your navel,’ Duke said impatiently. ‘I mean, you don’t have to stick out your stomach and say “Would you mind just saying a few words into here, Senator?” All you have to do is make sure you don’t lie flat on your stomach and muffle the reception.’
‘Is that what they teach you in the porno movies, sarcasm?’ asked Lollie.
David looked at his watch. ‘The Senator should be here soon. Lollie, I want you to call him almost as soon as he checks in at his hotel. Otherwise he’s going to fix himself up with some other girl. His wife is at home in
Minnesota this week, and he’s making pretty full use of his freedom.’
‘I thought the people who governed this country were supposed to be moral,’ said Lollie, taking out her chewing gum and parking it under a simulated marble sidetable.
‘Juan, will you bring me the Mullard remote transmitter from the blue case?’ said Duke. ‘And that latex make-up stuff. That’s right. In the box that says MGM Make-up Department.’
David went to the window and parted the net drapes. ‘It looks like the Senator’s arriving now,’ he said. ‘There’s a black Fleetwood just drawing up outside the Xanadu Hotel, and there’s a bunch of people out there to meet it. Wait a moment. Yes, that’s him.’
‘I forgot what he looked like,’ said Lollie. ‘I just remember he wheezed a lot.’
‘Would you take off your T-shirt,’ asked Duke. ‘I want to get this transmitter in before you make that call. Juan, will you go check that wiring?’
Lollie crossed her arms and tugged off her skimpy yellow T-shirt. All three men watched her with a kind of dispassionate relish. Her breasts were rounded and high, with a wide pink aureolas and prominent nipples There was a little spattering of pale freckles between them, which a boyfriend of hers had once described as ‘seasoning.’
Without being asked, she unbuttoned her tight red satin pants, too, and eased her way out of them. Her pussy was scarcely covered by a scanty floss of gingery hair. The pants slid to the floor.
There was a silence, and then Duke said: ‘Juan, will you please go check that wiring?’
Lollie lay back on the bed, and Duke got to work inserting the tiny transmitter. He stuck it into place first with a cyanoacrylate adhesive which actually bonded it to Lollie’s skin, so that there was no chance of it falling out, no matter how sexually athletic she was. Then he carefully covered it with skin-pink latex rubber, and moulded the rubber into the curled shape of a navel.
‘Your mother couldn’t tell,’ he said, when he was finished. ‘Now let’s test it out. Juan – do you want to get close to this lady’s stomach and say something?’ Juan looked up from his wiring check. ‘You bet your ass, Mr Duke.’
After Duke and Juan finished the final equipment tests, David Radetzky picked up the pale-blue rococo telephone and dialled the private number of Senator Chapman’s suite. ‘Come on,’ he said to Lollie, and she obediently came across the room and took the receiver.
‘It’s still ringing,’ she said.
David whispered, ‘Duke – the amplifier.’
Duke went over to a makeshift amplification system on the table, and switched it on. Over the loudspeaker, they heard the phone ringing, and then they heard it picked up. There was a lengthy silence, and then Carl Chapman said gruffly, ‘Hello? Who is this?’
‘Senator Chapman?’ Lollie said in a little-girl voice. ‘That’s right. Who are you? Who gave you this number? This is a private number.’
David whispered, ‘Go on, tell him who you are. Tell him why you’re here.’
‘This is Lollie, Senator Chapman. Lollie Methven, from Miami, Florida. Don’t you remember the Doral Hotel, room 1126? You said I was cataclysmic.’
‘Lollie Methven?’
‘That’s right, Senator darling. Don’t you remember that beautiful suck? Schlup, schlup, schlup, until you couldn’t hardly stand it?’
There was an awkward pause, and then Senator Chapman said, ‘I remember. But what the hell are you doing here?’
Lollie blinked at David Radetzky in bewilderment, but David hissed, ‘Tell him you love him. You’ve been reading about him in the papers. You followed him here.’
Lollie gave a synthetic little giggle, and then said, ‘The truth is, Senator darling, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I know it’s silly, but I’ve fallen ass over curls in love with you.’
‘That’s romance?’ asked Duke, throwing’up his hands. Lollie giggled again. ‘I read in the Miami Herald you were flying to Las Vegas, and so I hocked my quad stereo to pay for my airfare, and here I am.’
There was another ruminative silence. Then Senator Chapman said, ‘All right, you followed me here. What do you want?’
‘Oh, Senator darling, I want you. I want to take off all your clothes and kiss you all over. I want to take your big stiff dork in my lips again, and schlup you till you’re bone dry.’
Senator Chapman cleared his throat. ‘I’m, uh, pretty busy tonight, Lollie. I have a couple of heavy meetings. I’m not so sure that I can—’
‘You must,’ insisted Lollie. ‘I’ve missed you so bad, and there are so many things I want to do for you. Senator, I love you. You’re the most masculine, sexy man that ever drew breath.’
Senator Chapman said, ‘You really mean it, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, Senator. A thousand times over.’
‘Well, uh, where could we meet? Where are you calling from?’
‘I booked the Pompadour room at the Scirocco,’ Lollie told him, while David Radetzky fiercely pointed to the name on top of the room service menu. ‘It’s all ready for you, Senator.’
‘A nest of love,’ whispered David.
‘A nest of love,’ repeated Lollie.
Senator Chapman was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘I can be there at twelve-thirty. How’s that?’
‘Oh, Senator, I’m going to count the hours,’ said Lollie, coached by David.
‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ answered Senator Chapman. ‘I’m looking forward to it, too. How does that go again? Schlup, schlup, schlup?’
‘That’s right, darling. Schlup, schlup, schlup.’
David took the receiver and put the phone down. Duke said, ‘More like schmuck, schmuck, schmuck. Is that what makes our country great? Dummies like him?’
David took out a clean handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints off the telephone. ‘We’re not here to judge his politics, Duke. We’re just here to get his – wife divorced.’
Lollie said, ‘How did I do? Was I okay?’
‘Lollie, you were terrific. Now, you’ve got time to shower, and change into something sexy, and have yourself some dinner on room service. The steak here is passable, the clams farci are farcical, the cheeseburgers are better than nothing.’
‘Will I see you again, Mr Radetzky? When it’s over?’ David picked up his jacket. ‘Not unless something goes wrong, and we have to try again. The less we see of each other, the better.’
‘What about my money?’
‘When you’re through with Senator Chapman, take a taxi to the airport. Go to the United Airlines desk and ask for a package addressed to you. All your money will be there, plus a bonus if you’re extra-specially good.’
‘And twenty dollars if I—?’
David nodded. ‘Sure. Twenty dollars if you—’
Duke said, ‘We’re all ready here, Mr Radetzky.’
‘Okay,’ said David. He put his arm around Lollie Methven’s naked waist, although it was no more affectionate than a boss putting his arm around the stout middle of an elderly secretary.
‘Do a nice job here, Lollie,’ he said. ‘And try to enjoy yourself, too.’
Lollie leaned over and kissed him. ‘It’s a job, Mr Radetzky, that’s all. But you, I could go for.’
He took his arm away and grinned uneasily. ‘Maybe you could,’ he said, buttoning up his jacket. ‘But that’s not what we’re here for, is it?’
Twenty-One
Ken Irwin was lying on the surface of the pool on an inflatable airbed, his eyes closed against the afternoon sun, his hair dried into spikes from swimming. The airbed circled slowly around and around on the still water, and he appeared to be asleep. The Roman statues watched him with blind solemnity, and down in the gardens there was the monotonous hiss-hiss-hiss of a lawn sprinkler.
She had been watching him for some time from an upstairs window. He appeared to be asleep but she was not sure. He was naked, and getting very brown, and she liked the way his penis was curled up against his thigh.
She stepped back into the c
ool of the air-conditioned bedroom. It was a guest room, decorated in green, and it was hardly ever used. There was a single bed with a rounded oak bedhead, an oak chair, and a painting on the wall of a mustard field in France. For some reason, it reminded her of a room from her childhood.
Her ash blonde hair had been swept up in curls today, and covered with a fine lace cap with dangling pearls all around it. She wore a billowing white gown of cotton lace as transparent as smoke, which had been specially designed for her by the Moroccan dress designer Abid. Underneath it she wore nothing but tiny white cotton briefs.
There was something about Ken Irwin which nagged her, and disturbed her sleep. He was a willing, silent lover. He helped the staff to clean the house with efficiency and calm. And yet, considering he had been taken off the roadside and elevated into a life of luxury in one afternoon, considering that he was now the pet stud of one of Hollywood’s most glittering ladies, he was strangely unimpressed and matter-of-fact.
The boy lovers she had taken before Ken Irwin had invariably been starstruck, and had followed her everywhere, delighted to bask in her ageing but still erotic charisma. But Ken went about his household duties without paying her any attention at all; and here he was, in the middle of the afternoon, lying on an airbed in the pool, apparently asleep.
Adele left the room, closing the door behind her. She went down the spiral oak staircase which served the back bedrooms, across the tiled hallway, and out through the back door. The sun was intensely hot and bright, and she wished she had remembered her sunglasses. She stepped on tiptoe across the scorching stones of the pool patio, until she was standing by the edge.
Ken, on his airbed, slowly circled the pool.
Adele said, in a clear, thespian voice: ‘Consider the lilies, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin.’
Ken circled a little more, and then opened his eyes a fraction.
‘You look very sexy,’ she said, ‘But if you stay out here much longer your little ding-a-ling will catch sunburn, and what will I do for pleasure tonight if that happens?’
The Sweetman Curve Page 14
