“Say, you from England, honey? I just love that accent.”
They all just love that accent. Being English here is like having a gold American Express card; it opens doors. I murmur a few words, trying to sound more Princess Di/Sloane Ranger than Portishead – though I doubt if most Americans have a clue about the difference.
“Where you from?”
“London. Just off Sloane Street.”
“Great to meet you. I’m Milt Jones.”
“What Jones?”
“Milt. Short for Milton.”
“Like the poet?”
“Poet?”
“You know, Paradise Lost. John Milton.”
“No, I’m not John. Milt’s my first name. Milton Sherwood Jones. Jones is Welsh. My great-great-grandfather came from Wales. And my grandma came from Ly-cester.”
“Leicester.” I correct his pronunciation.
“What?”
“Oh, forget it.” I feel a nervous tugging at my sleeve. “Er – this is Norah.” I wish now I’d left her safe in bed. I can see Milt’s friends eyeing her with a mixture of distaste and curiosity. Her Crimplene’s really filthy now, the jacket buttoned up wrong, and the rain has done nothing for her hair.
“Hi, Norah. This is Gabe. That’s Eddie in the stetson. Wayne’s the ugly mug, and this tree-trunk here is Shorty.”
We all laugh save Norah, who looks scared out of her wits. I say “hallo” for both of us, save my broadest smile for Wayne who’s actually quite dishy. Milt hands me a new drink, another whopper.
“What did you say your name was?”
I didn’t. Names are still a problem. Will Norah call me Jan and land me in it? I’m sick of Jan, to tell the truth. She’s only brought me trouble. Yet Carole’s so damned dull.
“Er … Atalanta,” I blurt out. God knows why. Blame three different liquors. I can’t even remember who she was, except definitely a goddess and extremely beautiful. I think she won a golden apple; won something, anyway – and I like the names of winners.
“That’s some name, kid.”
Kid, when I’m a goddess. “My father chose it,” I say nonchalantly. “He was a Professor of Ancient Greek.”
I can see they’re impressed – not just Milt, but all the friends and hangers-on as well. (My father sold shirts and ties and handkerchiefs in an old-fashioned menswear shop, where he worked for twenty years. The only Greek he knew was “humus” because when my mother was too bad to cook, he bought it from the Cypriot take-away and we had it on Ryvita with a pot of tea and Kit-Kats.) Anyway, it’s worked. I’ve been admitted to their circle, two arms linked in mine now, Wayne’s eyes on my skirt slits, which he obviously approves of. He offers me a fat cigar. Why not? I’m down to my last Marlboro.
I sip my gin, puff out clouds of smoke. Life’s looking up, no doubt about it. I just wish Norah didn’t seem so jumpy. These guys won’t eat her, for God’s sake. A rather sweet old grandpa-type with silver hair and glasses is even trying to talk to her. I flash him a big smile. If Norah’s happy, I can relax a bit myself. Milt’s still playing winner, mopping up more fans, dishing out the drinks. Their fawning seems to turn him on.
“How about some dinner?” he suggests. It must be two a.m. at least, so they’ve probably eaten, most of them, but this is swinging Vegas. Why stop at just one dinner?
“Great idea,” I say, pushing right up front again. I don’t want to lose this wonder-guy, though it’s a shame about the trousers. That green’s okay inside a pod, or jazzing up boring pie and chips, but not on human legs. If he’d done his shopping at my father’s store, he’d have been persuaded into quiet grey serge or sensible brown worsted. Never mind. I feel exceptionally forgiving at the moment, and also rather peckish. “Yeah,” I say, waving my cigar. “A celebration dinner. Fabulous!”
A strand of Norah’s dripping hair snails across my cheek. I turn to face her. “What?” She’s whispering in my ear and I can’t hear a thing for all the whoopee.
“I’m not hungry, Jan. I’m not allowed to eat.”
“Yes, you are, love. That was just the first two days. In fact, you ought to try and eat now, or you’ll start keeling over. You can always order something plain.”
“It’s not dinner-time. It’s bedtime.”
“Ssh,” I whisper back. If Milt’s just won twenty thousand odd, this may be the most expensive lavish dinner we’ve ever seen or dreamed of. Norah shouldn’t miss it. She’s missed too many things in life already, always cowering in a ward or shut away. This is her chance to live it up for once, build some memories, before the walls close in again. Okay, I could take her back, or put her in a cab, but she’s been cooped up in the Gold Rush all damned day.
“Look, just have some soup, love, or just one course or something. I’ll sit next to you – okay? – tell the waiter you’re not feeling all that great.”
You can’t have soup or only just one course. It’s a Moroccan feast, ten courses, and a chef who gets insulted if you don’t have second helpings of them all. And I’m not sitting next to Norah. I tried my best, but Milton split us up, insisted he sat next to me; then Wayne flopped down the other side, with Gabe and Eddie opposite. No one’s sitting actually – not on chairs – there aren’t any, and no knives and forks or spoons. You eat with your fingers and recline on silken cushions. It’s part of the attraction. The restaurant is a sultan’s tent, a replica, with no boring inessentials like ceiling, walls or windows, just purple silk billowing in folds. The floor is spread with oriental carpets and there are gleaming copper kettles dotted all around.
When we first came in, a sort of Moroccan-style Lolita picked up a kettle and went all round the table, pouring warm rose-scented water over everybody’s hands, then dried them with pink towels. It took her ages. There are thirty in our party. Once he’d won, Milt was like a magnet, his cash attracting groupies. I’m the number one, though, all his own kudos spilling over onto me. The two of us are sharing one large cushion at the far end of the knee-high coffee table, his bulging wallet swelling out his trousers like a trophy, badge of rank. It’s strange how it attracts me. I keep looking at it, checking on it. It’s not just cash as such – it’s power, authority, my power as well as his. Waiters are kowtowing to me, Moroccan nymphets simpering, dusky youths plying me with wine.
It’s a Moroccan wine, called Sidi Mustapha, which is the same name as the chef. (Well, not the Sidi bit, just the Mustapha.) He’s a sweetie, Mustapha, keeps lumbering out of the kitchen in his tall white hat and apron, hugging guests at random, begging them to eat more, praising his own cooking to the skies. He was really upset because Norah wasn’t eating, wouldn’t touch his couscous. She wasn’t all that keen on scooping up a soggy mess of chickpeas with her hands, and she doesn’t fancy raisins mixed with meat. It’s even worse trying to eat salad with your fingers. We had this huge great bowl of it, with a really oily dressing which dribbled over everything. I swilled down three big helpings before I discovered there was something called cilantro in it – Chinese parsley, an aphrodisiac. It’s affected me already, or maybe it’s the booze, or hunky Wayne, who keeps leaning over, asking me to wipe my greasy fingers on his jeans.
I move my knees nearer to his crotch, glance around our table. There’s quite a lot of talent – at least six or seven really classy men, and that rather adorable oldie who’s sitting next to Norah, still struggling hard to get a word from her. The women aren’t that great, though – a tedious redhead who answers to the name of Misty and keeps talking about her osteopath; a female wrestler in polyester leopard, with her depressive younger sister, Merry-Lyn, and a few nondescript fatsos who obviously resent the fact I’m younger, slimmer and Milt’s Elect.
The waiters are all darling – lean and dark with peat-bog eyes and dressed in baggy scarlet pantaloons and gold Moroccan slippers, pointed at the ends. The whole atmosphere’s exotic, with the swaying coloured lamps and the wild impassioned music blaring from the stereo, with its sudden dramatic pauses and crescendos. Ed says it’s a
ninety-nine-stringed Kanoon, whatever that is. Ed’s been here before. He told me it’s a tourist place, quite a favourite spot for celebrations. Well, you’d need to win a packet just to foot the bill. Dom Perignon costs a hundred and eighty dollars a bottle – I saw it on the wine list. Milt ordered some for me, but I must confess, I prefer the Sidi stuff, which is sweetish and sort of aromatic. I push my glass across, offer him a sip. He’s drinking Seven-Up himself.
“No, alcohol’s a stimulant and I’m not allowed to get pepped up. Doctor’s orders, honey. That’s why I drink this stuff. It’s got no caffeine, see? Like they say on TV – ‘Never had it, never will’.”
It sounds a pretty dreary claim to me. I wouldn’t go round boasting that I’d never had it, but then poor Milt’s off a lot of things – has to watch his calories, his cholesterol count, his daily fibre intake, and something called his EFAs. Misty’s not much better. She’s describing a recent trip to Europe’s capitals in terms solely of her bowels: bunged up in Amsterdam, fast and loose in Paris, laxatives in Athens, griping pains in Rome.
Wine’s a laxative, I’ve heard, so I put my own glass down, squeeze Milt’s chubby thigh, my eye still on that wallet. I’m its bodyguard, its watchdog, protecting it from pickpockets. No danger at the moment – except from Mustapha, who is bearing down on us with a gigantic sort of pastry thing, bigger than a car-tyre and snowed with icing sugar. The pudding? No. We’ve got five more courses still to go before we reach dessert. Mustapha is beaming. This is the pastilla royal, which in his native Casablanca is made to honour royalty. Milt is king, so Milt must break it open, let the aromatic steam escape. Mustapha’s English leaves a lot to be desired, but I understand the gist of it. He’s babbling on about the importance of this ceremony, which I gather is symbolic, and how the ingredients of the dish itself are loaded down with meaning – fertility, virility, friendship, immortality. It all sounds pretty heavy for what is basically a gargantuan cream puff.
No. Wrong again. There’s no cream in it at all – everything else except. I see Norah’s face fall further as he starts listing all the fillings: honey, almonds, chicken, scrambled egg. I doubt if she could face them singly, let alone all mixed and mushed together. Milt looks dazed as well, though he’s trying hard, up to his wrists in grease and icing sugar as he tears apart the gigantic ring of pastry. The steam escapes, the waiters cheer, the ninety-nine stringed whatsit adds its wail of triumph. Then we all dip in, yanking off great hunks which smell sensational, but are impossible to eat. The strudel-type pastry flakes and breaks to nothing, dollops of the filling drop on laps and cushions, icing sugar wafts in sneezy clouds.
I feed Milt with a sliver. It’s probably on his no-no list, but if he doesn’t at least sample it, he may risk friendlessness, sterility, impotence and death. Wayne is feeding me, dribbling honey down my cleavage, which gives him an excuse to lick it up. His tongue is in the pro class, though it distracts me from the taste of the pastilla which is really quite extraordinary, very sweet and cinnamony, yet with sudden shocks of salty egg or spicy chicken jarring on the palate. I glance at Norah, who can’t eat anything since she’s bandaged both her hands in her soft pink Turkish towel. (We were all given these pink towels, which seem to be the Moroccan equivalent of paper serviettes, and much more useful when there’s so much grease and gunge about.) I ease up from my cushion, pastilla chunk in one hand, wine glass in the other.
“You’ve just got to try this, Norah. It’s power-food, quite amazing. You won’t get this at Beechgrove. And have a sip of wine, love. You can’t keep drinking all that boring water.”
The sweet old guy who’s sharing Norah’s pouffe looks quite relieved to see me, squeezes up one end to make room for me as well.
“Is your friend hard of hearing?”
I nod, suppress a giggle. His accent is deep South. Poor Norah probably hasn’t understood a single word. Suddenly, Mustapha’s huge belly is wobbling over us. He pulls Norah to her feet, whisks her through the curtains of the tent. God! What now? Norah needs a nursemaid and I’m too unsteady on my pins to fit the rôle. I stagger after them, catch my breath as sultan’s tent gives way to steamy kitchen – the hottest, busiest kitchen I’ve ever seen: grills and gases flaring, whole tribes of dark-skinned boys stirring, chopping, kneading; sweat pouring down each face. The smell’s delirious – cardoman and garlic mixed with buttered honey, sharp astringent mint. The boys all nod and smile as I slink in. I mutter a hallo, but the word’s completely lost in the clash of pans, the whir of liquidisers, the chef’s own voice lashing out at Norah.
“You no like our food? You no think our kitchen clean? I show you kitchen. Kitchen very clean.”
He picks up shining saucepans, gleaming ladles, shoves them under Norah’s nose. He’s obviously upset. Ed told me that it’s an insult in Morocco to refuse your host’s food and that anything under six or seven courses is considered parsimonious, hardly worth the name of meal at all. I’d better make sure I never win a holiday to Agadir or somewhere – or not with Toomey as my table-mate. The chef is close to tears.
“I cook for royal palace. I cook for Shah. I cook for Princess Anne …”
“My friend’s not well,” I soothe him. “It’s not your food at all. She was feeling lousy anyway.”
“Nothing lousy here. My food good, very good. I buy myself. I get up at blast of dawn …”
By the time I’ve calmed him down and reassured poor Norah and we’ve all three made it up with huge bear-hugs and free samples from the battery of pans, our party is two courses on, and Misty and a man called Doc (who’s nothing medical) are fighting a mock duel with their two-foot-long kebab skewers. Wayne has saved me a kebab and starts wooing me with chunks of pork and mushroom.
“Where did ya get to, honey? I was worried you was throwin’ up or somethin’.”
I can’t speak for charcoaled pork, so I shake my head, then nod it, to show I’m quite okay. Wonderful, in fact. He’s sort of massaging my mouth with a warm and buttery mushroom cap, running it round the insides of my lips. I lick his fingers as a small return. They taste delicious – honey-roasted he-man with a hint of spice and sweat. I just wish Milton wasn’t watching. I like the guy, but he’s not exactly a ball of fun. His seventh course is not kebab, but indigestion tablets – two Tums washed down with water. I suppose he likes the Tums commercial too: “Do without the heartburn and the sodium.”
He returns the carton to his pocket, pulls out something else – an airline ticket – starts to crumple it up.
“What you doing, Milt?”
“It’s no good now, honey. The damn plane left six hours ago.”
“You mean you … missed it?”
He drains his Seven-Up. “I was shootin’ craps. I’d had a real good run and was all psyched up; didn’t want to interrupt my luck. Just as well. In the end, I lost at that damn crap table, but if I hadn’t stuck around and started playin’ the slots, I’d be twenty thousand grand the poorer now.”
I stare at him. He didn’t know he’d win. He could have lost his bankroll, lost his shirt, be stranded in Las Vegas without even the fare for a Greyhound bus, once he’d let that plane go. Or maybe you can swap plane tickets over, re-book a later flight. In which case, why tear up the ticket? It must have cost a bomb. He lives miles away, way up near Chicago.
“But couldn’t you have changed the ticket, Milt? Used it tomorrow or the next day?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess so, but it ain’t worth the hassle.” He removes an ice cube from his glass, cools his forehead with it. “I’ve missed a lotta planes, hon. If you’re on a winning streak, you can’t live your life round airline schedules. You have to be ready to drop everythin’ and jus’ go with the flow.”
I’m really quite impressed. I’d put Jones down as Mr Ordinary, but maybe he’s the real McCoy high roller I thought I’d yet to meet. I mean, I was wrong about Victor, imagined him swanning round Las Vegas, living off his winnings, when he’s an engineer or something rather dull. I feel a sudden
pang. Victor wasn’t dull. He knew a lot of things, was always so … No. No regrets. Victor doesn’t want me – he made that pretty clear tonight – and these guys do. In fact, the feeling’s mutual. I need them. There’s no one else I know now in this whole hard-hearted town.
I edge a little closer to Milt’s bulge. He’s having quite a turn-out of his pockets, looking for another unused plane ticket, so he can illustrate his point. He turfs out aspirin, low-sugar breath-mints, salt-free chewing-gum, a whole concertina fold-down of credit cards, and a larger card with a pink flamingo entwined around his photograph.
I pick it up. “What’s that?”
“My VIP guest card. I’ve got a big credit-line with the Flamingo, so they look after me. It’s like – well, a free pass, I guess. I don’t pay for my room, or meals, or …”
Wayne’s playing snap, has produced one of his own, this time from the Golden Nugget. Someone else is joking about the last free suite he had which was called Old Masters and had a mini Sistine Chapel ceiling in the bathroom.
“I cricked my neck keep lookin’ up at all them dingers. I could have had a ‘Cave Man’ room with real rocks and a fake-fur bath-robe, or ‘Tarzan’ and a jungle, but I guess I felt too old to start swingin’ from the trees to find my Jane.”
We all laugh, except Norah, who appears to be mesmerised by a blue-rinsed fatso lecturing her on the nutritional dangers of the Beverley Hills Diet.
“We just can’t live on avocado, hon, or kiwi fruit. If God had meant for us to do that, He wouldn’t have made doughnuts, especially not cream ones.”
I stretch right out, head in Milton’s lap, feet nuzzling Wayne’s right thigh; reward them both with dazzling smiles as they fight to light my cigarette. I’ll make it up to Norah in the morning. For the moment, I intend to have a ball. These guys are true high rollers – free suites, free passes, missed planes, the lot. If they accept me into their circle, even for just a week, I could win enough to change my life. I’ve got to escape from Beechgrove, escape from dole queues, dead-end jobs, and I need cash for all of that. I shan’t be greedy. Once I’ve got my basics like my mansion and my Rolls, I’ll give the rest away. God! I’d really love that – writing out cool four-figure cheques to Martha Mead and Ethel Barnes; buying mink-trimmed incontinence pants for Lil; setting Norah up with her own private circus and her own portable super-loo which she could tow along behind her. I’d give massive bribes to governments to abolish all psychiatrists, or make cigarettes free-issue like infant orange juice. I’d buy a chain of florists, then offload them on to Jan, with the one small proviso that she dispatch a lorryload of marigolds to my father’s grave each week. I’d …
Sin City Page 19
