The Quorum

by Kim Newman

  DARLING, he typed, TONIGHT, MIDNIGHT, MY ROOM, WAITING FOR YOUR...

  ‘Love? No, it has an “e”.’

  ‘Sex,’ suggested Mickey.

  ‘An “e” and an “s”.’

  HOT BODY, he typed.

  ‘Hot body?’ Mark said.

  ‘It’s the kind of Neily thing she’d expect,’ Michael protested. ‘It has to be convincing. It’s not what I’d put in a billet doux’.

  With his left hand, he signed Neil’s name. It was readable, but nothing like a grown-up’s handwriting. Mark found an envelope in a desk drawer and Michael popped in the note. Mickey fished out a durex from his wallet.

  ‘Shove this in for that final romantic touch.’

  Michael cringed. ‘That’s appalling.’

  He put the condom in with the message from Neil.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Five pounds would be truly insulting,’ Mark ventured.

  ‘No,’ Mickey said, ‘this would be worse...’

  He took out a pound note and tore it in half.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to do that,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Michael said.

  ‘Slip half the note in with the johnny and the letter. Raunchy Rachael gets the rest when she spreads ’em for Mr Suave.’

  Michael laughed again.

  ‘This is disgusting,’ he said, accepting the half-note. ‘Pin the other half to his board. With luck he won’t notice it, but she will when she comes round to force feed him his wastebasket.’

  ‘She looked like a big girl,’ Mickey said. ‘Athletic. Probably has a good right hook.’

  ‘It’s tragic we won’t be here for the fireworks,’ Michael said.

  Mark checked his watch. They’d been in the room for three-quarters of an hour. There wasn’t much more they could accomplish.

  ‘I say we withdraw and come back in to pull the sink stunt when he’s at his seminar tomorrow. This Rachael move is too sweet to complicate.’

  They agreed. They left the room and locked up. Before they left Tadcaster Hall, Mark slipped the envelope (which Mickey had pencilled a heart on in red) under Rachael’s door. The Quorum left the hall. Mark, ahead of schedule, had time to make the last two-thirds of his Marlowe lecture, leaving the others to make their way back into town.

  He was working on an essay about masochism in Dr Faustus. If his brief omnipotence is followed by an eternity of torment, it’s hard to see what’s in the Deal for Faustus. After reviewing his undistinguished first term - he’d been too caught up with Pippa and leaving home to do actual work - Brian Ellison, his assessor, admitted Mark had really seized the opportunity of Tragedy.

  VALENTINE’S DAY, 1978

  The next day, Mark rapped at the door to make sure Neil was out. After sustained knocking, he used the key. The room was different. Neil’s bed was unmade and one of the shelves had been ripped off the wall, dumping books over the floor.

  Mickey laughed, ‘What a woman.’

  ‘Zhou don’t suppose she came over and shagged him senseless?’

  ‘I’d doubt that,’ Mark said. ‘This looks more like the aftermath of a shouting and screaming fit than a night of unbridled passion.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Mickey said.

  ‘I think she chucked the typewriter at his head.’

  ‘Amazing, Holmes,’ Mickey spluttered. ‘How did you deduce that?’

  There was a triangular dent in the plasterboard just above the pillow, and the typewriter lay face down on the floor.

  Knowing Neil, Mark guessed he was wrung out with embarrassment and confusion. As far as he was concerned, the girl next door whom he fancied, but didn’t dare approach, had barged in late at night and attacked him like a fiend. She’d probably have been in no mood to give an explanation.

  ‘This is better than clobbering him on his coursework,’ Mickey said. ‘Neil could always muddle through by working harder. I think we’ve found his weakness. Women.’

  ‘Everybody’s weakness,’ Michael observed.

  ‘Let’s hurry up and make our move,’ Mickey said. ‘One more shot and we’re through for a year, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Mark muttered.

  Neil’s washstand was a mess, squeezed toothpaste tube on the floor, hot tap dripping, towel in a bundle by the bed. The mirror was cracked. Rachael again. Mark found a flannel and jammed it into the plughole as if it had accidentally clogged there. He turned the tap.

  ‘Not too much,’ Michael said. ‘Zhust a slow trickle.’

  Even at its current rate, the level rose. In maybe ten or fifteen minutes the sink would overflow. Within half an hour, water would gush into the room below.

  ‘He won’t remember washing his face this morning,’ Mickey said. ‘He’ll be too wound up about Roughhouse Rachael.’

  ‘The tap was dripping. This is a completely believable accident.’

  He twisted the tap a smidgen more, the water flowed a tad faster.

  10

  7 JANUARY, 1993

  Crossing the Atlantic, he travelled forwards and backwards at the same time, losing a slice of night. Jet lag was not a problem. His bodyclock came fitted with a temporal gyroscope, he always adjusted instantly. It was a gift: some people were lucky, and he was one of them. Comfortably curled in his Superior Class lounger, lulled by the wine from the party, he snatched four hours’ quality sleep. He woke with a clear head as the plane began its descent to JFK. He shared the privileged cabin with Loud Stuff, a shaggy rock group, and a diplomat who gripped an attaché case as if it were handcuffed to his wrist. Miren, Mickey’s personal stewardess, offered a jolt of complimentary orange juice. He sloshed it around his mouth, cleaning his teeth. The landing was smooth. It always was in Superior.

  He was first off the plane. Miren kissed his cheek as he left. She smelled slightly of citrus fruit. Tangy but refreshing. At the end of the carpeted corridor stood a uniformed hispanic name-tagged ‘Raimundo’. He held a sign which spelled out ‘Mr Yeo’. Mickey identified himself and was led through a womb-like passage to a sunlit VIP reception lounge. A woman with smooth honey-blonde hair and an orthodontal smile awaited.

  ‘My name is Heather Wilding. I’m with Pyramid and I’ve been assigned to you for your personal ease and convenience.’

  He couldn’t help grinning. Heather wore a tailored business suit: a severe jacket with a short skirt. She was a career magazine cover: hands on hips, jacket wings swept back, chest out-thrust, eyes bright with determined promise.

  Loud Stuff trundled in, blaming their road manager for the loss of a case of synthesiser equipment. Mickey shrugged and smiled at Grattan, the lead singer, who peered back through a curtain of hair extensions. Having heard rumours of the Choke Hold album project, he’d personally come over to Mickey’s lounger to ask to be considered for a slot. Mickey had assured him he was top of the list, keeping to himself that it was the ‘Not Now Not Ever NEVER’ list.

  ‘Have your people call my people and we’ll interface,’ Mickey said, his personal slang for ‘fuck off’.

  The diplomat handed his case over to an American and walked back to reboard the plane for its return flight.

  ‘Mr Yeo’s luggage is being processed,’ a functionary explained to Heather. ‘Would he care for complimentary champagne?’

  Heather looked to him.

  ‘Why the hell not?’ he said. ‘You want a blast?’

  ‘Too early for me, Mr Yeo,’ she said.

  ‘Call me Mickey.’

  A cork popped, a chilled flute was put in his hand: the party never ended.

  ‘I have your itinerary, Mickey,’ Heather said, producing a long envelope. ‘But first we’ll convey you to the hotel and afford you a freshen-up period.’

  Mickey felt the envelope.

  ‘I’m going to be fuckin’ busy,’ he said.

  ‘We aren’t inhuman,’ Heather smiled. Her eyes were the same shade of blue-grey as the sky visible through panorama windows. ‘We’ve factored breath
ing time into your schedule.’

  ‘Ta everso.’

  ‘We don’t wish to impact negatively on your health.’

  ‘Too right, John.’

  ‘My name is Heather.’

  ‘Right, Heth.’

  Raimundo reported that Mickey’s luggage was stowed in the limo, and Heather led him past the queues to Immigration. He gave Loud Stuff the high sign but they were too wrapped up in recriminations to notice. The formalities were accomplished with a wave of a British passport. He almost took his barely sipped champagne through but remembered at the last moment to return the flute to the functionary. Heather had expedited the way, the paperwork was over in an instant. She could get Josef Mengele warmly welcomed into Israel.

  ‘Welcome to the United States, Mr Yeo,’ said a gorgeous oriental girl at the Immigration desk. ‘May I compliment you on your graphic novel, Choke Hold. I’m an enormous admirer of your work.’

  ‘You pay these people, don’t you?’ Mickey said to Heather, who smiled tolerantly.

  Since arriving at Derek Leech’s Twelfth Night half a world away, he had been looked after: gently handed from one superhumanly efficient minion to another, eased past queues of fretting and red-eyed footsoldiers, offered complimentary everything, never for a moment allowed to suffer the tiniest inconvenience. It was as if handmaidens preceded him, scattering rose petals in his path. He could feel them crunch beneath his Doc Martens as he walked under the canopy to the limo.

  Settled on a backseat the size of a sofa, relishing the leather-and-sandalwood smell, he paid close attention to Heather’s legs as she folded herself into the facing seat. She wore sheer hose and running shoes, which she slipped off automatically and replaced with a pair of high heels. She gave an order in Spanish and the limo purred off.

  From a sleeve in the door, Heather took a selection of periodicals and newspapers and offered them. He declined the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in favour of yesterday’s Evening Argus so he could catch up with Dr Shade. Of all the comics characters he hadn’t written yet, Dr Shade was the one he most wanted to tackle. After glancing at the three striking panels on the inside back page - the guy who crammed detail into that demented space was Mickey’s contemporary hero - he relaxed and enjoyed looking at Heather, who unselfconsciously allowed him his viewing pleasure. Caught smiling in shafts of passing sunlight, she might be wrapped in cellophane, wearing a ‘Present from Derek Leech’ sash.

  * * *

  The express elevator took them to the Apex Suite, which was one floor above the Presidential Suite and the Royal Suite.

  ‘Derek resides here himself when in New York,’ Heather explained. ‘He left instructions that your comfort should be a paramount concern.’

  Raimundo carried his bags through the panelled entranceway into a penthouse larger than most supermarkets. Heather showed him the rooms, assigning a name and function to each, climaxing with the Sleeping Room, a high-tech grotto with a tinted glass sky-roof. Complimentary floral arrangements were central to each space. A basket of exotic fruits stood on the ten-person dining-table in the Entertainment Room. It was hard to imagine the austere Leech in this place.

  In the Reading Room, prepublication copies of spring and summer bestsellers were given prominent shelfspace. A file of synopses gave précis reports of the books, to save the Apex guest the trouble of reading anything longer than three pages. Mickey noticed an American omnibus of Michael’s Colin Dale and Ken Sington (all references to Torchy the Battery Boy and Sky Ray lollies pruned and replaced by jokes about Howdy Doody and Hershey bars) already in its place with the next from Stephen King, Tom Clancy and Umberto Eco.

  Heather retreated to the Office Space while Mickey stepped into the Freshen-Up Room. He splashed scented water on his face and assessed his chin to see if his stubble was stubbly enough to merit a trim. Changing clothes, he chose a Wile E. Coyote T-shirt, which outlined his skinny ribs, and complemented it with his favourite ripped jeans, leather jacket and pointy-toed motorcycle boots.

  ‘Heartfucker,’ he said to his reflection, passing fingers through the knotty braids sprouting from one side of his half-shaven head.

  When he rejoined Heather and Raimundo in the Office Space, which adjoined a spectacular terrace, a fax was churning. It was out that he was in town and requests for interviews, personal appearances and lunch dates were pouring in.

  * * *

  On Park Avenue and 55th Street, Pyramid Plaza was a slimmer variation on DLE London. Both were Constant Drache buildings. Crowded by neighbouring glass towers, the Plaza was ostentatious enough in its forecourt to establish its primacy as toughest skyscraper on the block. From large gold bowls, twin fountains pumped gushes of black water fifty feet into the air. Whenever Mickey called the place the Coming Building, Americans didn’t get the joke. It was five blocks from the hotel but Raimundo drove them. It did not do to walk.

  The forecourt thronged with banner-waving protesters, kept behind barriers by cops. No matter how many times he came to America, Mickey found it hard not to think their policemen were in fancy dress, toy guns on their hips, cool black jackets for show.

  The limo rolled up and the door swung open. This was the nearest he’d got to open air since his arrival in the country. It was even colder than London, but drier, fresher, sharper. Laced with vehicle emissions and amphetamines, the atmosphere tasted potent.

  ‘We’re Queer, We’re Faggots, We Don’t Wanna Be Treated as Maggots,’ demonstrators chanted. hitler was straight read a placard. Mildly interested, he asked what the fuss was about. Heather explained, gays were picketing because Pyramid Pictures was filming Pink Swastika, a bestseller based on the diaries of a homosexual SS officer. The book had been serialised in a Derek Leech paper, the Sunday Argus.

  Heather walked past the pickets, ignoring them as she would a pan-handling bum or a fire hydrant. A young man with a Queer Nation badge gave pink triangle armbands to people who went into the building. Mickey accepted his and shoved it into his white buckskins.

  ‘Nice jacket,’ the protester commented.

  Grinning, he entered the foyer of the Plaza. More demonstrators waited among man-sized potted plants. Three women in black leotards and whiteface squatted in a makeshift teepee by the elevator bank, wailing like grieving Apache widows.

  Heather made it known to the ice-queen at reception that Mickey Yeo had arrived. She issued a non-transferable security cardkey and gave him a four-digit entrance code which, combined with the card, would gain him access to all but the silver-marked security areas. His number was 1812. ‘Like the war,’ the receptionist explained.

  ‘What’s that about, Heth?’ he asked Heather, nodding to the squaws.

  ‘WoFBReIGN.’

  ‘Yer wot?’

  ‘Women For Better Representation In Graphic Narrative. A feminist pressure group.’

  He peered again at the women. They all looked like Kathy Bates.

  ‘It’s a vigil,’ Heather explained. ‘They’ve been there since Amazon Queen died. They say they’ll fast until she’s brought back.’

  He chuckled and, after seriously thinking about it, decided not to tell them who he was.

  ‘How did they get in?’

  ‘They have a court order declaring this a public place and upholding their right of lawful assembly. So long as they don’t obstruct anyone, they can’t be moved.’

  ‘You have a wonderful country.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, as if she were the ambassador delegated to accept compliments.

  * * *

  Heather escorted him to the ninth floor, the offices of Zenith Comics. She waited in the reception area while Mickey had his meeting.

  Two years ago, Timmy Chin had been a nineteen-year-old with the third largest collection of comics in the States; now, with a $500 haircut and a baggy tropical suit, he was vice-president in charge of editorial direction. He had control over the billion-dollar ZC list but, from the red-faced embarrassment he demonstrated when faced with
Heather, Mickey assumed Timmy had never met a girl.

  They sat in the corner office. Behind Timmy’s desk-space was a picture window with a priceless view. Framed in a cabinet were equally priceless comics from the thirties and forties. Also under glass was a two-sheet for the 1946 Republic serial Adventures of the Streak, with Clayton Moore. There was no memorabilia from the camp 1966-67 Amazon Queen show, which ZC purists despised but Mickey still remembered fondly, if only for Mary Ann Mobley’s thighs.

  On the desk were the proofs of the next book in Mickey’s quality format mini-series, The Nevergone Void. The first of the limited-run cross-over title had seen the death of Amazon Queen. Malevolent forces tampering with the ancient past had undone the heroine’s fifty-year career sucking her entire history into non-existence. Next up was Mr Mystery, a once-popular occult detective, who was due to be unmasked as the secret collaborator of the Nevergone Conspirators.

  ‘On Book One, we’ve had our biggest sales ever in this format,’ Timmy told him. ‘Biggest profits ever period. I’ve been on Entertainment Tonight and Sally Jessie Raphael.’

  Timmy was less bubbling, his voice a lot less squeaky than usual. He was almost solemn. He was a fanboy first. The vicepresident didn’t understand the medium had to outgrow steroid cases in tights if it was to hit the twenty-first century on an equal footing with real books. The best way to get all the superslobs out of the way was something apocalyptic.

  ‘This has been coming since that comic there,’ Mickey said, pointing to a framed Dazzling Duo Stories Issue Number One (June, 1948). ‘The Streak and Amazon Queen Together! America’s Mightiest Heroes Versus the Red Menace!’ ‘When Zack Briscow drew that, the ZC Universe was founded. Before, you just had a fuckpile of characters in their own series. When they bumped into each other, it became an epic. And epics have to have a big finish.’

  Briscow (a legendary drunk and lecher) left all sorts of logistical problems for his successors. Aside from the truism that heroes from World War Two would be in their eighties if they aged properly, there had been so many interconnecting strands it was now impossible to come up with a plot not strangled with fifty years’ worth of labyrinthine backstory. Under pressure from the anti-comics hysterics of the fifties, the Streak and Amazon Queen even got married and settled into tedious respectability for a while. In a pre-Dallas stroke, someone rubbed out that by writing off two years of three separate comics as a wish-fulfilment dream on the part of incipiently domestic Amy McQueen, whod otherwise never be able to get her superindependent hero to the altar. That characters introduced in the dream turned up years later in the real continuity was something no one ever sorted out. Sucking the overbearing virago out of ever having lived was as good a way as any of dealing with narrative tangles.