Altar Ego (36 page)

Any more down and out and Zack would have to play a benefit concert for me, no kidding.

41
A Pina Colada, A Non-stick Wok and Thou

BY DECEMBER, MY
Life imitated Art in only one respect. I’d been framed.

The morning of my court case, the air was tart. As I dragged myself into the Bow Street Magistrate’s Court, it was also heavy with the odour of a very large rodent. Dominating the windowless courtroom, Rotterman was fatter than ever. His immense accretion of flesh avalanched on to the bench next to me.

‘Guess what?’ Rotterman drawled excitedly.

‘Um … You slept with someone you’re not related to?’

‘Yer goin’ to jail!’ Gone was the road-kill toupe. Rotterman now sported a hair transplant in its place. It looked as though pubic hair had been sutured to his skull. ‘No one can save yer sorry ass. With a criminal record there ain’t no chance of yer gettin’ back with
Zack
, once we’re Stateside. I jest came by to gloat.’

This was no surprise. I knew exactly what page Rotterman was up to in the ‘How To Be A Complete Bastard’ manual. ‘I know my rights! And legally, well, legally …’ I floundered ‘this sucks.’

What I also
knew
, was that I was in deep doo-doo. Circumstances had boxed me in like the sides of a coffin. Fear coated my tongue. If only I could once again enjoy the peace and tranquillity of a panic attack. Trying to block out the cumulative strength of anxiety, I kept my eyes focused on the spearmint-green linoleum beneath my feet. I wasn’t feeling so cynical about lawyers now, believe me … except for my legal-aid appointed barrister, who seemed more concerned with the wax he’d just extracted from his ear than with my innocence.

Maybe the truth could save me, I thought hopefully … Yeah right. And O. J. Simpson doesn’t own any Bruno Magli shoes.

Looking up to see Julian striding into court, my blood left skid marks in my veins. Zack’s agent was as thrown by Julian’s appearance as I was. Rotterman’s Adam’s apple positively leapt over his gold chain. ‘How’d the divorce go?’ he blustered. ‘J’know why they call all hurricanes chick’s names? … They’re wet when they come and they take the house when they go!’ His guffaw was as fake as his hideous hair.

As my brain tried to kick-start my heart again, Julian
executed
a slow, top-to-toe body scan with his eyes, before laughing out loud. At first I thought it was my Lufthansa-stewardess look – scarf, pearl earrings and sensible wool suit in neutral tones – that had tickled him, until I remembered my hair. My hands flew to my head in embarrassment. Kate had predicted that the court might order a DNA hair-strand analysis to ascertain whether or not I was a drug taker. Trawling the internet, she’d discovered that dyeing my hair would destroy all evidence of the odd joint I’d smoked with Zachary. Needless to say, I’d been up all night at her place, bleaching. Not the type to overreact, I’d also shaved every hair off my entire body. Kate had to call in Dyno-rod that morning to de-pube her drains.

‘So, where’s your pimp?’ was Julian’s cold appraisal of my new look. I noticed, with relief, that he spoke through lips no longer shag-piled with moustache. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do,’ he said with a grim smile, before marching over to a lawyer from the Crown Prosecution Service who was standing at the bar table with my barrister, several grey men in grey suits and the cop who’d arrested me. Julian conversed with them quietly and then pointed in my direction. The cop nodded and detached himself from the confab. My Hellfire Pageant continued as he advanced towards me. I tensed involuntarily for the handcuffs he was removing from his belt. Looming over me, he cleared his throat as his shadow fell to obliterate me once and for all.

‘Mr Rotterman, I presume?’ he enquired of the suppurating lump beside me. ‘I have a warrant for your arrest for extradition to the United States for trial on charges of racketeering, blackmail and trafficking in narcotics across State lines.’

Notwithstanding his gaseous torrent of obscenities, Rotterman was dragged in handcuffs down to the Dickensian cells of Bow Street police station.

‘How did you
do
that?’ I asked Julian, once I’d recovered the Power of Speech.

‘I rang the case officer at the CPS last week and told him everything I knew from my old client files about Rotterman and his gang and their problems in the States. They checked with the FBI and found out his real name. He’s on the run and they want him extradited. We figured he might be malicious enough to turn up in Court this morning to gloat over your conviction. It turns out he was Scotland Yard’s in formant about the drugs, so he must have planted them on you.’ His hand on the small of my back was steady. ‘I also persuaded Danny (the Dog Fondler) de Litto to turn Queen’s evidence. He’s currently on a witness protection scheme and will only answer to the name of “Cheryl”…’ He steered me, symbolically, towards the light at the end of the foyer and pushed open the heavy doors. ‘The charge against you will be dropped, Beck.’

‘But, Jules.’ I was overwhelmed; disorientated. ‘You shouldn’t be here. I mean, this is your wedding day isn’t it?’

He shrugged. ‘There’s no law against us being friendly.’

‘Yes, I mean, what have we got to lose? We’re already divorced …’ We faced each other formally, like foreign dignitaries. ‘I’ve … I’ve missed you,’ I admitted. ‘You were the best husband I ever had.’

‘I still miss you, too, but my aim is improving,’ he quipped. His tone was remote, but friendly, like a tour guide. ‘So?’ he teased. ‘Were you going to state your age
before
you were sworn in on the bible?’

‘Actually, I’ve discovered a way to grow older gracefully … plastic surgery.’

That inveigled a smile out of him. ‘The way to stay young is to get older friends.’

‘So
that’s
why Anouska’s marrying you. I mean, what is the priest going to say? “… I now pronounce you Father Figure and Wife”?’ I bit my tongue. I’d promised myself I’d walk the tact tightrope for once; to rise to the wretched occasion.

‘So you’re against it?’ Julian fastened his eyes on me. ‘Give me a reason not to marry her,’ he said in grave, low tones.

My perceptions had been so skewed for so long that I dismissed the note of ambiguity I thought I detected in his words. My lips were stiff with the effort not to cry out –
Because she doesn’t really love you!
…
Because I really do!
Instead, I gave a restrained smile. ‘Is Simon going to be your best man?’ I said, polite to the point of insignificance.

He nodded. ‘You know he’s with Celestia now?’

‘Yes. I seem to remember him promising to find her Anterior Fornix Erotic Zone.’

‘Oh God. Not another erogenous spot. I’m still looking for the
last
one.’

‘
You’ve found it
, I wanted to say, touching my head and heart, like some demented Barbara Cartland clone. But I resolutely set my lips and said nothing. Hadn’t I sabotaged his life enough already? What on earth could Julian see in a frequenter of the moral low ground like me? An entry in ‘Who’s
Not
Who’? A bleached-craniumed, career-deficient (I was so broke I’d soon have to break into my facelift fund) disaster-magnet with the selfish ability always to land on somebody else’s feet?

‘Becky …’ He turned to me, an unfathomable expression in his blue eyes. Unspoken feelings hovered in the air between us. But the warmth in Julian’s face faded as his eyes focused on something behind me. His brows went up reflectively for a moment – then disappointment flowed down his face.

I swivelled to see Zachary executing his head-turning, high-bummed strut past the canary-yellow offices of the
Herald Tribune
towards us. In his torn T-shirt emblazoned with a cobra poised to strike, his Medusa hair and three days worth of stubble, he looked like a barbarian raider come to rape and pillage.

‘Thanks, man,’ Zachary extended his hand towards
Julian
, who shook it automatically. ‘I’m free!!’ Zack jerked his fist back, hard. ‘Yeeess! … The FBI interviewed me. They said I’m in the clear. Rotty’s contracts ain’t gonna be legally bindin’ now, are they, not now the gangster’s gonna be jailed, right, Counsellor?’

Julian nodded almost imperceptibly. His face had gone the colour of the fog.

‘Rotty’s dead as a dodo, man … The dodo. That was a real crap bird, weren’t it?’ he said, lighting up. ‘No wonder the sucker’s like, extinct …’

I grinned. Two grammatical errors, a mispronunciation and a totally politically incorrect sentiment. Thank God. Finally Zack too was back to normal.

‘Anyways, Beck, at least I’m still gonna be doin’ that gig at Madison Square Garden. I’m leavin’ for home. Tonight. An’ I ain’t comin’ back. Anyways, I was wonderin’ …’ He glanced at his gleaming sports car, cosied illegally up to the kerb. ‘I know yer don’t like bein’ seen in a car shaped like a sex aid,’ he zapped a smile in my direction, ‘although it does kinda go with yer new hair, babe, but do yer wanna join me? Yer can have Rotty’s seat beside me on Concorde.’

I spun urgently towards Julian … to find him gone – evaporated into the milky mist. I peered frantically up and down the street, but could see nothing. The whole of Covent Garden seemed to be lit by a forty-watt bulb.

‘Oh, Zack.’ I took a deep breath. The man was still so sexy I could only look at bits of him at a time. Neck.
Ankle
. Calf. Buns. Is there anything more aesthetically pleasing than lip-smackingly sweet buns in a pair of tight 501s? ‘You’ve got such verve, such élan, such panache … not to mention your irresistible libidinousness, but …’

Zackary regarded me with quizzical affection. ‘When I get home and look all them words up, I’m gonna be pleased, right?’

‘Yeah, you’ll be pleased.’ I kissed his cheek, demurely. He smelled of woodsmoke and caramel toffee. But my tourist visa on Planet Libido had expired.

He tossed his car keys high into the air, then caught them effortlessly with one hand. ‘Well?’

‘I wonder whether you have any songs about self-indulgent, thirty-three-year-old disillusioned females who left their husbands for a fantasy … and now want to go back?’

‘So.’ He centred me in his topaz gaze. ‘Yer ain’t got no more in yer heart for me?’

I tugged playfully on a dreadlock. ‘Trust you to turn a perfectly good one-night stand into a year-long Meaningful Relationship …’

‘It was meaningful, weren’t it?’

‘Yeah. It was … But I’ll only cramp your style, Zack. Why don’t you sing me something in the key of “I’m so sorry, it was wonderful, but it would never work out between us”…?’

Zack hugged me to his hot body for one brief
second
, sidled up to his car, inserted himself behind the wheel, gunned the motor and was gone. I watched his yolk-yellow headlamps wavering in the greasy light before it swallowed him up.

I slumped down on to the icy kerb beside a woman in a stained slip and greying bra, wrapped in a Salvation Army blanket, muttering to herself. Loneliness roared at me. I could feel myself draining away. I started to shake then, in shuddering, palsied spasms. The old woman offered me a swig from her bottle … But what was the point? It would only come straight out of my eyes.

When Kate barrelled into her Bloomsbury flat a few hours later, she found me crumpled on the living-room floor, providing a scratching post for her hateful cat. ‘What happened?’

‘Julian spilled the beans on Rotterman – to the CPS, the FBI, the CIA – they all came to take him away. My charges got dropped in the excitement.’

‘He did that? Wow! Did you tell him you still love him?’ she demanded.

‘No.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘Because he doesn’t love me. Not after all I’ve done to him.’

‘You big boofhead! Rotterman was his client, wasn’t he? And Julian’s a lawyer. The bloke’s just broken his duty of confidentiality. He’s a solicitor who’s ratted
on
a client! He could be struck off for that, you know!’

‘Struck off? …’ I looked at her in the vivid light, aghast. A shock wave of nuclear-test intensity went through my body. ‘But he loves his work!’

‘Not as much as he loves you. Shit a brick, Becky, you two are meant for each other. Your problem’s not irreconcilable differences … it’s irreconcilable similarities. You both wake up in mid-sentence, for God’s sake … Do you really want to become the pleasure-deprived Commitment Phobe I was for all those years? Sex
is
better than skydiving. But love is even more wonderful. You were right about something else too. Happiness is
not
learning to be content with what you don’t have,’ Kate said staunchly. She pointed dramatically to the door. ‘If you pull your finger out, you can still make it to the church on time.’

My abstract feeling of despair solidified into a raw voltage of alarm. I sprinted down the stairs and dived headlong into the nearest cab.

Lately I’d been swallowing my pride so often I was getting a taste for it. Mmmm. More pride please. It took me a moment or two to digest it … but by the time the taxi was tearing through Camden, I’d admitted that my terror of being a bad wife and mother were ill-founded. Let’s face it, there’s no such thing as a functional family. The only rule for achieving a good marriage is never to claim that you have one. And to love realistically, with the inoculation of experience. Sure, it was okay to have a fantasy about
Tarzan
swinging down on a vine and having his way with you … as long as you were prepared for the armpit odour. As if I finally abandoned my role as Supreme Commander of Spaceship Stupid, I also realized that my terror of losing my identity in marriage was ludicrous. Of course you can have it all … just not all at once.

With my usual knack for making enemies, I barged straight through the throng on the pavement outside the little church on the edge of Regent’s Park; right past Darius and his fiancé Norbett, the South African towel attendant; straight past The Woman Who
Used
To Do Everything More Successfully and Fabulously Than Every Other Woman in the Known Universe but was now as Demented, Ineffectual, Underachieving and Real as the rest of us; past Celestia, the bulimic Free-Fall Vegetarian who was flirting with Anouska’s father by telling him that she didn’t mind him calling her ‘honey’ as long as he didn’t eat it (worker bee exploitation).