Heartbreaker (29 page)

In a rush I say: “My manager’s wonderful to me, wonderful, and that’s why I always choose—
choose
—to do what she wants. Okay, I’m not doing what she wants right now, she wouldn’t want me to be here, but I made an exception tonight to my rule about always choosing to do what she wants. I came here because Carta asked me. I came here because she and I were both friends of Richard Slaney. And that means something. That’s special. That’s
real.
” Suddenly I find myself thrusting my right hand sideways towards Carta. I don’t look at her. I just stretch out my hand and she takes it in hers, she never hesitates, because she knows that what I’m saying is true.

I know now why that silence was so unbearable. It’s the silence of truth, the silence people keep when they’ve no option but to listen to lies. I lied earlier when I described my job in upbeat euphemisms, and the silence dropped on me like a lead weight. I lied just now about being liberated, and back came the silence to crush me to pulp. But when I told the truth about my mother Nicholas Darrow had plenty to say, and when I told the truth about how important Richard’s friendship was to me, Carta grasped my hand without hesitation.

I see now that these people are all focused on the truth of my situation, and when I lie they react like musicians with perfect pitch who are forced to listen to someone singing flat. These people see my life as it really is, while I . . . well, I never quite face it, do I? And why the fuck should I, I’d like to know? Their truth doesn’t have to be my truth! God, how do I get out of this, how do I retreat with dignity, it’s role-playing time again, got to be, can’t retreat with dignity while I’m being Gavin Blake Me, the stupid plonker who’s finally fucked up this scene, so—

“What you all fail to understand,” drawls Gavin Blake Superstud as Carta’s hand and mine slip apart, “is that I’ve got a great life and the last thing I want is to be ‘liberated’ from it! I make loadsa money. I’ve got a nice home, a fantastic car, sharp clothes in the closet—shit, I’ve even got a valet who cooks for me and does my chores! I’m proud of what I do, I tell you! I’ve got everything I could possibly want!”

In the crippling silence which follows, someone stands up. It’s Mr. Exocet-Missile. I might have known that in the end he’d be the one to blast me to pieces. Of course he hates me, despises me, thinks I’m the lowest of the low.

He walks across the room and plants himself on a spot twelve inches from my shoes. Then he stoops over, puts his hand gently on my shoulder and says in such a kind voice that my head swims: “But Gavin, where’s your freedom to be yourself?”

I’m slaughtered.

I do a runner, bolting from the room and blundering up the steps towards the churchyard, but before I can reach the top Carta calls my name.

I stop. I wouldn’t have stopped for anyone else, but I stop for her and she joins me. She’s breathing quickly but otherwise she’s cool. She offers me her business card for the first time, and as I take it I see her mobile phone number’s printed below the number of her office. I look at the numbers dumbly but I know this is all to do with the way we clasped hands after I mentioned Richard, all to do with me talking about my mum, all to do with truth and me being me and getting treated as a real person instead of a load of shit.

Carta’s saying: “You ought to have all my numbers so that we can keep in touch about the donation in the pipeline.”

I’m confused.
All
the numbers? There are only two: the office and the mobile. Then I turn over the card and see the handwritten number she’s scrawled on the back. “Home” she’s written after it. So I’ve scored—but not in any way that’s remotely familiar. I’ve won a gesture of trust and I mustn’t abuse it. That means any call I make has to be strictly business, but since I’ve decided not to go through with my plan to soak Colin there won’t be any business to call about. Unless . . .

“Keep me posted,” says Carta with an edgy little smile, but she hides her nervousness by adding warmly: “Thanks for coming—you were a big help to me.”

“I was?”

“Yes, I needed you to confirm your clients were tough guys who made their own decisions . . . And of course we all loved the story about your mother. It was like one of those parables, I forget which one, I’m not very good on the Bible yet, but it was definitely theological.” Turning away she says over her shoulder: “Thanks again for making the effort to come here. We all really appreciated it.”

She click-clacks back down the steps and I stagger on up into the churchyard.

Then I hit Egg Street and start running to the car park near Austin Friars.

Falling into the car I jam a CD into the slot and Verdi’s music begins to pour out, big, brash, lush and plush, a lavish wall of sound. I turn up the volume until it’s head-splitting, chopping up all unwanted thoughts about the kind of life I lead and flattening the memory of how I so totally lost the plot at the end of my gala performance for the rehab crew. But the memory doesn’t stay flat. It springs up again. Why did I make such a bloody pathetic balls-up? Because I was brain-damaged after being clobbered by that job offer, that’s why. I still can’t believe the offer was made. The Rector of St. Benet’s offered
me
a job! Maybe I should have accepted. Would I have worked alongside Carta? God! No, wake up, you dork, and stop fantasising. If I chose to work openly for St. Benet’s I’d have a death wish.

I tell myself I wish I’d never gone to the meeting but that’s a lie. It was good to be thanked and praised and offered a job. And something happened between me and Carta, though I’m still not sure what it was. We held hands but it had nothing to do with sex. Weird. Almost pervy. Shit, my head’s totally done in, that bunch have punched my lights out and it’s a wonder I can even remember what happened . . .

But I’m remembering. I’m remembering Nicholas. Can’t call him Mr. Charisma any more as if he were a client who could be nicknamed and treated as meat. This is Mr. Darrow who offered me a job, and when we met at Richard’s funeral he said I could call him Nicholas or Nick. Carta calls him Nicholas so I shall too.

I go on remembering. I remember that throughout the interview no one used the P-word to describe my profession. That was a mark of respect, wasn’t it? And they didn’t sneer when they said “leisure-worker” either.

Elizabeth says there’s never any need to mention the P-word because it’s only used by narrow-minded people who can’t accept that leisure-workers perform such a useful social service. The word “sex-worker” is misleading too, conjuring up images of drugged-up trash in massage parlours. It’s just not good enough for the kind of top-quality service I provide.

Elizabeth’s a great one for using alternative vocabulary. It’s not just the P-word which is taboo. “Evil,” “decadent” and “degrading” become “naughty,” “pervy” and “avant-garde.” Perversions are called “specialities” and given bright little names like “water sports.” She does use the conventional four-letter words but only when conducting business. Once she’s in a domestic setting the euphemisms rule supreme.

“I like to leave professional language at the office door,” she said to me once, although thank God she’s never attempted to impose this preference on me. I need to use four-letter words to relieve the tension of my daily life, and I’d burst a blood vessel if I always had to talk like a Victorian maiden—or like a classic shady lady hooked on a dream of naff respectability.

“Professional language!” In the office, where sex is treated as a commodity, Elizabeth says “fucking” as easily as some people say “marketing” or “sales.” The one four-letter word she never utters is “love.” “You do love me, don’t you?” I said to her recently and she answered at once: “Of course I do, pet,” but the word “love” never passed her lips, and sometimes I think that if she really loved me she wouldn’t want me to work in the leisure industry. But on the other hand, it’s all I’m good for and she did spot my talent for it, so . . .

So I mustn’t be too demanding. Instead of nagging her about love I should try remembering that
she’s
the one who “liberated” and “empowered” me, converting a dead-eyed wreck into a mega-success.

But where’s your freedom to be yourself, chum? And where’s your liberation and empowerment now?

Oh, shit, shit, shit . . .

But it’s no use cursing. What I have to do is pull myself together before I make a fatal slip, and that means no more double-life as a fundraiser and no more visits to St. Benet’s.

And Carta? Well, if I know what’s good for me I’ll give her up too, and I know what’s good for me, don’t I?

Punching off the Verdi I drive the last mile home in the deadest of dead silences.

Earlier in the day, to cover up my visit to St. Benet’s, I left a message for Elizabeth with Susanne to say that I was having a drink after work with Serena. I figured Elizabeth wouldn’t mind if I spent an hour after work with the approved girlfriend, but when I get home she’s irritated.

“Serena’s for weekends, pet,” she says. “I don’t want you wearing yourself out during the week with after-work activities.” But then she relents and says she’s glad I’m getting on well with Serena, such a nice girl and such good quality. She makes Serena sound like a stack of expensive bed linen.

By this time I’m exhausted but as soon as I’m upstairs I take the time to memorise Carta’s home and mobile numbers until I’m confident enough to tear up her business card and flush it down the bog. (The office number’s already memorised, and anyway that’s recoverable from the Telecom totty.) Even though I’ve taken the sane, rational decision that it’s too risky to see anyone from lifestyle-threatening, brain-blitzing St. Benet’s again I still can’t bear to pass up Carta’s personal numbers. I tell myself I just want them engraved on my heart as a souvenir. Am I nuts? No, I can argue that this move to memorise is actually crafty psychology. If I bin the numbers I’ll immediately want to call her, but if I have the numbers available I won’t feel so driven to do something risky. I can just live with the option to get in touch until the urge to call has faded.

Well anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I flop into bed and crash out.

Despite the stress I wake the next morning feeling ready for anything— until I remember that at eight o’clock I have to screw Gilbert Tucker. Elizabeth even reminds me about this before I leave the house.

“Try and get some good angles for the cameras, pet, and make sure the full trick’s turned. Asherton wants to see more than just you and Mr. Tucker playing with each other’s equipment.”

I drive to the City in a black mood which gets blacker when I arrive. I’ve forgotten that I didn’t clean up before leaving the flat yesterday, and now I have to rush around at top speed because I haven’t allowed extra time for the chores.

When Gil arrives he asks for coffee, which is an unusual request for a client at that hour. I always do have coffee available for the early shift, but most of the time I’m the only one who takes a sip—in the intervals between appointments. The clients don’t like to waste time coffee-drinking when they’re paying big money for something else, but this lost clerical innocent actually expects to sit on the kitchen barstool and socialise! He says he “just wants to talk” because “sex isn’t so important as building a relationship.” Why he can’t admit he wants to fuck I don’t know, but perhaps he feels he has to go through the motions of “saving me” before he lets it all hang out.

“Look, mate,” I say good-naturedly, knowing we have to get a move on, “I’m not an escort, paid to chat with you! You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want one of those.”

“I’ve bought the time,” he says. “Can’t I do what I like with it?”

He’s got to be seduced—and at eight o’clock in the bloody morning when I’m supposed to be doing routine stuff on automatic pilot! I want to opt out but when I think of Asherton’s face if I wind up with no viewable tape I set to work. It takes less than five minutes to get Gil upstairs but I grudge every second of them.

At the top of the stairs outside the door of the main bedroom I pause, just as I always do, to usher the client across the threshold ahead of me. Then as Gil passes by I flick the switch that turns on the hidden cameras. It looks like a light switch. Nobody ever glances twice at it and nobody ever sees me turn it on. Although at the beginning of my career I recorded every session in case a client turned violent, nowadays I pick and choose. There’s no point in recording if the client’s a sexual non-event (no market for our porn sideline) and if we already have a performance of his on tape to protect ourselves if he ever tries to make trouble, so I suppose on average I film no more than half the sessions a day. There’s a camera hidden in the fake smoke alarm, a camera hidden behind the collage of nude photos along one wall and, sneakiest of all, a camera tucked into one of the metal knobs on the ornate iron bedframe. That’s for close-ups. The cameras are wired to transmit pictures directly onto videotape which is activated by the electronic equipment in the second bedroom. Tommy has a great time cutting and splicing the film from the three cameras so that the viewer gets a jolt every twelve minutes, just as the porn industry recommends. Porn’s very scientific and well researched nowadays. Boring.

I’m not expecting much from Gil. When we did the freebie he was kind of pathetic as he was so out of practice, and this time he’s not much better but I can see he’s got some kind of mild potential. It helps that I’ve done him before and know that provided I take care he’s not going to seize up at the crucial moment, but I must say I’m relieved when I get past the tricky zone.

I glance at my watch but surreptitiously so that the gesture doesn’t show on camera. The fuck’s going to be a quickie but I can’t coast home, I’ve got to build to an erotic designer climax in three minutes flat. And all this before eight-thirty in the morning! God, I don’t know how those downmarket leisure-workers can do it for peanuts. At least I get well paid.