Heartbreaker (30 page)

We finish at eight-twenty sharp. That gives him five minutes to clean up before leaving and it gives me five minutes on my own to prepare for the next client. Gil knows he’s allowed a shower provided he takes no more than two minutes, but he shyly asks if I’ll have a shower with him. No way, mate! You just want another jolt but time’s up and out you go. I don’t put it to him as frankly as that, of course. I’m all rueful regret but I don’t back down. Why am I being so brutally professional with this nice bloke? Because I can’t afford to get involved. Because I don’t like to think I’m shafting him towards Asherton. Because this session’s a nightmare, that’s the truth of it, and I’ve got to stay detached to keep sane.

“Hey, listen!” I say casually, following my instructions from Elizabeth as I lead the way downstairs. “I know I’m out of your price range, but I like you a hell of a lot and I’m sure now we could have a great time together. Why don’t I fix it with my manager so that you get a big discount? She always allows me one client I see just for pleasure.”

I wonder if he can possibly be stupid enough to swallow this, but he does. It’s all that romantic idealism which is slopping around in his head—plus his recent eighteen months on a no-sex diet which is enough to drive any normal man up the wall. Gil may be a clergyman but he wasn’t designed to be a celibate saint. He was designed to be a good man in a one-to-one committed relationship with the companion of his dreams. It’s just his bad luck that his dreams are the Church’s nightmares, but I suppose these gay clergymen hope the Church will redefine the term “unnatural sex” so that everyone can live happily ever after. Well, a new definition’s certainly needed, considering that we now know men have an erogenous zone by the prostate which can only be accessed via the anus. What can be more natural than wanting to tickle an erogenous zone? But I can’t quite see the dog-collared straights ever debating that one in the Church of England’s General Synod.

I suddenly realise Gil’s saying: “I really shouldn’t see you any more.”

Shit, I have to run the seduction line again and we’re clean out of time.

I do my best. Physical contact. Gooey words. A real melting moment. He backs down, says he’ll call Elizabeth.

“You’ll find her very understanding!” I say, smiling, as I open the front door wide, but still he doesn’t go. He’s giving me a flyer—something about gay Christians and how they all need to look after one another.

Big deal! Who’s looking after Gil?

“I thought the Christian view was that all human beings should look after one another,” I say, somehow keeping my voice casual although I’m ripe to yell with impatience. “Why should caring be allocated according to what people get up to in bed?” And as he opens his mouth to deliver some pathetic activist spiel I say with a laugh: “No, don’t tell me! We’ll talk about it next time.”

I finally succeed in shoehorning him out of the flat. Then I go to the kitchen and toss the flyer in the garbage.

“That was very nice, dear,” says Elizabeth to me that evening after viewing the take of the third camera. Following orders I’ve brought back the tapes myself instead of leaving them to be collected by Tommy. “Very professional.” She glances at Asherton who’s looking like a food junkie after a thousand-calorie hit: all wet lips and bright eyes and a tongue that can’t stay still. “But personally,” she adds, “I’m still not with you on this one, Ash. Tucker’s looks are pretty run-of-the-mill if you ask me, and Gavin had to work ever so hard to make him look interesting.”

“I’m sure Gavin can help Gilbert become more accomplished! How long do you think it would take, Gavin my dear, to buff him to a high lustre?”

Asherton’s insisted that I should be present while the tapes are being played so that I can see for myself what improvements need to be made. I’m loathing every minute of this scene, although I keep my face expressionless. I don’t mind seeing myself on tape. I stopped being self-conscious about my performances a long time ago and in fact it does me good to see how professional I am at my job. But I just hate to see that mega-perv drooling over Gil.

Answering his question I say: “If I could see him a couple of times a week for a month, I’m sure I could produce a big improvement. Basically he just needs practice.”

“Plus a little instruction, I think . . .” Asherton gets technical. I’m handed paper and a pen and told to take notes.

Eventually Elizabeth reins him in. “My boy doesn’t do SM, as you well know.”

“But this is merely exploring the boundaries!”

“Yes, but your boundaries are on bloody roller skates!”

They haggle away about pervy sex and I listen like a zombie as I wait for the chance to escape.

“. . . all right, my boy’ll do that but he won’t do . . .”

“. . . yes, yes, of course I want to keep the boy happy, but I don’t see why he can’t get Gilbert to—”

I suddenly remember Nicholas offering me a job as if I counted, I mattered, I was special, and the next moment my voice says: “I’m nobody’s ‘boy.’ I’m a twenty-nine-year-old man.”

Neither of them takes any notice. I’m not a person to them at that moment. I’m just interactive bait for the fish.

Finally Elizabeth says: “What exactly are you after here, Ash? I don’t see how we can discuss Tucker’s training properly if you don’t tell me what you plan to do with him at the GOLD meeting.”

“Pas devant le garçon, ma chère.”

This is a power-play. Elizabeth doesn’t speak French though she does speak German, the result of working for a year in Bonn when she was young. (Something to do with providing British girls for the army of occupation, but the Germans got very pissed off and Elizabeth’s been xenophobic ever since.) However, when Asherton spouts his French she outmanoeuvres him by guessing what he wants. In-depth discussions about GOLD are always top secret. “Gavin,” she says colourlessly, and jerks her head towards the door.

Obediently I jump to my feet, but seconds later I’m hiding behind the half-open door of the office across the hall. It’s evening. Susanne’s gone. The room’s in darkness. I peer through the space between the hinges, and sure enough Asherton opens the living-room door to check that I’m not eavesdropping. When it closes again I give him another twenty seconds either to resettle himself or to be paranoid enough to take a second peep, and then I’m gliding back across the hall to put my ear to the panel.

Elizabeth’s exclaiming: “You’re joking! A tableau? If you’re worried about the members getting jaded, the answer is to overhaul the standard rituals, not to stage a weird one-off where people stand around like statues!”

“You’re making too narrow an interpretation of the word ‘tableau,’ my love. Naturally what I have in mind is a
tableau vivant
—”

“Oh, stop showing off your bloody French!”

“—by which I mean an exciting happening (as we used to say in the sixties) with minimal dialogue. We lead up to it by putting on a full-blooded version of the black mass to get everyone in the mood—all the trimmings, lots of incense, Gilbert swathed in yards of heavenly Anglo-Catholic lace—”

“Well, pardon my laughter, I’m sure! As I said only the other day, this is just
so
old hat—”

“Do you want to know my plan or don’t you?”

“All right, dear, go on. You do ever such a nice version of the black mass for a warm-up. And then?”

“Then we stage the first tableau. I’m designing a graded series of four, each one more stimulating than the last and all of them on the theme of the dominator dominated.” Asherton hesitates for a second before adding smoothly: “Of course I would have consulted you at the start about the tableaux, but they don’t involve any occult practice. I was hoping you’d design the black mass, but if you now feel such a rite’s beneath you—”

“You can rejig the last one I designed. What happens in the first tableau?”

“Gilbert, who of course has dominated the mass, now becomes the victim on the altar table. The girl who played the quasi-deflowered pseudo-virgin in the mass is temporarily set aside, and—”

“Wait a mo, you’ve lost me. How do you get Tucker to fuck the girl in the mass?” Elizabeth’s gone into professional mode. This is Business with a capital B. “You can’t get away with fakery!” she says. “The audience would never stand for it, and anyway Tucker’s not an actor, he’d never be convincing.”

“This is where Gavin comes in.”

“Oh no he doesn’t!”

“Let me explain. In the mass Gavin is the acolyte, doing the deflowering on Gilbert’s behalf. Then in the first tableau he has a struggle with Gilbert and emerges dominant. The struggle, of course, can be made to look
deliciously
stimulating, particularly if Gilbert’s taught the right wrestling moves.”

“And what happens next?”

“Gavin then fucks Gilbert while the girl watches, and after that, in the second tableau, the girl adopts the role of dominatrix and we can have a most thought-provoking threesome in which—”

“You’re trying to cram in too much, and if you take my advice you’ll simplify—cut out the straight stuff and make the whole show one hundred per cent gay. Don’t worry about the straights in the audience—work in a lesbian duet somewhere and both sexes’ll be more than happy. In fact if the choreography’s done right even an all-male duet will have everyone panting to join in.”

“Yes, but—”

“Get the Big Boys to pick up a rent boy to play the virgin at the mass—or better still a resting actor who can ham it up. The acolyte can still do the mock-deflowering—I can’t see Tucker playing the lead there even when the pseudo-virgin’s a man—but make sure the acolyte’s attractive and competent, and no, you’re
not
using Gavin! My boy doesn’t do party work, he doesn’t do any stuff which strays across criminal boundaries and he certainly doesn’t go poncing around in a series of fucking tableaus!”

“The word is ‘tableaux,’ my love. There’s no ‘s’—the French put an ‘x’ on the end and pronounce the word as if it were still in the singular.”

“Oh, bugger the frigging French! Ash, I mean what I say about Gavin.”

“But he’ll only be required for the mass and the first two tableaux! He won’t feature in the last two when the Big Boys take over and stage the hard stuff!”

“How hard is hard?”

“Well, if you bear in mind dear Gilbert’s calling, what could be more wondrously compelling than a climax involving a high, wide, wooden cross?”

“Something that doesn’t run the risk of you being banged up for murder! Supposing he dies?”

“Of course he won’t die! It takes hours to kill someone that way!”

“But he could go into shock, have a stroke—”

“My dear, I know exactly what I’m doing and I assure you Gilbert will survive!”

“Yes—to tell the police everything! Ash, you simply haven’t thought this through!”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have enough leverage to shut him up. I agree you probably have enough leverage to get him to perform the mass—a video of him with Gavin ought to do the trick, no problem. But if he’s a victim on the scale you have in mind he’s going to need more than the threat of embarrassment and humiliation to stop him talking. Don’t forget that according to Gavin, Tucker’s an activist. In other words, it’s no secret that he’s gay, and to get blackmail to act as a gobstopper where GBH is involved you
must
be able to expose a secret, preferably a criminal act which is more than just a run-of-the-mill party threesome and preferably a criminal act which doesn’t incriminate anyone else—”

“My dear, I’m finding your relentless scepticism distinctly tiresome. Did you seriously think I hadn’t thought of all that?”

“So what’s the plan?”

“In the third tableau he’ll take part in a criminal act in which no other people are involved. Do you remember Bugsy, Bonzo’s Great Dane?”

“Oh God, not that silly mutt who tried to eat Norah’s chihuahuas!” Elizabeth’s laughing. She’s actually laughing. Then before Asherton can finally lose his temper with her she says pleasantly: “Well, you’re certainly doing your best to ginger up GOLD, dear, and you can be sure I wish you well—if I’m giving you a hard time it’s only because I’m worried about what would happen to you if anything went wrong.”

“You mean you’re worried about what would happen to
you
if anything went wrong!”

“Now who’s being sceptical! No, I’m not worried about myself. If Gavin doesn’t participate, I’m not involved . . . But don’t let’s quarrel, there’s a pet, life’s too short. How about another gin and tonic?”

Stiff with horror I creep away.

“Hey, Junk-Hunk.”

“Piss off, Trash-Tart.”

After spending a lousy night and an even lousier day agonising about Gilbert Tucker it’s a relief to get home and start baring my teeth at Susanne. In times of stress there’s comfort in a familiar routine.

Taking no notice of my half-hearted order to piss off, Susanne demands: “Why’s everyone so hyped up over this Gilbert creature? I’ve had Tommy bellyaching about having to splice the Gilbert tapes in a rush for the Cobra. I’ve had Elizabeth oozing into the phone to the Gilbert that he’s going to get a jumbo discount in the future. And now I’ve had to bump the Greek geek off the Thursday late-shift so that the Gilbert can get a prime slot! What’s going on?”

“Ask Elizabeth.”

“You joking? She doesn’t employ me to ask the wrong questions when there’s something weird going on, and anyone can see this Gilbert business is totally weirdissimo. Why’s the Cobra frothing over like this?”

“Overloaded with venom. Wants the multiple orgasm of the big bite.”

“Don’t we all, pet, as Elizabeth would say . . . Hey, you’re looking flaky, you know that? Dark circles under the eyes, skin too pale, hairline looking more moth-eaten—”

“Shut it, slag!”

“You’d better perk up before Friday when Sir Colin takes you to the opera! Is he planning to grope your bits in his box?”

“So what if he is? At least my bits aren’t pervy, like those bowling-ball boobs you lug around!”

“At least my bits are mine to do what I like with, which is more than you can say for any of your bits!”