Worst. Person. Ever. (23 page)

“Neal, good God. What’s happened to you?”

“A bit of a sprain in my ankle, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all?”

“You know, Ray, you could have a little empathy for a friend in a bad situation.”

“How is this bad, Neal? You’re ensconced in a tableau that’s a cross between a
Hello!
Magazine home visit and Prince Harry’s trip to Las Vegas.” I plucked some capicola from his snack platter, along with a slab of wonderfully ripe Camembert. “But where the fuck is all the pussy you were talking about?”

“Oh, that.”

“What do you mean, ‘
Oh, that
’?”

“It’s not just the ankle, Ray.”

“Oh?” Suddenly I felt like a bit of a shit as I pokerfacedly waited for Neal to tell me he had inoperable leprosy or one of those no-hoper diseases with its own dedicated coloured lapel ribbon. “Go on.”

“I’ve got pussy fatigue, Ray.”

My eyeballs exploded.

“It’s what happens when you have too much sex too quickly, Ray. Surely you’ve had it before.”

“I have never in my life even heard of pussy fatigue, Neal, and I seriously doubt it exists. You have no idea how hard I worked to get here to Thong Kong from the yacht, and now you tell me you’re
pussied out?
”

“It’s a real condition. Google it.”

“You know darn well there’s no Internet because of the nuclear war. You just don’t want to share.”

“That’s a bit harsh, Ray. I’d be happy to share, except the ladies have all gone off on a healing retreat this afternoon.”

I was so stricken by this news that tiny convulsed dinosaur noises emerged from my choked larynx.

Neal went on. “I don’t think they had dick fatigue—I think it’s more of a spiritual cleansing. Glorious girls, though. So giving. So concerned about my pleasure, never theirs. And their energy! Boundless. When they’re not servicing me, they’re off in the kitchen making me snacks or giving me foot rubs to get me through the worst of my sprained ankle. Oh, look.” He pointed to the TV screen, which displayed the messy aftermath of a particularly forceful brawl. “You can see the bone sticking out of that bloke’s leg there. Poor fucker. Good thing he’s not in Bonriki, though. He’d be on the spit in seconds. Care for some champagne, Ray?”

“Well, Neal, you certainly seem to have landed on your feet here, even with a sprained ankle. How, exactly, did you sprain it, anyway?”

“Come on, Ray, don’t be a dick. You could even move in, if you wanted. There’s a nice little hut out back I use as a storeroom. It’s a bit small, and you’d have to move some tinned goods and a deep-freeze to fit in a cot, but it’s a big step up from one of the tents in the crew village. Those tents give me the chills. Hermit crabs’ll come in at night and eat your face off.”

I remained disgusted. “How the
fuck
did you manage to become Boss Hogg here? How the
fuck
do you manage to bag the only decent air-conditioned accommodation between Guam and Bora Bora?”

“This house is a legacy of the people’s princess, it is. Brings a tear to my eye.”

My attention was temporarily sidelined by some truly astonishing Brie and a mound of pâté, while Neal fast-forwarded through the DVD. The sight of so many Australians rankled me. “Fucking Aussies. Fucking Kiwis.
Smug, smug, smug.
We’re so violent! Look at us! Fight fight fight! We have vibrant little economies shielded from pollution and immigration, and our restaurants are really good.
Fucking Kiwis. Fucking Aussies.”

“Mind your language, Ray.”

“Have you turned into a fucking American?”

“Ray, we’re in
Princess Di
’s house.”

“What?”

“This was going to be Princess Di’s sanctuary from the world. One of her many rich boyfriends built it just for her. The most perfect house on the planet, as far away as it is geographically possible to be from intrusive cameramen.”

I looked at Neal with my coldest death-ray eyes. “Neal, are you rubbishing my occupation? My very way of making a living?”

“Ray, I’m not saying it was you
in particular
who murdered Diana.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m glad you hold me in such high esteem.”

“But every time I make love in here, I can’t help feeling a pang in my heart. She was so young. So good. Murdered by the media.”

“Neal, I hate to break the news to you, but you don’t have pussy fatigue. You have displaced royal bang syndrome.”

Neal stared at me goggle-eyed.

“I’ll explain it to you: you live in a cardboard Samsung box in a West London alley and yet you
really
want to get it on with some rich titled piece. Except you can’t—you live in a cardboard fucking box—so instead you bang every restaurant hostess from Heathrow to Shepherd’s
Bush who takes pity on you. But it’s not the same. Is it?
Is it
, Neal?”

Neal, of course, was now bawling. “You’re right, Ray. It’s not. I don’t want to fuck non-royals. Not in my heart.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No. I want to fuck the people’s princess. Except she’s gone. It’s like since 1997 I’ve been adrift on an asteroid, being bombarded by non-royal pussy at every turn, and it’s driving me mad!
Mad
, I say.”

“Excellent.” I rubbed my hands. “We’re making progress here.”

Right then Sarah walked in. Christ, just what I needed: Sarah to see Neal all vulnerable and needy in precisely the way women find irresistible.

“Neal, how’s your ankle?”

“Oh, hi, Sarah,” said Neal from within his silk sheets, looking nauseatingly like a puppy. “I’m getting by, I suppose.”

Sarah glanced at me, her expression saying,
Is there something I need to know?

I shrugged. “Neal here is mourning Princess Diana.”

“Oh, Neal,” Sarah gently remonstrated. “That was so long ago. She needs peace now. She really does. And we all need to move on … individually and as a society.”

“You think so?”

“I
know
so, Neal.”

Neal wore a face of profound sadness. “You’re American, Sarah, so you’ll never know what it was like to have Diana as your princess … your
very own
princess.”

“But I
do
read magazines—at least, I used to, before the Internet. And if Di’s wedge-cut hairdo didn’t change the way the women in my hometown looked at both themselves and at royalty, then nothing did. She was a force of nature.”

“Seriously? In the United States, too? Her hair was her trademark, you know.”

“Oh, I know. People think Americans are morbidly obese Wal-Mart shoppers who willfully undereducate their young people just so they can save a few extra dollars to pay for their five-ton recreational vehicles, but Americans are
more
than that, Neal.”

“Really?”

“Yes,
really.
Americans are …”

I swear that if real life could ever break into a song and dance number, that would have been the moment.

“Americans are …”

Neal was staring at Sarah wide-eyed, as if waiting for her to confirm whether fairies were real.

“Americans are … basically Englishmen with the English part removed.”

“Yes?” Neal sat up on the bed, clearly still in suspense. “What else?”

Sarah paused to think. “Americans are …”

Needy glances were exchanged in all directions.

Her face brightened. “Americans are the people who watch the TV show we are currently producing on this very island! Isn’t that something?”

Silence. Neal slumped back on his pillows.

Sarah looked crushed by her failure—and touchingly demure. “I don’t know what to say about Americans, Neal. They’ll do anything for no reason whatsoever and
go down in flames smiling at the TV camera while doing it. It’s kind of awesome, but it worked much better when there were only a few million of us instead of 350 million. There’s not much left to consume. In fifteen years, we turn into India. We’re a catastrophe in the making.”

Neal looked unutterably sad—and sympathetic. Sarah looked like she was melting. Ho. Ly. Fuck. Neal and Sarah were having a moment of real connection. This was intolerable.

“Neal, about my Cure T-shirt …”

“What about it, Ray?”

“May I please have it?”

“I don’t have your shirt, Ray.”

“Now, now, don’t be coy. Just tell me where it is, and I’ll fetch it and pretend you never brazenly lied to me like you just did.”

“I didn’t take your shirt, Ray. You gave it to Sarah, remember?”

“Oh. Right. I did.”
Fuck.

“And I gave it to Fiona,” said Sarah. “I hope that’s okay. She looked so sad, having to jet back to do the recasting. I thought the shirt would be a nice pick-me-up, although I had to Google the Cure to find out who they were.”

“
I
—” I was livid, but couldn’t let on.

“Fiona’s back,” said Neal. “She’ll probably be resting up in the tent city.”

“You should go visit her, Raymond. I know she still has strong feelings for you,” Sarah said.

“I’m sure she does.”

Mental images of Fiona’s warty face quickly made me remember why I was really there on the North Island:
Thong Kong and the promise of unlimited pussy. I felt conflicted because I had genuine feelings for Sarah, yet I also still wanted a full-on highly lubricated orgy. I sighed. Life does throw us these cruel existential puzzles.

Sarah had to leave. “Bye, fellas. I’m off to tame the beast!”

I was unsure what she meant, but whoever the beast was, I would love to be him, being tamed by Sarah.

“Sarah’s a nice girl, Ray. You sweet on her?”

“Neal, I came here for Thong Kong, and I want it now! I want acres of throbbing, needy cocktail-bunny quim. I want—wait—I think I
am
sweet on Sarah.”

“Well, she’s a keeper, she is. Just like that
LACEY
of yours.”

“
LACEY
is not
mine
, Neal. Why on earth does everyone think we’re life partners?”

“
You’re
the one who had the epic fuckfest with her.”

“Neal, there’s just something not right in the head with
LACEY.
The only thing you can do to fix a girl like her is go back in time to the age of fourteen, or whenever it was, and unmolest her or whatever it was that happened to her—but you can’t really do that, so instead we end up with a world of
LACEY
s, wasting valuable food and oxygen and causing massive problems within the service industry.”

“I hear there’s a sacrificial rock nearby. Want to go see it? I need to exercise a bit to help the sprain. Could be fun—a small hike, nature, coconuts …”

“Neal, you’re trying to change the subject. I want a pussy blizzard and instead you offer me a field trip to see a
rock
?”

“Touch of culture never hurt anyone.”

“And how did they ever get a rock onto this island anyway? The whole place is made of coral.”

“See, Ray—makes you want to investigate, doesn’t it?”

I sighed. “I suppose so. Get out your cane and we’ll go see this magical stone.”

Neal quickly donned another of Arnaud du Puis’s linen outfits. “Some people say the rock was delivered here by space aliens, Ray.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

We headed out the door into the perpetually hot, wet terry towel of a day. The idea of a sacred rock made me think of Stonehenge and alien theories about it. “Stonehenge being designed by aliens is crap, Neal. Think about it: aliens establish contact with earthlings and instead of giving us something useful, like mathematics, wheels or the power of flight, they decide instead to give us
large rocks?
”

“Never thought of it that way, Ray.”

We rounded a corner. Neal’s face lit up. “We’re here!”

I looked at the rock. It was a rock. I hated it. “You lead me to believe we’re off to see Stonehenge, and instead all I see is
this
?”

“Ray, I think you oversold it to yourself. I only said it was a rock. Even still, it’s sort of awe-inspiring. Reminds us that we’re all made of stars.”

“It’s a fucking rock!” I kicked it, which was a stupid idea. I hopped about for a bit on one foot, shrieking.

“The gods are punishing you for mocking their sacred rock.”

I literally screamed at Neal, “I don’t fucking care about some fucking rock!”

“Temper, temper. Come back to the house and I’ll find you some painkillers.”

I felt a rare pang of remorse for screaming at Neal. “Some painkillers might be rather nice.”

Back at the house, Elspeth and Tabs greeted us at the front door, dressed in Playboy Bunny costumes. At last, the gods were smiling on me.

Then I remembered: didn’t Neal owe me that piece of red plastic?
That fucker.