‘Very nice.’ For one sweet second I thought he might actually want to talk about my work. ‘So. Is it true that Alessandro Bertolli showed you his player’s entrance?’
I could see Hilary in the front row, sitting with her head in her hands. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,’ I replied, and watched the leer fade and die as Johnny Buckle fought to recover from my froideur.
‘Very noble of you. Well now, moving on, I always like to do a bit of extra research on our guests.’ Johnny fixed me with a shark’s predatory grin. ‘I’ve heard you’ve got a very clever little party trick, Lil.’
‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ I began, but Johnny had found a new seam.
‘Don’t be coy. I’m sure our audience want to know about your special talent, and I don’t just mean between the sheets, eh?’ He gave me a knowing wink, to more giggling from the horde beyond the studio lights. ‘So why don’t you tell us about this mind-reading?’
‘It’s not mind-reading,’ I explained, feeling the irritation seep into my voice. If Hilary wanted calm, she could come up and do this interview in my place. ‘It’s about noticing the details that most people don’t see then piecing them together in a way that sounds like you’ve got a hotline to the other side. The same stunt so-called psychics pull on the suckers that go to them.’
‘Ooh, sceptic. Thought you’d be into all that stuff, being the artistic type. You know, touchy-feely hocus pocus.’ I waited. Sure enough, he couldn’t resist. ‘So what can you tell us about Johnny Buckle, then?’
He’ll be fine as long as you let him win...
I made my decision; I had to attack before this cretin came anywhere near the rest of my life, or, worse, began to encroach on Daniel’s sanctuary. I appraised my host as if I were meeting him for his first sitting, and switched everything else off. The cameras, lights, audience all disappeared, and I was left alone with Johnny Buckle.
It wasn’t just the body language. It was all of him. His way of talking to his guests and colleagues; the clothes he wore; even this exhibitionist profession he had chosen. Each piece clicked together as I looked on. This was how I found the vulnerability, the hidden picture that my clients loved, but right now it was what I was about to use to nail the bastard.
‘Hell-oo? Is there anybody there? Come on, what dirty little secret can you reveal about good old Johnny Buckle?’
I smiled. ‘Little’s the operative word, isn’t it, Johnny?’ There was a sudden rush of pure pleasure as I saw his grin begin to slip. ‘It must be tough, lying there with your first girlfriend, thinking, this is it, the moment you’ve been waiting for, and she ends up in hysterics when she sees your cock. In fact, all these years later and it can still stop you getting it up, can’t it?’
Sometimes I had to backtrack, or dig deeper, but tonight I knew that I had scored an indescribably satisfying direct hit. I thought Good Old Johnny Buckle was about to have a coronary in front of his adoring viewers.
The studio fell silent, then there was a collective howl of laughter from audience and crew alike, so loud that Johnny struggled to be heard as he yelled, ‘And on that load of bollocks, we’ll be back after the break.’ As the studio lights dimmed he leaned forward so that his florid face was only inches from mine. ‘I’m going to bury you, you fucking bitch,’ he hissed, and stormed off to the sanctuary of his dressing room.
Jarred rushed up to re-powder my nose and cheeks. ‘I brought you a drink.’ He pressed a glass into my hand.
‘I don’t need water, thanks.’
He gave me a conspiratorial smile. ‘It’s vodka, darling. Forget everything I said. We’ve been waiting two years for someone to do that to the fucker.’
Finn
I was only half-watching the television. It flickered silently in the corner of the room and sheer novelty drew my eyes to it as Blaine trailed a line of cocaine across the hollow of my stomach.
I thought at first she was some child prodigy or other; some precocious little twelve-year old shit explaining how she’d been playing the violin or piano or ukulele since before she could walk. I almost didn’t give her a second glance. Almost.
Then, ‘Whoa.’ That’s all. Not even said, to be honest: just made some soft, breathed sound of appreciation to myself, at this slip of a woman in an evening gown the colour of storybook mermaids. She sat there, as still as the eye of a storm, while some fat, sweating bastard gesticulated and bounced around her and the camera, seemingly as captivated, suddenly pulled in so that the whole screen was filled with her face: a sleek, severe bob of midnight-blue hair sculpted around eyes that were carved from fragments of glacial ice, clever and unblinking. In that moment, I didn’t know whether I wanted to fuck her or be her.