Drink in hand, Richard Cody wandered deeper into the enveloping cavern of the club and found a tub chair close to a table on which a topless brunette was dancing. Her rounded arms and real thighs and splendid buttocks seemed a relief after the exposed musculature of the other women. As he took in the spectacle of the woman on the table he thought he recognised something familiar about her. Her name—was it Tiffany? Or was that the one at the Minx Club? Anyway, he thought, what did her name matter? She had a great arse.
He sat down and leant back and felt an odd and deep pleasure—all the sweeter for being familiar—take hold of him. He was thinking of how, for an eternity, people had thought paradise was somewhere else, whereas now it was here; of course, one had to pay, but then whatever pleasure you wanted was yours and you never needed to find out what their names were.
‘Ah,’ he thought, ‘how sweet! How sweet!’
And he leant forward and raised his hand, holding out a twenty-dollar note in his extended fingers. Though a little taken aback when the Doll deftly plucked the note from his hand—for he had not intended to part with it quite so readily—he still felt momentarily enchanted; life no longer seemed so bad, and it was as if the world spun its peculiar way merely in order to ultimately please him.
If Richard Cody had no idea who she was, the Doll, now she could see him clearly, recognised him. He was Mr TV, Richard Cody. In the way of a pine furniture catalogue, Richard Cody was dully reassuring: always the same and telling you what you already knew. He made you feel comfortable. But he seemed a little unreal, even spooky, sitting there in front of her, tipping her, talking to her.
The Doll had heard from Maria that he had become something of a regular in recent months, though normally only on a Tuesday night early in the evening with a few tv executives. The Doll had never been working when he was there, and this was the first time she had seen him in the club. Jodie had turned a trick with him a few weeks before. She said that he had a flat fat cock like a crushed Coke can, and that it was so awful she charged him double, telling him it was her going rate.
“You’re a gentleman,” said the Doll, smiling as she slid the twenty-dollar note down the side of her knickers. “I like to dance for real gentlemen.”
Holding his eyes with her own, the Doll then swung round and fell to her knees, so that her buttocks were very close to Richard Cody’s face. She looked over her shoulder at him, and as her arse slowly rocked above his nose, a drink appeared beneath it.
“Compliments of Mr Holstein, the manager,” said the topless waitress indicating, with a slight flick of her head, Ferdy, who was standing over at the bar with a circle of five fat-gutted businessmen. Ferdy raised his glass to Richard Cody.
Unlike the businessmen, Ferdy Holstein was small in both height and girth. He had originally been a budgie of a man who, after years of weight powders, steroids and the dreary round of gymnasiums, had transformed himself into a barrel-chested budgie of a man. Though nearly bald, he had bleached what hair remained a bright blond. For all that was ludicrous about him, he was still able to manifest menace.
A piece of bright icing, Ferdy peeled off from the doughnut of suits and walked over.
“I’m a great admirer of your work, Mr Cody,” he said, “as I’ve noticed you’ve become of ours.” He reached into an oversized pocket of his baggy jeans, pulled out a business card and handed it to Richard Cody. “If ever I can be of help, let me know.” As he spoke, a slight spume of white saliva gathered at the edge of his mouth.
Richard Cody looked at the card. “Ferdy Holstein,” he mused, then looked back up. “You’ve been in the news, Ferdy,” he said, pocketing the card.
“Unfortunate event,” Ferdy Holstein said.
“That drug rape trial, wasn’t it?”
“I was just a witness,” Ferdy Holstein said. “As far as I could see, it was consensual sex between my business partner and the girl. But I never said I saw everything.”
“Unfortunate,” Richard Cody repeated. And then he lit up: “Terrible thing to be tangled in a trial, Ferdy—you know what the Thais say? ‘It is better to eat dog shit than to go to court.’”
“They’ve got a point,” Ferdy Holstein said, taking Richard Cody’s hand. “It’s good to meet. Like I said, if I can assist you with anything, let me know.” He stressed the “anything”. “We’re a misunderstood industry and we like to help our friends in the media, Mr Cody. Otherwise we all end up eating dog shit.”
Yet when Richard Cody flashed Ferdy the briefest of smiles, it was Ferdy who was left feeling both oddly complicit and slightly fearful. Ferdy looked up into the light and, finding the Doll, indicated Richard Cody with a motion of his head.
The music track ended. As the next dancer was announced and the inescapable beat started pushing again, the Doll stepped off the purple felt-lined table and made her way to where Richard Cody once more sat alone.
Later, the Doll would think back on that strange half-hour she spent in one of the private rooms with Richard Cody—two shows in a row, paid for not by him but by Ferdy. At first Richard Cody simply wanting her to fondle her breasts in front of him as he mumbled obscenities. How confident he was—so unlike most men, who, no matter what their bluster, were often like lambs once they were alone with a naked woman: hopeless, lost lambs. But not this man. At one point he even quite cheerfully insulted her, saying:
“Isn’t it humiliating?”
“What’s humiliating?” said the Doll, picking up her drink, knowing full well what he meant. “Drinking a vodka with tonic rather than straight?”
“Ho ho,” said Richard Cody, without smiling. “No.” He opened his hand outwards, extending his little fingers—the tiny fingers of a child, slight, soft and without strength—as though he were a magician who had just conjured a dove out of the air and released it from his palm. The Doll looked down at his hand and felt revolted.
“This,” he continued. “Being here. Doing … this. You are an interesting woman. You could do anything you wanted.”
“And your job, my friend,” said the Doll, “that’s not humiliating?”
Richard Cody made a noise somewhere between a dismissive laugh and a hiss.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Now—let’s see your arse.”
And the Doll smiled the smile that Ferdy had taught them all to use, trying so very hard not to be upset by having to continue dancing naked above this man. And as she danced once more, as he again chanted how he wanted to slide his cock up her arse and then into her mouth and then into her arse, the Doll felt betrayed by her own words.
Why hadn’t she shut up, just kept playing the ditz, keeping herself hidden, safe, so that this shit would just pour off her as it normally did? And at that moment, the control, the sass and the front—which at other times seemed so potent and almost second nature—stretched to paper thin, and the Doll felt somehow deceived by life.
At the end, as she was putting her clothes back on, the Doll noticed him pull a small bottle out from his jacket pocket, pour some fluid into his hands and, in a strange ritual, wash them. She felt as if she were filth being flushed down a sink.