July 2001. Max has four Lola songs on CD: the Dietrich one from The Blue Angel; Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’; the Kinks’ ‘Lola’; and ‘Whatever Lola Wants’ from Damn Yankees. Every now and then he plays one of them, but the song he listens to most is Dietrich’s. This takes him back to when Lola came to his place in February 1997 and did her Dietrich routine with the black corset, suspenders, etc. Max is haunted by that memory. Lola was impersonating an actress who impersonated a café entertainer in the Berlin of 1930. ‘Ich bin die fesche Lola, der Liebling der Saison! Ich hab’ ein Pianola zu Haus in mein Salon!’ Dietrich flings out the song with an adorable throwaway don’t-give-a-damn sluttish cheerfulness that is a footnote to Lola Bessington’s performance, a flicker of something ordinarily unseen in Lord Bessington’s daughter. This image, this flavour, joins the Lola of that winter day in St Martin’s Lane and the Dover Bookshop, the coltish Lola with cheeks like cold apples. There are so many Lolas! Flashes of her revolve in Max’s head from the glitterball of moments past. So many Lolas, so many moments. Gone.
More and more it comes to Max that he’s absorbed very little of Lola’s lolaness. ‘What’s the first thing you learned,’ says his mind, ‘when you first started writing?’
‘To explore my material,’ says Max.
‘And did you explore the many and varied lolanesses of Lola? The uplands and lowlands, mountains and plains, forests and savannahs? Did you commit to memory the latitudes and longitudes of the islands and archipelagos of Lola? Her winds and tides and barometric pressures? Her El Niños, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Some,’ says Max, ‘but not enough.’
‘What,’ says his mind, ‘you didn’t have time? You weren’t interested?’
‘Of course I was interested,’ says Max.
‘Interested how? Like when you look at a fast food menu and you say, “Gimme a cheeseburger, large fries, and a Diet Pepsi?” Real deep interest like that?’
‘Come on,’ says Max. ‘Enough already. I’m an idiot and I lost her.’
‘No,’ says his mind. ‘Not enough. You’re missing the point. Let’s talk about Lula Mae Cheeseburger with the large fries. If you’d given Lola all the attention and interest she deserved you wouldn’t have had anything left over for Texas takeaway. Schmuck! That’s what love is – when there’s nothing left over for another woman. Some explorer you are.’
‘You’ve got some mixed metaphors in there,’ says Max.
‘I do that when I get excited,’ says his mind. ‘I can’t help it.’