She was coming to meet me at a trot, somehow having escaped from her husband the other way. I grabbed her, nodded to the goon with a feeble smile. He turned away, walked deliberately back towards the door I’d come through. I crushed her close, squeezing the life out of her, pulling her along the corridor.
“Wait! Here —”
“No, er,” I gasped, trying to rush and reveal deep heartfelt passion. What the hell was her name? “We must have… I can’t wait, darling.”
“This one!”
She tried slowing into another alcove. Luckily it was occupied, a couple twisting sinuously to synchronized gasps. I hauled her, whisper-babbling. A goon turned aside, arms folded. God knows what they were used to.
“Last round, folks!” The announcer’s echo made me whimper.
“Here, darling?”
“Yes, yes!” I flung her down and clawed feverishly at her bodice. Why the hell are their clothes so complicated? You’d think they’d go for simplicity. You can get scarred for life. “I can’t wait, er…” Name? Esme, Ellen? “Darling.”
Directly below us, faint clashes of the kitchen. If I’d had any sense I’d have counted the windows along that side to make absolutely sure, but maybe the dog handlers would have stopped me.
We overtook passion on the outward run, me ripping at her, shoving the dress off her shoulders and scrabbling at her thighs. The more uncontrollable my sheer lust, the more authentic my presence out here in the corridor while the idiot of an announcer called for silence.
“Alhambra’s card, the jack of hearts!”
My mouth was everywhere on Esme, only occasionally meeting hers as we mangled and mauled.
“Don’t mark me, Lovejoy, for God’s sake, honey, no, no —”
“Darling,” I gasped, sprawling over Ella, almost forgetting why I was there in the storm of frenzy. There was no doubt she was gorgeous, a million times more wondrous than any woman I’d ever —
“Alhambra win…!”
Thanks, Heaven, I remembered to say as Emma and I sank into that mutual torment, giving hurt and receiving it, wrestling to deny and abuse. She was openly weeping with delight, mouthing crudities, emitting a guttural chugging cough as we —
“Alhambra lose… Alhambra win…”
Win, Nicko, I thought. At least, I would have thought that if I wasn’t sinking below consciousness as Elsa dragged me in and down and out into space and bliss was enveloping —
“Alhambra lose. Jack of hearts, and Alhambra lose…”
Eh? I slammed into Esta, listened to that reaching hum which followed me, calling desperately for my mind to realize, and
You can’t open a window with your pants down, nor trying to pull them up. You can’t kick, either. I had my jacket. I wrapped it round my arm, averted my face and slammed the window glass, feeling something maybe give in my elbow. I felt the muggy night air wash in.
“What the—?” somebody along the curved corridor called.
The lighter was a gas thing. I pressed, got light, spun the control for tallest flame, tried to look out and down as a goon hurtled at me, lobbed the thing out onto the cylinders below.
Heat slammed the world, spinning it round. Odd, but all a brain remembers is clatter, clatter, when you find it hard to think what on earth could be clattering, when fire is shooting with a terrible tearing noise and a whole side of a building comes apart with a low screaming sound.
I remember thinking I should have maybe warned Emelda, at least told her what I was planning, but that’s typical for me, because by then something prickly was cramming itself into my face and people were screaming about fire, and a great golden shape was mushrooming out of the darkness nearby as a building crumbled and the hillside spread light and flame as a beacon for the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
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YOUR mind plays tricks. I can see myself running, scrambling up when I fell among vegetation, hauling myself along on all fours when the terrain suddenly let me down. It was some old serial I’d seen when little, funny man at antics to make laughter. Except this one was bleeding, clothes anywhere. And it was me.
Finally laying himself down, spent and stunned, among rocks with a curtain of flames ascending the hillside, something from a biblical epic now, roaring with a terrible grandeur and a massive building’s turrets silhouetted against the orange-scarlet. So many colours, so much to see, if only the man’s eyes could see. They couldn’t quite focus. And people were screaming and shouts coming closer among scrub. And, oddest of all, whole trees suddenly exploding like they’d been fragged by grenades as the heat reached them and their aromatic perfumes caused the night to quiver in a death thrill as they sucked the flames into each burst of spark.
And the wahwahs, flicking their reds and yellows and blues in feeble simile while the mountainside erupted in
