'Several.'
'Yours for one,' Colin tells me.
I'm unpleasantly aware of the flickering of screens around me. 'Aren't you my editor?' I appeal to Rufus.
'I'm still at the top of the pole, but I could do with more support. Your old friend is buzzing with ideas, and I can't think of a better choice when you've already worked together.'
'How are you saying we should do that?'
'Maybe like this,' Colin says and reclaims the computer again.
A waiter arrives with the starters but won't accept an order for another bottle; Colin has to type it on behalf of our host. I'm chewing some of my obscurely spiced squid by the time he completes his original task and lets me see the screen. It's displaying the first page of the chapter I sent to Rufus.
My head begins to throb, and the screen and its neighbours appear to join in as if they're revealing a shared pulse. 'Where have you got that?'
'It isn't online,' Colin laughs. 'I've called it up from my desk.'
The text isn't quite mine. I didn't suggest that 'Since Arbuckle is silent, viewers couldn't know if he sounded like a eunuch', nor 'The sight of Fatty as an outsize child in drag is creepier than it's funny'. I wouldn't necessarily argue with either observation, but it feels as if my chapter has mutated while I was asleep – almost as if my subconscious or someone else's took charge of the computer. Colin is consuming his moules.fr, scooping out the mussels and sipping from the shells. 'Fatty may have decided his gracefulness was the wrong kind of gay' – I suppose that's possible, and even 'Perhaps his penis rose up against the image he was projecting onscreen'. Dozens of my sentences have acquired extra spice to compete with these, but I don't comment until I've read nearly to the end. 'Can we really say he screwed Virginia Rappe to death?'
'Why not?' says Rufus, brandishing a forkful of tuna.jp. 'It's what everyone thinks.'
'There's evidence on the net,' Colin assures me. 'Dashiell Hammett was on the case for Pinkertons, you know.'
'If the university can live with it I can.'
Colin swallows his last mussel and stands up with alacrity I mistake for relief until he says 'I'm off to powder my nose. Anybody else?'
His announcing his intentions loud enough to be heard by other diners helps me not to be tempted. When Rufus also shakes his head, Colin hurries through the door marked Incoming Male. 'You aren't offended, are you?' Rufus says.
'I wouldn't say that.'
'He thinks any changes he can make that you don't object to will make it, well, we don't want anyone saying it's a reprint of your thesis. He'll email all his tweaks to you, of course. I thought it would leave you more time to concentrate on your Thackeray project if it's expanding as much as you said.'
I might well prefer to explore that rather than rethink old material. 'He won't want his name on the cover, will he?'
'There'll just be yours in splendid solitude. I expect he'd appreciate an acknowledgment inside.'
Soon Colin reappears, rubbing his nostrils with a forefinger. 'It's settled,' Rufus lets him know at once. 'Simon, do you want Colin to have a go at the rest of your thesis?'
'Don't lose any sleep over it,' Colin urges, laughing at my face. 'You'll both have to approve anything I change.' When I settle my expression he says 'It's great to be working with you again. Shall I send this back where it came from?'
'Better keep it to ourselves for now,' Rufus presumably agrees.
Colin shuts the file and returns to the newsgroup with a sprint of his fingers on the keyboard. 'The cunt isn't there yet,' he announces. 'I'll keep an eye out for him.'
I'm about to suggest that he should leave Smilemime to me when the businessman at the nearby table says 'Do you mind?'
Colin's glittering eyes brighten as they turn to him. 'Does your wife?'
The man's face is already suffused, but its redness intensifies. 'I'm asking you to keep your language to yourself.'
'I'll bet you are. Don't like the question, do you?'
The young woman tries to silence her companion by resting a hand on his arm, but he snatches it away. 'What question?' he blusters.
'Does your wife mind you shagging your secretary?'
As Rufus muffles a startled laugh, the businessman's face seems actually to swell around his pursed lips. 'Don't try to kid us that was just a business lunch,' says Colin. 'You could at least leave your wedding ring at home.'
I'm by no means pleasantly reminded of the head that burst during Lane's stage performance. I would suggest that Colin might relent, but the young woman is quicker. 'Let's go or we'll be late,' she murmurs.
Her companion is scarcely able to manipulate the mouse to send their bill to the printer behind the reception desk. He avoids looking at us while he stalks past our table as if his empurpled face is a burden he's barely able to support, but the young woman pauses to inform us 'I'm not a secretary.'
'Seems like we've all been promoted,' Colin remarks.
I watch the couple leave the restaurant and try to outdistance a figure in a lolling red conical hat. It's the juggler. His prey hurry out of sight, and the globular faces caper in the air before they and the performer vanish in pursuit. Rufus recaptures my attention by elevating his glass. 'Here's to rediscovery,' he proposes, 'and shaking the world up a bit.'
I have to hope that Rufus and the university will keep Colin under control if it's called for. I lift my glass and clink it against theirs. 'Not too much. Just enough,' I say. Perhaps I'm discovering a deadpan talent, since both of them laugh.
TWENTY-FIVE - IN STORE
As soon as I hear voices outside the apartment I find the exit from the net and shut down the computer. I'm feeding myself crumbs of cheese and biscuit with a fingertip before I clear away my plate and knife when Warren says 'We won't come in.'
'Maybe just to say goodbye to Simon,' Bebe says.
Mark is first along the hall. 'You should have come,' he tells me. 'I had a Hilarious Hamburger and some Cosmic Cake.'
Warren's invitation was so obvious an afterthought – 'And of course you should come as well, Simon' – that I pretended to be busier than I expected to be. Even the choice of restaurant – The Kitchen Table, serving Fun Food for Families – seemed painfully pointed. 'I had to get ready,' I remind Mark. 'Packing and all sorts of last-minute stuff.'
Warren has followed him after all. 'You don't mind we aren't taking you home with us, do you?' he informs rather than asks me. 'It would be kind of early for us to get up to run you to the airport.'
'I do understand.'
'Okay, have an easy journey.'
He's turning away without having acknowledged any irony, although their house in Windsor is closer to the airport by about an hour, when Bebe halts him with a freckled hand on his shoulder. 'So who's this person you're going to visit with, Simon?'
'Willie Hart. He makes films.'
'Do tell us what kind.'
'What I told you before,' Natalie intervenes. 'Erotic.'
'I guess we might have another name for it.' Bebe glances at Mark and acts out thinking better of her punch line. 'And you'll be staying at his house,' she substitutes.
'That's right, and researching his grandfather's films.'
'Not the same species, we hope.'
