Are you landed yet, Simon? Is everything as you expected? Let us know you're safe. Mark sends a big grin.
I type so fast that my fingernails twinge.
Couldn't be safer. Sorry I didn't get back to you as soon as I arrived. No sooner in my room than I fell asleep until just now. It's breakfast time in London, isn't it? If you read this in the next few minutes I'll probably still be at the computer if you want to let me know you have. Meanwhile I'm being well looked after by my host and hoping to start what I'm here for very soon. Love to you both and a bigger grin back to Mark.
I'm not sure about the last comment, but I send the email before I can change my mind about withholding the gender of my host – I think the revelation is best kept until I'm home. I bring up the Internet Movie Database, but it doesn't lack the information I was convinced it did. Willie Hart's page shows her birth name as Wilhelmina.
Has it been added since I looked? At least there's nothing unfamiliar on Tubby's pages. The newsgroups have been busy with me while I was asleep, however. To begin with, Colin intervened on my behalf.
Reverting to baby talk now, are we? Not much of a regression when you've been flinging the contents of your nappy at anyone you disagree with. Just because people read you on the Internet doesn't mean you're worth anyone's attention. It's the biggest slush pile in creation. A slush pile is where writers like you that are never going to see print end up. Real writers like Simon have real editors like me who haven't time to waste with illiterate unpublishable ignoramuses like you. Have you caught on yet that the last thing we are is jealous of you? I see your name spells I'm Slime, Me. Good to see you writing the truth for once even if you didn't know you were.
I can't help grinning at Colin's discovery, but my amusement doesn't last.
No, it spells Me, I'm Miles. That's miles abbove you nipping at my heels, except it's more like treading on an innsect. Don't bother wonderring if it's my name any more than yours is Collin Vernon. Do you really think you'll connvince anyboddy you're an edditor by talking to us all like that? Real edditors help people, they don't try to make us think we're no good and just you are. We all know you wouldn't make such a fuss trying to deffend yourself if you bellieved in yourself.
Other posters on the newsgroups have joined in the argument or tried to end it.
What's any of this got to do with this group?...
Can't the three of you take your row outside?...
I don't know who any of you losers are and I'm sure nobody here wants to...
However many of them there are, they're all as bad as each other...
I think the last comment is especially unfair, but I'm not going to be diverted. I address my reply to Smilemime.
I absolutely agree with everyone who's tried to stop this. Just hush and we will.
Though I'm tempted to advise him to depart propelled by a jet of his own urine, I post the message I've typed instead. I hope there will be no answer, and there's none from Natalie. As I log off I become aware of a sound at the end of the corridor. It's the rhythmic moaning of a female voice.
It must be in a film. If it weren't amplified it would hardly penetrate the door in the wall that terminates the corridor. It seems to intensify as I venture closer. I ease the door halfway open, and then my arm continues the action as if the spectacle ahead has taken control of my brain. The room beyond the door is as wide as the house, and much brighter. The subject of the brightness is an unclothed double bed occupied by two slim naked girls. The one whose face is visible looks dauntingly young. She continues to moan, such an exaggerated sound I'm not surprised it was audible through the door. The handle drifts out of my distracted grasp, and the movement catches her attention. She lowers her head, which was thrown back, and rests silver fingernails on her friend's shoulder. The other girl lifts her face from between her friend's thighs and licks her glistening lips. She appears to be even younger. For that reason among others I'm hesitating in the doorway when both girls produce smiles that age them several years – at least, I'd like to think so – and stretch out a hand each to me.
How impolite would it be to refuse? I'm unable to look away. As I pace forward they turn their supine bodies to me. I feel as if the entire naked lengths of both of them are aware of me, a notion so intensely stimulating that there's no question my no doubt foolish grin originates in my crotch. I follow the swelling into the room, or at least that's my excuse. I've no idea how many steps I take before noticing the arc-lights and, already behind me, the camera. I'm in a film until I grin sheepishly at the camerawoman. 'Cut,' Willie Hart shouts beside her, twice.
The repetition is so clearly a rebuke that the embodiment of my libido sags at once. 'Sorry,' I mumble.
'Okay.' It audibly isn't, and she adds 'For what?'
'For ruining your take.'
'And how do you figure you did that?'
I'm not sure even of the question. 'By being here?'
Each of the girls on the bed gives a sigh that Willie puts into words. 'By looking at the camera.'
'I'm not a professional. I mean, I am, but not that kind.'
'Amateur is good too. Just be yourself. Mona and Julia would show you how.'
'I know perfectly well who I am.'
'Then let's find out,' either Mona or Julia says.
'Looked like there was plenty of you before,' says Julia with as wide a smile, unless she's Mona.
'Don't be offended, but I'm just here to write a book,' I say and face Willie. 'And I'll be correcting all the errors on the net about your grandfather.'
'Take a break, everyone. Which errors?'
The performers swing their legs off the bed, and I see that one girl is wearing a ring through her right labium. As they catch me watching, her friend gives the ring a gentle tug. I wince, not least at the responsive pang that travels along my penis, and manage to pronounce 'The descriptions of his films.'
'How do you know they're wrong if you haven't seen the movies?'
'I think this character specialises in writing rubbish.'
'Show me.'
I linger to ask 'You won't be including me in the film, will you?'
It's the camerawoman who answers. Her hair is cropped even shorter than the other women's. 'What,' she says, 'as a joke?'
'Not even as that if you don't mind.'
The girls send a final sigh, mocking or otherwise, after me as Willie ushers me out of the room. 'Don't mind Marilyn,' she murmurs. 'She has quite a tongue when she uses it.'
I'm tempted to rejoin that the same is true of the performers. Instead I say 'Don't think I'm prying, but how old are the girls?'
'Legal. Proof on file. Want to see?'
'Good heavens no. Of course not.'
As I open the door to her office she says 'Well, you seem to know your way around.'
'I heard the screensaver before.'
'Really? I'll have to cancel the repairman. The sound card must have fixed itself.'
The waves have fallen silent. Before they can prove me truthful, Willie rouses the mouse. 'Where do I need to look?'
'The IMDb.'
'I'm not familiar with it.'
I lean over her to bring up the site. She's wearing the thinnest of T-shirts, and the V of the neck is even more revealing. The heat of her body seems to surge at me as I use the mouse to pull down the list of recent online visits and click on the reference. At once I feel as if the computer has tricked me into betraying myself. 'Sorry,' I blurt. 'I was on here earlier. I couldn't find you and I wanted to let my partner know where I was.'
'Hey, don't worry. Were you feeling lonely?'
I'm distracted by Mona and Julia, who are strolling naked past the office. 'Not at all,' I say hastily. 'Just
