Before clambering over the railings into the street, Vince muttered into the dark, ‘I bet they’re having a whale of a time down there. One long, unremitting orgy. I bet heaven is just like teatime at the Marquis de Sade’s.’
Andy hauled him over. ‘I can’t take you anywhere, can I?’
Fran, Jane and Liz staked out a corner in a bar that had been made to look like a ship’s deck. ‘A pirate ship, eh, Jane?’ Liz winked. ‘Remember Frenchman's Creek?'
But Jane didn’t. Their reading didn’t overlap entirely. Sipping a double vodka, she advised, ‘Stick together, girls. It’s going to be a rough night. The packs are out.’
The place was full to capacity. People were standing eight deep at the bar, swaying in time to the music. The crowd was reflected back in the misted-up mirror behind the optics. Lots of suits, the smart-jumper brigade with their tight perms and moustaches, and then a few ravers in hooded tops and greasy hair. All the men stood in tight clusters, sticking together for now, fists around their glasses. Now and then their eyes would flick along the length of the bar at the women and at other men, as they talked about something else. This was the serious part of the night, the part in which they would discuss, decide, and realise just how pissed they were going to get.
The women kept to smaller, yet louder, groups, all dressed young although the age range was wider. There were schoolgirls who had overdone their make-up because the club they were going to had funny lights and they wouldn’t show up otherwise. Older women with highlights in their hair blown rigid under their driers. There was more laughter from the women than from the men. They weren’t at ease, but they were confident, half enjoying, half ridiculing the attention in those nervous, shifty glances.
‘God, it’s like the jungle!’ Fran had decided not to drink. ‘I forgot about all this.’
‘Show me Tarzan.’ Liz was not joking. ‘All the men are horrible. Greasy little things. Why do they think we want them with all those muscles?’
‘I like muscly men,’ Jane said.
‘That’s because of the books you read. They’ve made you think you want something big and strapping when, really, you don’t at all.’
‘But I do! And you read those books, too!’
‘Honestly,’ Liz went on. ‘They go pumping metal, or whatever they call it, they waste all that time and energy, and then they haven’t got the life left in them to pump anything else. They come out of it looking hideous. Fat necks and red faces with bulging eyes.’
‘Nice bodies, though,’ said Fran. ‘I tried to get Frank to go weightlifting. He looks like a Care Bear with bis kit off.’
‘And,’ Liz ranted, ‘weightlifters have got tiny whatsits. It’s the one part of themselves they can’t expand. It’s sad, but the more they build themselves up, the worse it gets. That’s why they all get bulging eyes, trying too hard. What time is it?’
‘Late.’ Jane was well on ber way by now. She had dropped the frostiness she had earlier determined to show. ‘We’d better collect our tickets and get across to Flicks before it packs out. I want to dance.’
‘Let’s get on the cocktails. That’ll get us going.’ Liz moved to go, sliding across the plush. ‘Hang on a sec. Everything I’ve just said, I take back. Him by the bar. He’s built up. And just look at the packet on that!’
Fran hurried them out while the body builder with the overdeveloped packet passed crisps among his circle of mates.
The entrance was round the back of MFI. Andy rapped smartly on the door, which opened to reveal a bright-red room, heavy with smoke.
The bouncer shouldered backwards to let them in. He glanced from beneath a broad brow, his pan-shovel hands making irritable pincer movements while he waited to block the doorway again. Goth Night made him uneasy.
In the red foyer there was a window at which the cloak attendant lounged, dangling her jewellery over the ledge. As Vince and Andy approached, she pulled a wad of chewing gum from her mouth, reaching tonsil-deep with well-manicured nails, and stuck it deftly into the top left-hand corner of her window frame.
‘Well, boys, it’s weirdy night up there. Weirdy night tonight. We’ve got every freak, drug addict and queer in town milling about upstairs.’
‘Oh, we know.’ Andy passed his coat across. ‘That’s why we’ve come. It’s our favourite.’
‘Right.’ She seemed to be taking note of them for the first time. ‘I thought you might have been expecting to be bopping to Jason and Kylie and what have you.’ Her eyes narrowed to slits and she tested the water with, ‘Because it’s not that night tonight and the girls here aren’t the sort of girls you might be after.’
Andy gave a conspiratorial grin. ‘As a matter of fact, we’re both quite queer ourselves.’
‘Are you now?’
‘Yes. Very queer indeed, actually.’
Vince ushered him to the stairway, where there were posters of the Hollywood greats tacked every few yards up the furry wallpaper, leading them towards the source of the low, hypnotic music.
‘Bloody smart, this!’ Jane was enthusiastic as she and Liz waited in the doorway. The wine bar was full to overflowing and Fran had gone in by herself to ask about tickets. ‘Freebies and everything!’ Jane shuffled out of the way of some people wanting to leave, toppling into Liz, who manoeuvred them both towards the potted plants.
‘I’m not so sure it’s right.’
Jane said, ‘My mother says it’s Ladies’ Free Night every night —’
‘No, I mean the whole idea of a ladies night. It seems sordid somehow. Lure in a bit of skirt with free tickets —’
‘Bugger that! I’m on a tight budget.’
Forced to wait by the rubber plants, Liz was sobering fast. ‘So am I, pet. But I wonder whether we ought to be capitalising on our femininity like this?’
‘What, you mean, like selling it?’
Jane was breathing
