Robert steps into the brothel. Old Scarlet sits behind the little desk. Karl leans against the wall, flicking through a glossy magazine. Both look up. Old Scarlet’s eyelids are painted with shimmering cyan that illuminates her brown eyes, tired from thirty years of late nights and dark rooms. Her lips are tinted the color of her namesake. She greets Robert warmly. Karl is even larger than him and has even less hair on his head. He wears nothing but black: a black shirt and a pair of black jeans tightened with a black leather belt. He notes Robert’s presence then returns to his literature. He hardly ever speaks.
“How are we today?” Old Scarlet asks.
Robert answers that he is well and asks how she is.
“Oh, you know,” she says. “Sciatica. We’re not as young as we used to be.”
“We’re not.”
She opens the ledger. The only computer in the brothel is attached to the webcam upstairs. Old Scarlet runs the business with pencil and paper.
“Tiffany and Giselle and Precious are free now, or we’ve got Young Scarlet in half an hour, or Crystal an hour after that. It’s Candy’s day off.”
Robert raises his hands in indecision. “I’ll go with whoever will have me. To an old thug like me they’re all absolutely lovely.”
“Precious, then. You and her get on well.”
Old Scarlet makes a mark in the ledger and instructs Robert to take a seat in the showroom. “I’ll tell Precious you’re coming. Help yourself to a drink.”
Robert wraps his knuckles on the wooden desk by way of thanks and turns from Old Scarlet and Karl. He takes the swing door to the left of the admissions desk and steadies it shut before proceeding. A long and familiar hallway stretches before him. The walls are coated with a red fabric like velvet but with longer strands, like the coat of a shaggy dog. It gives the walls the texture of something organic, something that has grown from the plaster. Robert stretches out both hands, as he always does when he walks through this familiar passage. He allows his hands to glide across the fabric. He enjoys the soft tickle. The carpet is likewise red and it is padded with a kind of satin towelling. Robert’s shoes sink into it. The lighting is dim and rose-pink. Long tendrils of silken cord, this the deepest red of any of the fabrics, have been stitched into the padded ceiling and hang to approximately the height of Robert’s waist. The silk tendrils are the red of bull’s blood. They are the red of sow’s blood. They hang as if dripping.
Robert walks through the web of cloth. It strokes and caresses his face and he carves a path through it as if parting a sea. The light from the pink bulbs shines on the red fabric of the walls and the floor and against the crimson tendrils. The hall is steeped in a spectrum of red, and the red is alive with movement.
Robert is color blind. For Robert, red is green and green is red and there’s nothing in between. When he takes this short walk between the foyer and the waiting area, he does not think of the heat and clamor of the busy street behind nor of the pleasures beyond. He finds himself in a forest that he knows of old, in a wood so thick and fecund he can see no more than an arm’s length ahead and an arm’s length behind. He feels the fabrics as foliate, like the tender needles of young firs. He seeks a path through the branches to the room beyond, and when he comes to it he blinks, though the light here is hardly dialed brighter.
The far wall presents a familiar brass drinks trolley, with glass and crystal decanters holding brown and gold and burgundy liquids. He pours himself a whiskey and waits. After a minute or so Old Scarlet comes rushing in from the reception.
“I forgot to ask,” she says. “What can I tell her you’re after?”
“Full service,” replies Robert. “It’s my birthday.”
The Trickle Down
In another part of the city, Bastian Elton watches his girlfriend preen. There are parts of her routine he’s permitted to see and parts he isn’t. She goes inside the bathroom to wax, to shave and to pluck, but stands in front of the living room mirror to apply her makeup. Rebecca keeps her catalogue of accoutrements in a metal box with compartments that fold in and out like the doors of an airplane. It is highly technical. There are boxes within boxes, and pastes and gels and brushes. She selects a white tube and squeezes a precise amount of clear gel onto her forefinger. She uses the fingertips on both hands to rub it over her face, then pulls out a small plastic tub, unscrews it, and balances the lid on the mantelpiece. The tub contains a fine powder resembling ground skin.
Bastian is sitting on the sofa with his legs slightly apart. His hands are between them, holding the jacket of a suit that has just been delivered. The clothes Bastian used to buy came from expensive high street shops, but when his grandfather discovered this, he set up an account for Bastian at a tailor’s shop on Savile Row and took him for a fitting.
Bastian continues to watch Rebecca. She touches the dust with a long brush with bristles that fan out like the tail of a peacock then bounces it across her face until the powder becomes invisible. Next, she attends to her eyes. She clicks open a disk containing powders of varying hues, divided into sections. She applies some of the beige powder then two shades of brown. She puts the items back into the box then pulls out a pencil and a long thin tube
