'You've gone all butch,' she said.
'Me?' That was a new one.
'Yup. You used to be a little squit of a thing. Oh, very, very pretty, but I'd have been frightened of snapping you in two.'
So they smooched again. Her lips were fat, her breasts were fat, and Michael yearned to see her squirm out of her 1976 skin-tight jeans.
She peeled like an orange, and her body was in sections, restrained by straps. He sucked her shoulder. He tried to flip her breasts out of the bra, and then tried to undo it, and he got her tangled up, like a horse caught in reins. She started to
giggle.
'You've never done this before. You have never got a woman out of her bra before!' she shouted and laughed.
He remembered how badly his copy made love. He tried to be better at it. He tried to delicately twitch her nipples. She giggled and kissed the top of his head. 'You're twiddling them like they're knobs on a stereo.'
So they just cuddled naked, deliberately kissing the neglected parts: elbows, ears, eyebrows.
He said, 'This is more fun than sleeping with a man.'
Bottles couldn't resist. 'I was about to say the same thing.'
'Oh cheers.'
'Men are always trying to fuck me without a condom.'
'Oh no no, it's just the opposite with me. They always have a condom because sleeping with me puts them at terrible risk. They couldn't sleep with me without a condom, they don't know where I've been. It's a good thing I liked being fucked, or they'd get nowhere.'
'I can't help you there,' said Bottles, sucking on a roach that would have required a microscope to see, let alone smoke. 'It seems to me that you urgently need to meet some nice men.' She offered him the roach, and after breathing out said, 'If you find one, let me know.'
This seemed to have introduced the topic of the episodes.
Michael began. 'Does… does it seem kind of strange to you that you're sixteen and I'm thirty-eight?'
She paused. 'Not really. But then the world doesn't really add up for me.'
'What do you know about yourself?'
She seemed to darken and go dull. 'That I'm…' She sucked on her teeth. 'That I'm some kind of construct. The real Maggie is thirty-eight, a single mum and lives in Islington. She's real and I'm not, but then I never really felt real.'
Michael explained the miracle to her. He explained why he needed her help.
She took it on the chin. She sat up and went business-like. 'I'm not the Aids expert. She is. I guess she'll help you. But. Don't call her Bottles. She hates the name. She's Margaret to strangers, Maggie to friends. She'll know something, dimly, about this. Like she's dreamed it, so she won't be entirely surprised to see you. She believes, a little bit, that women sometimes see things.'
Bottles leaned back, and looked up into his face, and it was firm. 'I meant what I said about swots.'
Why did everybody always have something perfectly justified to say about him?
'Go ahead,' he said, 'let me have it.' He wished he were dressed. His stomach was hairy and his dick shrivelled.
'You're so concerned about yourself that you're asking the wrong question.'
'So what question should I be asking?'
She told him.
'Oh God,' he said, and covered his eyes with shame. She was right and all. Right on methodological grounds. Right about the self-concern. He chuckled at himself.
'Can I go now?' she asked. 'The more I know about this, the weirder it gets and the sadder.'
'How come?'
'Because I'm dead. There hasn't been anyone called Bottles in years.'
'Can I see you again?' he asked.
'Yeah sure,' she said, in voice that meant no. 'Is it up to me?' There was no point pretending that it was.
'See you around,' said Michael, and she was gone.
Can I cure Angels who are sick?
That was the question to ask. If Michael could call up Angels and cure them, then he could make love to them after they were rid of the virus.
So, after making certain arrangements, Michael ended up in a clinic after hours. Margaret or Maggie was doing him a favour.
'It's not for me,' he had told her on the phone. 'It's a friend of mine. He won't come in for a test if I don't come with him and he doesn't get the answer right away. And… he's also paranoid about false results, so he wants to take the test two times in a row. Yes, I know, it's weird, but I'm really concerned.'
Margaret's voice sounded just the same as Bottles, as if it were the sixteen-year-old on the phone. Except that she didn't call him Babe and was content to stay with her all-purpose native London accent. Her voice was calm, and soft and business-like all at the same time.
'A lot of people are very frightened by the test, so it's good that you want to come in with him. Does he have any problems with confidentiality?'
'Um, in what way?'
'If he's paranoid about one thing he may be paranoid about other things. Like being seen by anyone.'
'Could we come in after hours?'
'It's an imposition,' she told him directly. 'But if it will make the difference between him coming in or not, then I'll do it. But it can only be this Wednesday night.'
Her clinic turned out to be attached to a hospital in the East End. The door was locked, but he rang and she herself opened it.
Margaret's hair was the colour of carrots, like his mother's used to be. Michael had the feeling that the hair and her long loose Chinese jacket were all carefully calculated to strike the right balance of flamboyance and reliability. She was like a civil servant with a past. I used to be quite interesting, but now I'm reliable. It was a balance inclined to create trust on both sides: the ill and the official health establishment. Her voice was motherly, concerned, and extremely cautious. Every word was carefully rehearsed; not so much chosen as identified over thousands of ticklish interviews as being the most appropriate thing to say.
Yup. Bottles was dead.
'Hello,' she said to Michael's companion, and held out her hand. 'My name's Margaret, I'm an old friend of Michael's.' She was searching his face with concern.
'So am I. My name's Mark.'
Mark was tall, broad-shouldered with wavy red hair streaked with grey. He had died five years before from Aids.
Michael had met Mark at Sussex University. Mark was in the Army, studying under some kind of Army grant, and he was big and muscular and freckled and slightly overripe. He wore cravats and played polo, and wore a green carnation in honour of Oscar Wilde.
Mark was one of Michael's more spectacular missed opportunities. They met in drama club and were doing an experimental piece that involved a lot of stretching, yoga and jumping about. It was easier than being talented. At one point they all had to lie on the floor on their tummies and put their heads on someone else's bum.
The entire time Michael's heavy head rested on Mark's bottom, he flexed his cheek muscles, up and down. Michael's head wiggled. Mark turned back and grinned naughtily. He had a general's face, lumpy and attractive rather than pretty, and he had a soldier's lumpy body.
'You must be hungry,' said Mark. He spoke rather like Noel Coward. 'Why don't you come back to my flat and
