She gave a little laugh, distorted by the drug. They drove along the deserted avenues.
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?” she said, braving the sidewalks.
“No.”
She laughed.
“Keep your hands on the wheel!”
Osborne got the car back on track just as it was about to smash into a garbage pail, which went flying anyway. Ann laughed all the louder. Above them, the stars were burning slowly. He smiled at the emptiness uniting them. Already high, Ann had made up her mind. She’d liked this guy right from the start, and that was precisely the kind of thing she refused to fight. Ann lived in a world of instant gratification. Since the dice were always loaded against you, you might as well help yourself to what you could get. Stopping at a red light, she asked, “A park, is that okay?”
It was Ann Brook talking to him, not Hana.
“Yes,” he replied.
The lights turned green.
They passed the reject shop on Queen’s Street, closed like all the other stores, and, at the corner of the avenue, turned toward Auckland. There was a gentle breeze. The coupé pulled up outside the gates of the park. Tall trees were swaying in the mauve night. In the distance stood the Auckland Museum with its neoclassical, neo-Fascist facade.
Ann took off her sandals and threw them on the back seat. “Can you see anyone?”
He looked around him. “Only you.”
The answer seemed to please her. She took his hand, but it was the moon that guided them through the darkness.
There was nothing stirring in the park, only a few owls. They partly stripped under the branches of a gigantic matai.
“Shit!” she cried. “It’s full of thorns!”
Osborne made out her little white panties on the ground, her smile in the shadow of the branches, and that long, caressing body at his fingertips, as if surrounded by a wonderful halo. He could barely stand. Ann pressed herself against him and stroked his testicles. Two round black eyes told him that he was handsome, that she really wanted him. She bent to suck the tip of his penis. Time passed, hanging from invisible threads. Ann looked at his exposed penis, blew gently on its erect tip, then stood up again, heedless now of the thorns nibbling at her feet, and lodged it like an ardent secret between her thighs.
That, at least, was the vision he had of it. Everything else seemed to be swimming in a haze. In three minutes, Ann had turned the world upside down. He abandoned himself to this cosmic gymnastics, forgetting everything. Supporting themselves against the trunk of the old matai, they made love with all the intensity of those nights when you forget everything. Ann came before he did, then, still shuddering, went back to his penis and took it fully in her mouth. Hana crossed his mind, in flames, but he didn’t care. Ann kept going, using her hand as an aid, and felt the pleasure mount in her lover’s penis. He ejaculated in her mouth. After that, blackness: the ecstasy, the alcohol, the datura, everything exploded at once.
When Osborne opened his eyes again—a second later, two seconds, ten?—the branches of the matai were swaying in the odorless night.
“Are you OK?”
Ann was picking up her panties, abandoned on the carpet of thorns.
“Yes. Yes.”
But he was swaying under the branches. He had just experienced his first blackout of the night. It had only lasted a few seconds, but there would be others. A little more effort and he would forget that he even existed.
“Are you coming?”
Ann Brook had dressed again at the speed of light. She was waiting in the moonlight, her pupils still dilated. Gradually recovering his balance, Osborne followed her warm hand across the park. A few red squirrels sitting on a tuft of grass watched them pass.
The car was waiting at the exit of the park, doors open. Ann put her sandals back on as he collapsed on the seat.
“Do you want more?” she asked.
More of what, he didn’t know. “Yes,” he said.
Ann gave a half smile and switched on the ignition. From that point, everything tipped over the edge.
* * *
K Road. Flashing signs, a few night birds moving like ghosts along the sidewalks, and the smells of Asian fried food fading away on the warm night air. There was one club after another here, with their sad doormen and their neon lights and their electronic music filtering out through their doors. Ann took Osborne by the sleeve and pulled him into the neighboring alley. The car ride had perked them up a bit, the effects of the datura were starting to wear off, and the lights of the street lamps danced in the puddles, even though it hadn’t rained.
They soon came face to face with a Maori with arms like legs, the Herculean guardian of a discreet door from which no sound emerged. The Phoenix.
“Hi, Will!”
Ann kissed him on the cheek. The guy must have been nearly six and a half feet tall, his build and belly were impressive but, curiously, his head was so small it seemed to belong to somebody else. Not only was he out of proportion, he didn’t look terribly affable either. He gave Osborne the once-over.
“He’s with me,” Ann said, to placate him. “No problem.”
The big Maori jutted out his chin but didn’t bat an eyelid. He opened the door, and they walked in beneath his muscular arm.
“He looks nasty,” Ann said, “but he’s really quite a nice guy.”
There was no cash desk inside the entrance, only a cloakroom plunged in gloom. There was a single purple ceiling light to illumine the legs of store window dummies that had been stuck to the walls, women’s legs daubed with paint that seemed to have sprouted there like strange plants. A girl appeared, a live one this time, a blonde in a fifties swimsuit and high heels, smiling like a starlet on the Riviera.
“Is he with you?” she asked.
