Ann had joined the contenders, and was following everything with rapt attention. Donkeyskin was literally sliding on the clay, pushed toward the edge of the circle with great staccato thrusts, and finally ejected. The man had come with one last groan, and his penis now hung flaccidly beneath his leaf-green tunic.
The insults intensified when Ann entered the arena. Leaning back against what seemed to be a stone wall, Osborne held his breath. His fairy looked magnificent under the glitter ball, her brown pubic hair just visible under her lamé costume, but, lost as he was in his delirium, he feared for her. Savagely, the two fighters grabbed hold of each other. The man had the advantage of strength, the silver fairy that of agility. As slippery as an eel, she kept escaping his grip, while somehow maintaining her balance. The cries from the spectators grew ever louder. Osborne didn’t know if he was dreaming. Peter Pan almost brought her down but Ann’s thighs were powerful. She took advantage of the abortive attack to pull him to the ground. Was it because he had just come that he was a little weak?
The crowd moved in closer, applauding the Silver Fairy for bringing down Goliath with a wave of her magic wand. Ann grabbed a huge dildo, tied it around her waist and, still panting, bent over her victim. She gave him a couple of kicks to force him to get on all fours, then adjusted her terrible tool, and slowly plunged it into his anus. The man gritted his teeth as she dilated his sphincters. The virtual penis seemed thick and long enough to kill. Ann sank it deeply into him, then, whether out of sadism or a desire for revenge, kept pushing and pushing. Almost dislocated now, Peter Pan moved forward on all fours, closer and close to the edge.
At last, he left the circle, not so much defeated as thoroughly beaten.
Osborne couldn’t hear anything anymore, and could barely make out the movements of anyone’s lips. His mind whirled in the kaleidoscope of the disco ball as he left the salon. Walking to the bar counter, he felt nauseous.
Reality had escaped him, and he had no desire to catch up with it.
He turned one last time toward the clay floor. Now it was Ann who had fallen. Her little skirt was pulled up over her back, and a phallus, a living one this time, was digging into her intestines . . .
* * *
The Southern Cross had appeared in the sky by the time they left the club. The effect of the “thunder” was slowly wearing off, and Osborne was left with a jumble of images and a strong desire to vomit. Ann was smiling beneath the street lamps, her eyes half-closed. Stoned as he was, she appeared unruffled. He remembered her on the floor, beautiful and cruel in her fairy costume.
“You’re a strange girl,” he said.
“You’ve got to have fun somehow.”
Between her and Hana, there was an abyss, into which he was sinking.
“There’s a party at Julian’s,” she said. “Coming?”
Osborne shrugged by way of consent—given their state, they wouldn’t get far. Even getting to the coupé took them a while.
“Can you drive?” he asked.
“No. How about you?”
“Me neither.”
Laughing, Ann switched on the ignition. Then she lit a cigarette, turned up the volume on the car radio, did a U-turn in the deserted street, and set off for Ponsonby.
She’s . . .
So . . .
Heavy!
The electric cry of a guitar. Three-thirty in the morning by the dashboard clock. His head thrown back on the seat of the coupé, his nose in the stars, Osborne wasn’t alone anymore, there were thousands of him. They drove, carried along by the breeze. The trees swayed, lights slid over the hood, each one on the rails of a driverless train. At the end of the ride, silence.
Ponsonby Road. The car went in through the open gates and braked outside a large well lit building. They were both slowly coming down. The night air had given them a lashing.
“Here we are,” she said.
Trip-hop jungle music was escaping from the open windows of the house, along with a lot of screaming and yelling. Ann opened the side pocket and took out some tabs of acid. They kissed one last time and took the drug.
“Shall we go in?”
She fixed her hair in the rearview mirror with amazing dexterity given her state, but, once on the gravel, Osborne noted that she was swaying dangerously. He supported her as far as the steps.
“Are you going to be OK?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry.” She seemed almost serene.
People were hovering outside the house, lying on the grass in the garden, sharing a joint or a few jokes in the moonlight.
“You should be careful about the company you keep,” he said, putting her down on the front steps.
“Oh, don’t worry, I keep excellent company.”
For a split second, it seemed to him as if they were sober and clearheaded, but then she started giggling and he changed his mind.
The house was vast—at least a dozen rooms, with ceilings so high you could have hanged yourself from them. Ann soon found a seat on a couch, where he left her in the company of drunks like her. There were plenty of people drinking in the different rooms, some lounging on seventies-style couches, some standing, some leaning against the walls. A group of guys with long hair, who had clearly just raided the refrigerator, were opening bottles of beer and laughing uproariously as the foam gushed out. The music made the floor shake, the tables were strewn with bottles, and people were gesticulating in the middle of the improvised dance floor in the living room under a thick cloud of smoke. Young white men in shirts and ties, others in torn black T-shirts, a few Europeans who’d somehow ended up on the other side of the world: there was a bit of everything here. Osborne grabbed a joint and walked out into the garden.
Julian himself turned out to be a jovial type who was smoking grass by the side of the swimming pool in the company of two Maoris with fearsome faces. One of them had a tiny head on a muscular body, the spitting image of the doorman from the club.
That was almost the last thing he remembered.
