“The slobbering bubonic Rat. While I was awaiting trial, bloody months on
remand, he took her out to one of his gobsucking gourmet evenings, probably
told he her could make her a star. But I never saw her again. I don’t even know
if she’s still alive. I. ”
“I’m sorry, Larry, really sorry. But I don’t see—”
“Anyway, it was The Rat who sold me the gear.” He points over her shoulder.
“That chest with the silly pun is the one with all the weird shit in it. I can’t
remember for sure. But I do know that he took those pictures in the house
where it was all found. Poor girl, she nearly froze to death.”
Pauline looks again at the pictures. There’s something odd. “This one’s
been touched up.”
“Tanya was like something out of the Garden of Eden. The perfect apple.”
He shakes his head, sighs, and takes a long draught of Smirnov.
“I don’t mean Tanya’s body. I mean the background.” Around the chest,
behind and between Tanya’s elegant legs there’s a curious fudged quality to
the light, a dark halo, as if the chest itself were an alien splodge,inserted into
the picture by some clumsy matte process. Larry obviously feels she’s being
pedantic.
“It’s just cheapo nasty colour printing. Or bad lab work. It was a very
cheapo product, I guess.”
Pauline leafs through remnants of the cheapo mag: THE SEX EFFECT
and How to Seduce A Saucy Succubus; THE SEXIEST BEAST IN THE
WORLD!—Aleister Crowley and His Scarlet Women; SEX BEHIND THE
IRON CURTAIN!—Readers write in with their Eye-Spy Fantasies . . .
Of course there are dozens of faded ads—‘White Slavers of Wimbledon!—
sixth form girls in suburban gorsebush romp, colour, standard 8mm
only . . . ’ and catalogues of implausible marital contraptions, clockwork vibrators,
inflatable latex Russian dolls—‘Try husky Babushka!’, so much tinsel-
knicker trash, who bought it all, where did it all come from?
Apparently from Dept NN, Krassex House, 23 Harsnett Rd, SE27, which
is the address in all the ads. Which is also the editorial address, c/o Rampant
Publications, 23 Harsnett Rd, et cetera.
“Did the proprietor of this publication also own the old house?”
“I only know the Rodent did photography, helped with properties, operated
as a kind of under-assistant dogsbody to a Mister Big.”
“Haven’t any of these people got proper names?” She’s becoming very confused
and uncertain.
Libros Libertad 