Beauties and the Beast (10 page)

“Sorry about that,” he said. “But I can't stand still for too long. People recognise me and then its bedlam. So how about it are you coming for a drink?”

The girl hesitated. “I was on my way to uni,” she said. “I've got classes.”

“Is that all?” said Mickey. “Can't you turn up late for once? Are you going to pass up the chance of having a private drink with Mickey Finnegan?”

She laughed. “My friends would think I was crazy to do that. Okay.”

“Come on then.” He grabbed her hand and they jogged along together until they reached Mickey's hotel. They stopped outside, panting a little and faces flushed.

“Won't you get mobbed in here as well?” she asked.

“Not in the private bar,” he said. “It's for guests only. The people in this hotel are so snobbish they wouldn't recognise the Queen if she came in for drink. Come on.”

She followed him through the opulent foyer of the hotel, with its marble columns and richly carpeted floor, into the glass fronted elevator. He pressed the button and elevator soared silently skywards. It stopped on the 18
th
and they walked out into a wide floor space than tapered off into the suite area on one side and into a quiet, wood panelled bar on the other.

Mickey was right. The handful of people who sat at the bar or at the low set tables with large rounded chairs placed round them didn't even look up when they walked in. He sat her down and ordered a bottle of champagne. He sat beside her and smiled. “Here we are then, as the actress said to the bishop.” The girl laughed. “Well,” said Mickey. “You know who I am, but I have no idea who you are.”

The girl shook her cartoon curls. “I'm Juliet,” she said.

“What light from yonder window breaks,” said Mickey with a mocking impression of Shakespearian dialogue.

Juliet laughed again. “That's what they all say.”

“Really?” Mickey's reply was on the edge of sharpness. He liked to be original.

Juliet didn't pick the pique.

And the arrival of the champagne precluded further discussion on the subject.

The champagne went down, the girl became giggly, and Mickey became quietly amorous. His hand strayed to Juliet's knee. He felt her body tense and changed his squeeze into a friendly pat. He withdrew. This was a prize worth waiting for, a fish worth playing. A student? Well, Mickey would be a fine tutor for her.

Juliet talked and, for a change, Mickey listened. The golden girl was studying fine art and the law, which seemed to be a strange mix of imagination and logic. They stayed for an hour before Mickey's mobile beeped. Always the mobile dependency persisted.

She was his guest at the show that night. He was between marriages. She sat at a table close to the small stage self-consciously alone, sitting in the reflected glow of the stage lights.

Mickey was on form. He could feel the power. He held the audience in the palm of his hand. If he'd have told them to drink poison they would willingly have done so. The laughs flowed thick and fast and the faster they flowed, the stronger Mickey became. He could see the sparks flying, the raw energy creating patterns in the smoky darkness. It was a power he felt he could reach out and touch, grab it by the handful and fill his pockets to overflowing.

Juliet, the golden girl, basked in the reflected glory, eyes wide and shining, the Finnegan-created energy flowed into her. One glance at her through the crackling atmosphere and Mickey knew that the power he had would bring him anything he wished for and what he wanted most at that moment was Juliet, sweet Juliet.

He left the stage to thunderous applause and did not return. No encores from Mickey Finnegan. He gave the punters what they paid for. Leave ‘em panting for more. He treated his women the same way. He gave them something to remember before he left.

The party afterwards was charged with liquor and excitement. Juliet was overwhelmed by the heady atmosphere of life at the top. She was living a dream, but it was a dream that would turn into a nightmare in less than three years.

That night, Mickey discovered that not only was Juliet a virgin, but a trusting innocent as well. Her experience was amazingly small and she had a demure sweetness that was incredible in a modern girl.

Mickey stared into the computer monitor mesmerised by the image of her life; the suburban doctor who was her father, the stability, the security of being a beloved only child, her beauty, and the academic abilities which led her to university. She was alone in the city, but confident in her ability to survive. She was a lovely, intelligent, trusting, but unworldly girl who should have gone through life unhurt and untouched by the humanity-created mire of corruption. But she happened to be in the wrong park on the wrong day.

Then the vision changed and he was staring into the grime of pornography, the grainy unfocused darkness of a hidden video camera. The one he kept in his room and the one he'd recorded the sowing of the seeds of corruption in Juliet. Filming his own fouling was Mickey's belated hobby. He watched himself gently seducing the girl, using his command of the craft of sex to bring her body awake. It was a beautiful body, even in the gloom of the dimly lit room, it shone.

Juliet was one of Mickey's willing victims. She was no passionless ice-beauty. She had a strong sexual drive that had been suppressed until Mickey expertly released it in a tide of wetness and quivering. She did whatever he asked of her and each time was a new experience.

She felt for the first time the throb of a man in her mouth, probing at her throat, following the whispered instructions: lick, suck, nibble, faster, slower. She felt the passion rise in Mickey and discovered her own power as she played a natural game until she felt his rotund body tense and thrusting, felt the outpourings, the urge to swallow and then Mickey's fast return to flaccidity and the slow withdrawal.

Mickey himself could not believe the experience, or the rest of the night when he took her virginity in every possible way. In the morning he awoke with a start. Memories of the night flooded back. He looked at the sleeping figure beside him and his heart leapt. It was not a dream.

As the relationship stretched on Mickey was constantly amazed at the inherent sexuality of Juliet. Her demure sweetness hid a carnal appetite and he revelled in the experience. She gave him new life and boosted his flagging performance to peaks he hadn't reached in years.

Other men envied him and tried to grasp a piece of Juliet, but she was constant. The reason for her carnality was based simply on her complete love for Mickey. This love shone like her hair and glowed in her eyes. This adoration convinced Mickey that marriage to this girl might be the one that worked. She said she'd do anything for him and for once he believed the words, so often so emptily pronounced.

Show business as usual stamped its insidious mark on the ceremony. Ratings were dropping suddenly and they did it live on TV. But it was a temporary boost. Within a season the show was cancelled and with it half of Mickey's life.

He didn't suffer financially at first. He could still pull in top price for his live appearances and the golden girl he married was still a curiosity on the floor of the rooms he worked. But more rapidly than he ever imagined his popularity waned. The fans that mobbed him in the street stopped recognising him. Once, where he never bought a drink, he found himself doing the buying, just to keep someone talking to him.

Where the popularity waned, the craving for approval never did, nor did the inability to unwind after a show.

The parties that were part of his life dried up. And so did his desire. The confused Juliet tried everything to make him happy, but Mickey's self doubt was so strong that the attempts at sex became a torturous failure. The more he tried, the less he succeeded and Juliet drank more to hide her own shame. She thought she was no longer attractive to the man she loved body and soul.

Where he once refused most party offers each night now, it was he who put out the feelers. ‘How about a few drinks in my suite?'

The lecherous stares at Juliet that he would once have crushed he now encouraged. It helped to bring some life to his sleepless night. It was the combination of fear, loneliness and the torture of sexual failure that pushed him deeper into the bottle to the point with rational thought was a rare occurrence. His self-loathing he turned into an insane hatred of Juliet and the more she tried to help him, the more he punished her.

The lowest point arrived when she cried and desperately told him of her love. “I'll do anything for you,” she sobbed. And he took her at her word. In a fog of alcohol he forced her, stumbling drunk to have sex with one of his ‘friends'; on the floor in full view of the party. He watched and saw the expression of sexual enjoyment that was once his own private property. Dam the bitch. She was enjoying it.

He was unable to tear himself aware from the perverse images on the screen and he felt the tide of nausea swill round his stomach. The scenes became worse. First there was one man, then two, then three, then two at the same time and finally the three. Mickey drank himself insensible. Occasionally the smell of sex and the erotic tableaux he saw brought him to erection. When this happened he threw himself on Juliet, piteously anxious to gratify himself.

Even then Juliet, his victim, gave everything to him. She was so far down the ladder to degradation that she was grateful for even those small attentions. Whatever she did was because she loved him, even when Mickey finally had to use her body to attract any friends at all. And despite the life, the body, the hair, and the sweet innocence of her beauty were unspoiled. Even after close to two years of degradation, she still looked like a sweet virgin and was actor enough to convince Mickey that doing what he wanted her to do made her happy.

The monitor suddenly went blank and Mickey blinked.

“So she used to love it did she Mickey?” Angela purred he question.

Mickey stayed silent.

“If she enjoyed it so much,” asked Diana in a conversational way, “why did she opt out?”

“I don't know.” Mickey's reply was sullen. “She went nuts. I couldn't cope with a nutty wife. I had enough problems. We had a row and I told her I was leaving her. I didn't mean it. It was just words.”

“Why don't you do you and everyone else a favour and do yourself in?”

Mickey's face paled and he looked as haggard as he had in the video replays. “I never meant it like that. Anyway I went down to the pub and when I came back she was lying on the bed with an empty bottle of pills on the floor.”

“And how did you feel, Mr Finnegan?”

“About what?”

Angela's eyes glowed green. “About the young virgin you married?” She hissed, “The sweet little innocent who killed herself after two short years of total abuse?”

Mickey was not about to accept the blame. “Come off it.” His reply was contemptuous. “You can't pin it on me.”

“So,” said Diana. “It was entirely her fault.”

“I didn't say that.” Mickey felt a rising tide of fear and self loathing creeping under his skin. “It just happened.” The pictures recurred in his mind and he retched. He looked despairingly at the women. “I hated it all,” he cried.

“You what!” Angela was incredulous.

“I hated what was happening. I only did it to keep the others happy. I needed friends. I hated it.” His voice reached screaming pitch.

“No Mickey.” Diana was a stern schoolteacher. “You enjoyed it.”

“I did it for them,” was the tormented reply.

Diana sighed and studied the computer printout. “Now I'm confused. You said you enjoyed it all for your own sake. ‘I like sex and I was never one to be prudish'.”

Mickey walked slowly to the chair and sat down. He held his head in his hands. He was drained and had nothing left. “That was at first, while I was drunk and it was happening, but after.” he paused and looked up with an agonised look on his face, “after I didn't like it so much; once the booze wore off. You see we all used to booze on. I wanted to stop, but I felt as if I was being pushed. Everybody was at me. Everybody wanted a piece. There were people on all sides. Then the more we did it the more I hated it, and yet the more we did it. I couldn't stop.”

Diana's face showed a brief whisper of concern. “It's not easy to stop, especially when the run is down a deep and slippery slope. We understand - don't we Angela?”

Mickey saw a gleam of lust sweep across Angela's eyes. “Indeed we do,” she said.

Diana then placed the printout onto the table and turned her attention to the computer screen. A few movements of the mouse and the screen blinked on. There was a moment of silence. Then she turned and smiled. “Thank you Mr Finnegan, that will be all for now.”

“Didn't I get the part?”

Diana laughed. It was loud, brassy. “You still have to read for us. Nothing has been decided as yet.”

“I could kill for a cuppa.”

“You'll find everything you need in the Green Room.”

“Turn right down the corridor,” added Angela.

“I usually finish with a song,” said Mickey with a feeble attempt to rescue his credibility.

“Thank you,” said Diana. This time the tone was completely dismissive.

Chapter Eleven

The echo of Diana's voice brought Mickey back to reality. He set down his cup and addressed himself to Thornton. “They want to see you.”

Without a sound he rose and marched out of the mysterious Green Room.

Mickey watched him and wondered what sort of experience he was in for. Billy saw nothing. He was slavering and consuming more of the glorious pate. Then the smell of the food assailed Mickey's nostrils. There was one in particular. With his gastric juices beginning to flow and creating saliva in his mouth, he hurried to the servery.

His eyes scanned the steaming dishes. Yes, there it was - the lobster Americaine. The medallions of luscious pink flesh cooked in spices and mustard and lying, tempting, in the half shell. His eager hands picked up the tongs and he placed two of the shells on a plate. Pretty. He surrounded them with vegetables that made a colourful pattern and then hurried to a table. The taste was delectable, the meat unbelievably succulent, but even he ate his mind was dwelling on the array of chocolate and cream cakes displayed in the cool deserts cabinet. He would eat his fill today.

A huge burp, acrid with garlic, belched from Billy's insides he consumed his last mouthful. He rubbed the T-shirt that covered the tightening skin of his stomach and glanced to the food displays. The tubs of ice cream caught his eye. ‘Just the thing to round off the meal' he thought. He stood, and felt his gut filled almost to overflowing. Could he eat more? The ice cream, glistening with crystals called. He could squeeze one helping, he was sure.

As he approached the freezer he saw a man with cherub lips, head and shoulders protruding over the gleaming stainless steel shelf of the hot servery, beckoning him. Billy's eyes opened in surprise, he was tall himself, but the man in white seemed to tower above him. Billy wandered across the room, curious and puzzled.

The man grabbed his arm and pulled him behind the servery. A frown creasing his forehead and his cherub lips puckered. Billy's eyes opened in surprise for the man was suddenly a deal shorter than him. He looked towards the top of the servery. The thought that the man had been hovering crossed his mind.

“Do not please eat any more.”

Billy stared at the man in surprise. “Why?” he asked. “I've never been so hungry - and never seen so much great food in one spot before either. Man, I'm having a good time - and I ain't had ice cream, for years. Look at it, man.” He waved an expansive arm. “How could you ignore this? Man, I spend more time eating pizza and burgers than anybody else I know. This I am enjoying.”

“Do not eat, please, you are in danger.” The little man's choirboy voice wavered anxiously.

Billy looked warily at the servery. “What you saying, man; you saying its poison or something?”

The man shook his head. “No. But please, you will not eat more. It could be very bad for you.”

“Who are you?” He threw a glance at Mickey, but he was too busy tucking into his lobster to catch the look. “Are you part of this crazy set-up, another arm of management?” He looked the man up and down. He reminded him of someone, no, some
thing
; a picture, a painting in some museum? He shook his head to clear away the debris,

The man shook his head. “No I am from... the opposition.”

Billy threw back his head and laughed loudly. “A talent poacher! What you got going then, something better than the others? It wouldn't be hard, bloody weird people. You got good backing as well then?”

“Not as good as theirs; we possibly do not have such a sound financial situation, but we maybe have better lasting benefits.”

“No cash, just fringe benefits eh? Sounds interesting, cash means nothing to me anymore. What are the benefits? Free dope? Class chicks?” He laughed as cherub-face's mouth dropped open and he squirmed with embarrassment.

“I am contemplating that perhaps my peers might be correct. Maybe their advice not to come here was timely. I think maybe I will retire and find ground more stable. But please, do not do all they ask - and do not eat more food.”

With that cryptic remark he scurried away down a white painted corridor behind the servery. Billy stepped into the space, but all he saw was the man disappearing round another corner.

“This place has more hidey holes than a haunted mansion,” he muttered.

He turned his attention to the ice cream. The crystals didn't gleam so brightly, but he picked up a plate and dug the scoop into the honeycomb crunch, the favourite flavour of his childhood.