I Wanna Be Like You, Part 2
After all last issue’s travails, the externally unremarkable house we turned up at actually turned out to be…to be well, rather nice. And there was, at least, plenty of alcohol to get stuck into. As no real, um, action seemed to be happening as yet, I set off my cunningly-concealed tape recorder, shooed Fenella in the direction of the drinks table, and got mingling. Why were people here? What exactly did they expect? I may have been press-ganged into the situation, but I might as well get the facts. I sidled up to a professional-looking couple just on the wrong side of thirty.
“Hi,” I said, nonchalantly.
“Hello,” simpered the woman, in a wary fashion, while her husband, or boyfriend, or whatever he was slid his eyes from side to side in a worried-looking manner. Ah, I thought, I see what’s gone on here. At least it wasn’t just me feeling out my depth.
“So. Hear about this in the paper, then?”
The man just looked worried and started talking about house prices. Christ, this was depressing. Why were all those present putting themselves through this? I can only assume that our existences have become so utterly devoid of energy and of sensitivity that the part of our brain devoted to keeping us breathing, eating and copulating feels the need to rebel now and again, in a desperate attempt to recover a frisson of lost excitement. We spend our lives cocooned in air-conditioned boxes or crammed in dismal underground tubes, as we stagger from desk to sofa, senses dulled by anxiety. Yet something almost forgotten at the top of the spine sparks into being now and again, to torment us with a memory of an evolutionary past when each day was brutal, uncertain and real, lived under sublimely terrible skies, rather than a flourescent glare. When human affections were all the sweeter for flowering within a brief and turbulent life. As Rousseau once said…
“Pardon?” said the man.
I…er…crap. Had I been thinking aloud? “Food’s a bit garlicky, isn’t it?” I blustered, attempting to salvage the situation. “Hummus wouldn’t have been my first choice.”
“If you don’t fancy it much then I did just meet a woman who’d bought along her own sandwiches,” he said. He prodded around in the hummus with a breadstick. “Did they say if this was organic?”
“Who in the name of God would bring their own food to an orgy?”
“Hello,” said a small and disturbingly familiar voice behind my shoulder. I turned round.
“Poppy, I…” I paused. “Poppy. What the fuck are you doing here?”. I regarded the drooping figure of Decline and Fall’s Arts Correspondent with horror. “And what exactly are you wearing? Wasn’t it supposed to be formal this evening?”
“I knitted it myself,” squeaked Poppy, almost tearfully. “I bought some sandwiches.” She held out a small, unsavoury-smelling foil package, just as I saw something start happening in the corner of the room that made me blanch slightly.
“But….OK, look. I’m here on official business,” I whispered. “Whatever you do is entirely, um, up to you, but I didn’t…”
“Oh, I’m here officially as well,” she said. “And Jay.” She pointed towards the sweaty, egglike visage of Decline and Fall‘s music correspondent, who I was distressed to observe across the other side of the room. “And there’s Ondine too, look”. I looked and noticed our resident columnist as she came into the door and saw us. Her face didn’t so much fall as plummet.
“Jesus!” I howled. “Do you know, I think I always knew that if I went to a swingers’ event, I’d just end up running into my coworkers.” What the hell was going on? Had I perhaps done something shockingly awful in a previous life and was now on the receiving end of a specially-devised infernal torment? Fenella reappeared, holding a bottle of gin and laughing broadly.
“Ahah! Who’d have guessed that everyone in the office…”
“Hush,” I said. “I’m still supposed to write an article about this…this fiasco!” I tried to lower my voice, in case our cover was blown. “And try not to steal the drink, it won’t go down well.”
She snorted. “Speaking of going down well, have you seen what that person’s doing over…”
“Oh shit,” I said. Things were getting serious.
“Hold on,” said Poppy. “I’m here to write an article. The Editor asked me to.”
Things suddenly fell into place, with a sickening thud.
Continues next issue