To Murder My Love Is A Crime!
Stories of Desperate Men by Matthew Asprey
Copyright c 2008, 2009, 2011 by Matthew Asprey.
‘Villa des Bijoux’ and ‘To Murder My Love Is A Crime!’ were originally published in 2009. ‘Gut Bucket Blues’ was originally published in Exempore No. 1, November 2008
SMASHWORDS EDITION DECEMBER 2011
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I. VILLA DES BIJOUX
THIS IS A STORY of discovery and also a story of loss. I’ll begin in Paris, in the wintertime, in the lobby of the Hotel Bolovens in St-Germain-des-Prés. I was sitting with my fat half-sister Alexis on a sofa. I was wearing a horizontally-striped blue-grey pullover and a red foulard with white polka-dots. I looked fantastic. Alexis, unimaginatively practical, hid her figure in a black woollen overcoat.
“Leon will help us,” I reassured her.
She lifted her eyes from a tourist brochure and said again, “But how will you recognise him?”
“Tweeds.” I was a bit fed-up by her negativising attitude. “All academics dress in tweeds. They’re very predictable people. Pretentious arseholes.”
And soon a chubby, middle-aged Frenchman in a – what did I tell you? – tweed jacket stood before us. “Are you Mark?” he said, his voice soft. I stood to greet him. He laid his brown attachè case flat on the coffee table in front of our sofa and kissed each of my cheeks. “Finally we meet, after so many emails!”
“Yes, Leon,” I said. “This is my half-sister Alexis. She’s sixteen.”
Barred by the coffee table to some distance, Leon skipped the kiss-kiss and shook Alexis’ puffy right hand. “A pleasure. Is this your first trip to France?”
“It is,” she said.
“And you, Mark?”
“Oui.” I didn’t try too hard to muffle my bitterness. Mother had promised me this trip as far back as my high school graduation but she had meanly hung onto the cheque for fifteen years until little Alexis grew up. That way we could ‘take the trip together’. Reducing my holiday to a bloody chaperone job.
We sat down and I said to Leon, “You’re probably wondering where I got my outfit.”
He took the liberty of feeling the fabric of my pullover between his fingers. “Yes, it’s exactly right.” His English was very fluent. “Perfect vintage. Where did you find it?”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“He wants to be Cary Grant,” said Alexis contemptuously. “Do you dress up like Cary Grant, monsieur?”
Leon laughed. We were confronted by a mouthful of neglected teeth. Maybe there was no fluoride in the Paris water supply. “No, I don’t do the dress-up, nor do I have an extraordinary To Catch a Thief collection. Just a few pieces of memorabilia I acquired when I wrote my thesis on Hitchcockian scopophilia. Mark, however, is famous on the world wide web for his rarities.”
It’s true. In my bedroom in Sydney there is a To Catch a Thief shrine that has been a source of happiness for many years. I have framed posters, original lobby cards, publicity stills and personally autographed photographs of the creative triumvirate – Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly. There is an expansive array of imitation jewellery and costume recreations on Grace Kelly-shaped mannequins. What else do I have? A reel from a legally contraband VistaVision print I rescued from the estate of a Sydney projectionist. A vintage diecast model of a white ‘53 Sunbeam Alpine convertible on a spotlit dais, the very car Grace Kelly gunned along the Moyenne Corniche with Cary Grant in that glorious motion picture. As usual, Hitchcock’s instincts were correct; the perfect car for an oil heiress with sparkling white gloves, for an ex-jewel thief known as ‘The Cat’, for the picturesque French Riviera in the summer of 1954.
Alexis the underminer – who had never even seen To Catch a Thief – told Leon, “He wastes all his money on that stuff.”
“Darling,” I said, “Why don’t you go up to the room and watch television?”
“Actually I think I’ll nip over to the patisserie.” She buttoned the overcoat across her belly. “And I’d really like to see Notre Dame this afternoon, alright?”
“We may not have time.”
“Damn it, Mark, it’s my holiday, too.”
When she’d gone to indulge her self-pity with large chunks of chocolate and orange moussecake, I said to Leon, “My half-sister profoundly fails to understand our passion. But now we can get down to serious business.”
Leon seemed uncertain. “I’m still not sure why you requested a meeting.”
“Hmmm. I’m on my way to the Riviera to visit and extensively photograph the locations used in To Catch a Thief. I’ve come all the way from Australia to do so.”
Leon lit a cigarette with a matte silver lighter, judged this “a pleasant excursion” and smiled, pleasantly.
“As you know, my chief desire is to find the Villa des Bijoux.”
“Yes, Mark, but we emailed about this matter.”
“The address is not listed in Burton’s International Guide to Movie Locations or in McNale’s Cinema Location Directory. I called Paramount Pictures but they have an inadequate sense of history. The U.S. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences refused to check the Hitchcock papers for me because I lack ‘academic qualifications’. Life is hard without tweeds.” I smiled broadly at Leon. “That is why it was necessary to meet with you personally. I need the address.”
“But unfortunately, as I already informed you in my email, I do not have the address.”
I didn’t push too hard. “Naturally I understand the confidential nature of the information. But I’ve been assured by a reliable source that you did locate and visit the villa last summer.”
“Your source was mistaken.”
“I don’t believe so.” In fact, Tibor Markovitz, the moderator of an internet message forum, had forwarded personal emails from Leon that confirmed the fact. For many years I’d lusted after that villa in the hills of the Alpes-Maritimes where Cary Grant’s character lived apart from society. I desired to reenact scenes from Hitchcock’s film in a kind of moving tableau vivant; to sit on the back porch on a sunny afternoon and be served quiche lorraine and good wine by a housekeeper named Germaine (a former Résistance assassin) while an old black cat curled on a wicker chair. I had a certainty that a precise reenactment – making Hitchcock’s dreamlike celluloid images tangible – would effect a major epiphany in my life: a moment of transcendence.
Like most people I was conditioned to think such dreams impossible to realise until my life was metamorphosed by the book How To Live The Fantasy Life You Desire by Andy Bumber. After that, I started to consider this fantasy definitely do-able. I would eat that quiche lorraine, I would look across the grape and flower gardens to the medieval village on the stubbly mountains. Visualise your goal, create a strategy, bask in your success.
Leon looked nervous. “But you’re misinformed. I have never seen the villa.” Conspicuous desperation crept into his words. “In fact, the villa no longer exists. It was destroyed long ago by fire.”
“Oh, really? What was the address, Leon? I’ll check out the ruins.”
“I don’t know the address. Forget about the villa.” He laughed, trying to enforce a casual mood, as if the villa was not important to him, but he could not hide the raw truth behind his academic qualifications, his tweeds and his calm French manner. You should read his discussions of Thief minutiae on the internet message forum. They overflowed with passion. All that post-whatsit psychoanalytic gobbledegook was sheer pretence. He was a sweaty, obsessive fan whose own cache of collectables possibly rivalled my own.
Leon unclipped the flap of his attachè case.
“I have a little gift of welcome for you. You’ve come all the way to France, we have exchanged so many emails about the film, so this is for you.” He handed me a compact disc of the music from To Catch a Thief in easy-listening arrangements performed by Georgie Auld. A pathetic consolation prize for me while Leon held onto the location of the villa! He said, “It is my own digital restoration from a 45rpm EP. It was a bit scratchy but I cleaned it up. I also created the colour booklet.”
“Thankyou, but I have the original record in near-mint condition, naturally in a protective mylar sleeve.” I had bought the item by credit card (at a grotesquely inflated price) from the legendary and mysterious obsessive Belgian fan iamthecat@tocatchathieffanatic.com, who claimed he lived “somewhere north of Antwerp” despite an inconsistent postmark (Liége) on the package. His unreasonably angry personal attacks inflamed the To Catch a Thief internet community – but was that any more than a simple testament to how such a film can excite a man’s passion?
I took Leon’s little CD and happily presented him with an extravagantly more valuable gift – a rare first edition of David Dodge’s novel (Random House, 1952). Don’t worry, I had acquired it for a nominal price from an ignorant secondhand bookseller some years earlier. The market value was US$300 but it was frankly a surplus to my collection. There was a small tear on the lower right corner of the dust-jacket and I already had a perfect edition as well as a shelf of translations and paperback reprints.
Leon sighed, quite moved. “I’ve been looking to buy one with a dust-jacket for many years.” Weak-eyed, he suddenly blurted, “No, it’s too much, I must pay you for it!” and took a chequebook from his pocket.
“No way.”
Routed, wincing, Leon was weak enough to keep examining the pages. He could not help but smile. I allowed him what I guessed to be adequate exposure before leading with, “Now I must ask you for a favour.”
“But the villa is a mystery!” Leon said like a flustered witness on the stand. “All records are gone!”
“Be honest, Leon. I know you discovered it.” I produced a print-out of one of his forwarded emails and quoted: On July 14th I drove to St Jeannet. After an exhaustive search of the streets, I discovered the house used in the film. In all essential aspects, it is unchanged since 1954. “Proof!” I said. “So why are we playing games?”
“So Markovitz forwards my emails to you?” Leon grunted. He pursed his lips in anger.
“I want that address. You know I’ll find the villa anyway but I don’t particularly want to search every fucking street in St Jeannet. I thought we could share resources,” I gestured the first edition, “as brothers in our passion.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. There are exceptional circumstances,” said Leon, as if burdened by staggering moral responsibility. He pushed the first edition back across the coffee table. “And if you will not let me pay you for the book, I cannot accept it under such conditions.”
I placed an original Mexican lobby card on top of the book, a sweetener. “You know there is no more serious fan of the movie than I.”
“That is what is unsettling. That is what is difficult.” Leon buttoned the flap of his attachè case and abandoned obsessive little me on my sofa.
I jumped up and shouted, “You liar!”
He flinched and scuffled backwards, a big frightened tenured teddybear, while the concierge grimly reached for the telephone. I was too disgusted to be prudent. We were leaving Paris anyway. So what if they ejected us from the hotel?
“You despise me for my honest obsession while you dress-up identical longings in pretentious academic jargon!” I yelled. Leon fled through the vestibule, down the front steps, into the Paris rain. “You selfish sanctimonious hypocrite! You negativising Frog! Why won’t you share?”
Of course I probably would have acted the same way had I been dealt his lucky hand.
THE RIVIERA! I unfolded a large map at an outdoor café near our Nice hotel while Alexis browsed the pictures in Nice-Matin and sucked up a moist hunk of something grotesquely rich; I think it was a marbled chocolate pyramid with hazelnut mousseline and chocolate ganache. There was enough warmth in the tender sea breeze to fool us into thinking it wasn’t winter. The shadows of palm leaves danced across the map.
“St Jeannet is near Vence,” I said. “Here, at the end of bus route 55. Do you see?”
“No.” Alexis called for the waiter to bring back the dessert menu, a bad habit of hers.
“Alexis,” I said quietly. “Are you really sure you want another dessert?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Just think about it.”
The morning activities of our To Catch a Thief location pilgrimage had not been thrilling. Although I was again dressed in the pullover and foulard, it had been impossible to reenact scenes with the necessary accuracy. Cannes had shown all the symptoms of a winter lull. The film locations were unhappy sights. The glamorous plage privée had been bulldozed into mounds of dirty sand and rubbish. The Carlton Hotel, where Grace Kelly’s rich girl had been deflowered during a fireworks display, was masked by scaffolding. Even the bay of Monaco, that mountain-ridged horseshoe of little pink and green buildings in a wash of Grimaldi opulence, was a let-down. The luxury hotels, the ranks of yachts and speedboats, the apathetic young women on the streets with amber-dark complexions and high leather boots, the sports cars, the skirted skaters at leisure on the ice rink – every inch of it screamed “International Set!” yet it had little impact on me because we could not locate Bertani’s restaurant at the water’s edge on Quai Antoine. Instead we found a public toilet that demanded two francs. Perhaps the restaurant only ever existed for the purpose of Hitchcock’s shoot. That didn’t matter; I reassured myself that all was mere prelude to the glories of the Villa des Bijoux.
On the journey back to Nice for lunch I placed a bouquet of roses at the precipice where Grace Kelly died in a car accident in 1982. I meditated in sad lust. I’d had the unlucky fate of being born in a later generation; she died before I was sexually mature, precluding a romance. How fortunate then that Hitchcock had forever captured the image of this beauty in VistaVision and Technicolor when she’d been just twenty-five!
“A contact in San Francisco sent me a email last night,” I said to Alexis, who was now scoffing chocolate praline mousse layered with rum-soaked génoise.
“Hnh. You already told me.” It was impossible to have a conversation with the girl - her voice was again buried under cake.
“My contact said Hitchcock’s crew got very ill after eating poisonous blueberries that were growing on the St Jeannet property.”
“I know.”
“You see, Alexis, it’s another clue. We’ll keep our eyes open for blueberries,” I said. “Yep. We’ll find it alright. Don’t need that bastard Leon’s help.”
She swallowed and prefatory to sucking up another slop told me, “You can go yourself. I’m staying in Nice to visit the Matisse Museum.”
“I’m under strict orders from Mother not to leave you unattended. You’re still a child and under my supervision.”
“You’re the one who acts like a teenage fanboy.”
“Hmmm. It’ll be great, trust me. We’ll make those dreamlike celluloid images tangible. We’ll experience an epiphany, Porky.”
For a moment her eyes were vicious and then her mouth quivered tearfully. She hurried to swallow all that cake but couldn’t get it down. Her own fault. Eventually, after flushing her gullet with mineral water, she spluttered softly, “Don’t you dare call me that any more. I’m not a little kid now!”
I’d said it intentionally, for her own good, an act of loving intervention. See Andy Bumber pp. 27-31. The night before I’d casually put my spare copy on Alexis’ bed in our hotel room. Typically, without even reading the blurb, she hurled it like a discus into the wall. If only she would look into it and change her life!
We nearly missed the train because of a dispute I had with the waiter. I had to drag my cumbersome half-sister through the closing carriage doors by the arms of her overcoat.
“You’d better be careful I don’t kill you on this trip,” she panted through her teeth.
I laughed. “Yeah, on a train! How Hitchcockian would that be!”
In St Laurent du Var we boarded a public bus that wound inland on needle-thin roads through little villages – La Gaude, Le Peyron. The landscape gently ascended and the bus emptied. Alexis listened to music through earphones and stared out of the window. It was I who first sighted in the distance the thrillingly familiar Baou de St Jeannet, a huge rocky mountain above our destination. The bus pulled up a long road to the deserted St Jeannet village centre, dropped us off, and croaked back down the hill on its return route. We were left behind in the cool sunshine. The prospect: hundreds of identical stone villas hugging the slopes under the Baou, which looked like a great chunk of rocky road ice-cream. My geographic sense of the village was based entirely on repeated viewings of To Catch a Thief, so it was limited.
“This will be like a game of Where’s Wally?” said Alexis. “Except every villa looks like Wally. It’s the Riviera’s version of suburbia.”
“You’re negativising, Alexis.”
“I’m what?”
“Look, we’re obviously in the right village, aren’t we?”
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Thin blue chimney smoke was in our noses but there was no other evidence of human presence. In the narrow alleys the balconies were empty and their louvres bolted. There was nobody to ask for directions – neither the village winebar nor the little tea shop was open (nor the patisserie, a lucky thing). Finally I spotted a little girl on a BMX bike speeding down one of the lanes but she pedalled harder when I called for help. The little bitch wouldn’t even stop when I chased her down the hill. She left me heaving for air in a blanket of grass while my half-sister watched the speck of a hand-glider above the Baou.
“We’re obviously in the wrong part of the village,” I concluded. “The Villa des Bijoux is on a secluded road on the edge of a steep slope.”
I thought it sensible to execute a systematic search strategy. My instinct was to start at the highest elevation. We entered a long corridor of olive branches. I was looking for a small two-storey stone building with brick chimney-stalks rising from a terracotta roof. Not one of the villas prompted a shiver of recognition. They had too-contemporary façades with glass-fronted balconies and solar panels on the roofs. The road terminated in a boggy cul-de-sac facing the western hills. Alexis and I retreated at this elevation to the other side of the Baou where the houses were planted high above us behind security gates and squared hedges. Presumably they were unattended summer homes for very rich French people, which accounted for the unsettling quiet of the village.
“Can’t you just pick any one of these villas?” said Alexis. “Take a photo and we can go back to Nice.”
“What? None of these exhibit the authentic magic of the Villa des Bijoux.”
“They’re all the same."
“I’m here to have a moment of transcendence, Alexis. This is not fucking Disneyland.”
“Then I’ll wait at the bus stop while you look.”
“How can you be tired already? You ate too much cake at that café, didn’t you?”
“Argh! I’m bored, you idiot! Do what you want. The bus leaves at 4:30.”
“But that’s only an hour away.”
“Yes.”
I was blunt with her. “I haven’t even begun to think about going back to Nice. We’ll just get the last bus of the day.”
“That is the last bus of the day.”
“Hmmm. I really doubt we’ll be finished in an hour. It’s that bastard Leon’s fault for not helping us. It may be necessary to stay in the village overnight.”
“I’m getting on that bus no matter what. I don’t give a toss what you do.” Then she waddled through the village towards the bus stop in her suffocating overcoat.
Left by myself I could better execute the search before nightfall. I crossed to a ridge opposite the St Jeannet belltower where I found life, albeit of a decaying kind. Two ancient women were drinking tea on the balcony of a house high on the ridge. They had dead white hair and faded floral dresses; it seemed entirely possible they had been out on this balcony on the days Hitchcock was shooting in their village.
“Bonjour, Madames! Excusez-moi! Je ne parle pas Français! Parlez-vous Anglais? Je suis un Australien!”
The two crones exchanged frowns and then jostled their chairs a little more to the east so I was out of their angle of vision. I called, “Où est la villa d’Alfred Hitchcock?” but they did not care to help me.
I went further up that road and along a succession of others that ran parallel further down the slope. I peered over numerous garden fences and hedges. I was frustrated. I had not found what I sought. In addition, I was suffering a headache behind my eyes. It was probably because of the persistent sun on my bald spot. I sat on a crumbling stone wall in the shade. My head cooled down but an unhappy weariness came over me. With a lump of longing in my throat, I listened to Georgie Auld’s romantic saxophone wheeze on my portable CD player. I tried to spark the desperately-desired moment of transcendence. Like Cary Grant on his balcony, I could see the St Jeannet belltower. There was beauty to be found in the muscular lushness of the mountainside. The Mediterranean was blue in the distance. But it was just not good enough. I had not journeyed halfway around the world to go halfway with my goal. Where was the quiche lorraine and the wine? Where was Germaine and the black cat on the wicker chair? Where, basically, was the fucking Villa des Bijoux?
I tore off the earphones, ashamed of myself for considering compromise. I held tight to the Bumber book. Deep breaths. Reiteration of ambition. Visualisation of ultimate success. I ran with fervour along the shady road and down the next, cut through a lane of soft grass and fruitless bushes and emerged under sunshine on an isolated road. Here birds fleeted and spurted intermittent machine-gun twitters at me, nasty fucking creatures. I went downhill. Parallel to the curb ran somebody’s high wild hedge. All I could see of the property beyond was a couple of brick chimneys. Another suspicious villa for investigation. No problem. I climbed up onto the mossy rim of a neglected stormwater drain whose mouth gaped a metre wide. The old concrete cover lay broken at the bottom of the drain like a lone cracked tooth. By deftly tip-toeing and stretching my neck till the muscles ached, I found an angle from which to spy the villa’s terracotta roof. In my blue-grey pullover and red foulard, up in that position, I felt quite like an agile cat burglar!
Then I slipped on the moss and was swallowed by the dark drain. Unlike a cat I did not land on my feet. I fell hard, knocked my knees into the rubbly concrete slab, and finally doused the front of my pullover in a shallow pool of muck. I rolled onto my backside, getting my outfit dirtier, and cried “Help!”
My cry was automatic but not really that desperate, for although my slacks were torn and my knees a bit bloody, no bones were broken. Nevertheless, I heard brisk feet and, as requested, a rescuer appeared in the bright square of sky. He was a small white-haired Frenchman, probably sixty-five, who bore a pair of open hedge clippers like a priest with a crucifix. I assumed he was the local gardener assigned the job of maintaining the enormous hedges that made these bloody villas so impossible to case!
“Monsieur?” he called with grave concern, laying aside the hedge clippers and offering his hand.
My knees felt a bit of a sting but I would have no limp. I consented to the old man’s aid, or at least went along with the pretence so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings, though his dirty hand was as weak as a child’s. Then a young woman leaned from the edge to assist the rescue. Where had all these villagers suddenly come from? The girl’s thin warm arms were strong and limber. She wrenched me out of the drain. The old man stood by embarrassed while the girl said something to me in sexy, unintelligible French. I just looked at her. Her body was tall and slender but quite robust. She had an irresponsible tan and in a vague way resembled the nubile To Catch a Thief character Danielle.
“Parle Anglais?” I asked in hope.
She frowned and spoke to the old man, who translated, “She wants to take you to her villa to dress the wounds.”
I nodded eagerly but the old man had a different suggestion, “Please, my house is closer. I must insist. We speak English there. And my wife is a nurse.”
“Er – no, monsieur,” I stammered, compelled by the girl’s resemblance to Danielle, her alert bottom and her charitable attitude. “C’est bien. La femme est tres bon.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but she speaks no English.”
The girl laughed and took my elbow in her hand. The old man gave up, inclined his head apologetically, and went on down the road. The girl pointed a long way off to our destination, a house somewhere down the hill. She restrained her natural pace to help me along. But as we unexpectedly came past the driveway of the suspect villa, everything in my field of vision clicked into place – the Baou in the background, the villa secreted modestly behind hedge and gate, the sloping road. My heart jolted. I examined the stonework of the massive gateposts and counted the wooden lattices of the gate and thus confirmed it was indeed the Villa des Bijoux!
I was also shocked that the old gardener was unlatching the gate to enter the property.
“Monsieur!” I cried. I left the girl on the road without another thought and didn’t look back. I didn’t observe her reaction at being jilted. Hmmm. It is actually only now, memorialising this on paper, that I think of her again. She was probably not used to that kind of treatment. But c’est la vie! One cannot be remorseful for things that happen in moments of passion.
I limped to the gate. The old man, who seemed happy to attribute my initial rejection of his aid to disorientation or miscommunication, tried to help me along the driveway. I had to help him really – he had his own limp. In retrospect I’m sure we looked pretty silly together, hobbling like cripples, but at that moment I was giddy with glee. Naturally time had done its ruthless work to the property. For instance, the concreted driveway had been a rough dirt path in the days Cary Grant tended the flowerbeds. The vines that once spread wildly across the stone walls were now squarely clipped below the level of the windows. But otherwise, the building was remarkably unchanged!
“Fabienne!” The man throatily yelled into the back garden. His handsome but portly and probably menopausal wife appeared with her own pair of hedge clippers that, combined with her deeply scrutinising eyes, were primally frightening. I figured she was suspicious of my glee, so I limped a bit more heavily and fed my overspilling emotions into an impression of injury-related delirium.
Fabienne blurted something in French; I gathered she was demanding an explanation from her husband. The old man recounted, with lots of hand gestures, the story of my mishap. His wife reacted angrily and he took the rebuke in shame. Then she put her hand on my upper arm with a mother’s tenderness. She was on my side now.
“I apologise, monsieur, Gaston was supposed to cover the drain last week. He is too lazy, now this catastrophe! Come inside.”
Expectation was bubbling under my skin, making for a hot atmosphere in the mucky pullover. Now for the first shock. I expected to enter a monastically gloomy stone chamber. That was the paradox of the Villa des Bijoux and what so few To Catch a Thief ‘aficionados’ understood. Though a more beautiful setting would be impossible to find, the villa was not just a luxury retreat. It was also necessarily austere lodgings for the penitent Cary Grant. It was simultaneously the immoral fruit of, and an indication of the humility earned by, a life of crime - modest pastel landscapes, a single book cabinet, an escritoire for letter-writing, grandfather clock, and a table lamp in the dark corner for quiet night study and cognac; everything anciently varnished and matted by pipe smoke. But the interiors I came upon were so different that I wondered if I’d mistakenly identified the villa. What I found indoors was an entirely different architectural shape. There was a light-filled living room and adjoining kitchen under rafters. The stairs to the upper storey and down to the cellar were at the wrong end of the house. I naturally concluded, after my shock dulled, that Hitchcock had created the interiors on a Hollywood soundstage. How logical, but how dispiriting! I wanted to step into that simple retreat for private meditation, but instead I was confronted by vulgar modern furnishings and the latest digital technology. Remote-controlled heating made the fireplace a redundant cavity, so they’d filled it with a vase of marigolds. A boy of seven or eight was crosslegged on the hearth rug, repetitively thumbing the control pad of a videogame consol, perpetuating violence on a big screen television in digital surround sound.
“Your name, monsieur?” said Fabienne.
“Conrad Burns,” I told her, Cary Grant’s character’s pseudonym.
Fabienne made me sit on one of the white sofas and, exercising her authority, used a remote control to turn down the screams of the demons the boy was machine-gunning his way through. “Marcel, say hello to Mister Burns.”
“Salut,” sang the gluggy-eyed brat.
“Anglais!” commanded Fabienne.
“Hello,” said the boy. He didn’t look at me for more than a second.
“Bonjour,” I said.
“My grandson,” said Fabienne. “He doesn’t yet speak much English.”
Guilty Gaston was aloof on the carpet, his dirty gardening hands on his hips, so Fabienne sent him to the kitchen to make me a cup of tea. I was feeling disappointment with these interiors until an enormously fat cat materialised on the hearth rug to roll its head across the boy’s knee. That was the spirit of the Villa des Bijoux! Thank God for le chat, Hitchcock’s recurring visual joke!
Fabienne fetched a first aid case and popped open the silver fastening button. To access the wounds it was necessary to cut clear the already torn knees of my beautiful slacks with a pair of scissors. I was promised new slacks. She cleaned up the grazes with iodine and planted wide adhesive plasters. Insignificant wounds, really, and an ingenious passport into the villa. Despite Hitchcock’s heartbreaking deception with the interiors, it was irrefutable that the exteriors were shot here. I looked through the glass balcony doors inwardly chanting Bumber’s Positivity Mantra.
“You have a beautiful view,” I told Fabienne. “May I see it?”
“Absolutely.” I think she was just pleased by my manly indifference to the injuries. I’d relieved her anxieties about being sued. She said something to the boy in French and then left the room to put away the first aid case. The boy froze his game mid-massacre and directed me outside. He dragged the glass door open and dawdled interminably at the threshold. I had to push him along. He had a glum, sluggish manner and didn’t seem too bright.
And then I was on the balcony. Two arches of stone framed the St Jeannet hills. Below us, the villa’s garden of roses, peonies and tulips surrounded a little rectangular pool. Dare I think that the dining table on the balcony was the very same table used in the lunch scene with the English insurance man? Or had that too been a Hollywood studio recreation with rear-projection of the hills? I quashed that awful idea. Very slowly I withdrew a chair – Cary Grant’s place, facing the house – and with a delightful internal laughter tickling to my back ribs, sat down. Quelle gloire! I was so close to a perfect reenactment. Only a few elements were missing. No matter. All in good time.
The boy tore apart a stale petit pane in his clenched fists and, leaning over the balcony, threw the pieces to some sparrows. Fabienne, a considerate hostess, sat in the chair opposite me. She saw nothing unusual in me facing away from the very view I’d requested to see, nor in my face which must have been glowing with pleasure.
“I apologise for my early suspicion, Mister Burns,” she said. “We’ve had unwanted visitors recently because of the history of this place. Absolute violations of our privacy.”
Visitors? That was very interesting. Leon’s façade was cracking. Fabienne sighed wearily though not with fragility. Suddenly the ringtone of my mobile phone sang in my pocket. It was the theme music of To Catch a Thief which I’d digitally programmed myself. Fortunately Fabienne did not recognise the tune. The caller would be Alexis, at the bus stop, but it was only 4:25. I pretended I couldn’t hear it. The boy looked at me as if I was crazy but Fabienne, with fine French manners, did not mention it.
I resumed the conversation while the phone sang on. “Why, what is the history of this villa?” I was very cautious, you see.
Fabienne laughed unhappily. “I wish it had none. We didn’t know the history when we bought the place.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, nearly thirty years ago. Many years earlier the property had been used in the cinema. I’ve never seen the film. Do you know Hitchcock?”
Thank God the phone had stopped ringing. “I’m not much of a movie buff myself.”
Gaston ratted on the balcony door and muttered an unbutlerish summons. His hands were still garden-dirty. I reluctantly left Cary Grant’s place and went back to one of the sofas in the living room. My tea was on the coffee table. Fabienne brought in some petits fours from the kitchen and then joined Gaston, who was hunched forward with his dirty fingers threaded like a man in prayer for forgiveness, on the pristine white sofa across from me. The boy had to sit next to me with his feet suspended a few inches above the ground, and was annoyed he could not return to his virtual massacre.
“Why are you here in St Jeannet?” Fabienne asked.
I took a painful draught of the boiling tea to give myself thinking time. I came up with a doozey. “Amateur hang-gliding. I was looking at the Baou as a possible gliding site.”
Fabienne approved. “Yes, many people do that.”
Gaston started when the dialtone rang again in my pocket. But as it was only just on 4:30, I though it best to wait a couple more minutes before talking to Alexis. The boy looked at his grandmother in disbelief.
“Great tea,” I said. “Could I have another cup?”
Gaston, grateful for the opportunity to make up for his irresponsibility, lurched off the sofa for the kitchen. The boy asked Fabienne something, he wanted to return to his bloody game, she allowed it. Left alone, she found the tact to tell me my phone was ringing.
I acted astonished. “Really? My hearing is not terrific at those high frequencies. Thankyou for telling me.”
I pulled out the phone and pressed the button to release a cry into my ears: “You idiot! We missed the last bus!”
“Oh, hello!”
“I should have got on the bloody bus and left you behind!”
“I’ve been injured, darling. Some nice people are helping me.”
“Where are you?”
“What is this address?” I asked Fabienne, who gave me – casually threw to me! – the precious detail I’d sought for so long. I repeated it to Alexis, who hung up in unhealthy rage.
“Because of the accident in your drain,” I announced sadly, “I have missed the last bus back to St Laurent du Var. Stranded for the night.”
Fabienne groaned in dismay on my behalf. “We lent the car to our son this afternoon. Won’t get it back till tomorrow. What an inconvenience for you! I’m sure you had other hang-gliding sites to inspect.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“You must stay here tonight as our guest.”
“Oh, we couldn’t.”
“We?”
“My half-sister is also stranded. She’s coming here now. Poor thing is very distressed about my injuries.”
Gaston brought in my fresh cup of tea and resumed his prayerful posture on the sofa.
“I hope you won’t mind sharing the spare room with your sister,” said Fabienne. “We feel terrible about the accident.” She angrily slapped Gaston’s knee and he did not react, was convinced it was all his fault, he must accept the shame.
“You’re ever so kind,” I said.
“We’ll dine at 6:30.”
“On the balcony?”
She shrugged. “If you like.”
“I like.”
“It might be cold.”
“Will we by any chance be having quiche lorraine?”
“I planned bouillabaisse.”
I bit my lip. “Unfortunately, I’m allergic to fish.”
Fabienne addressed Gaston in French, he shrugged, she acquiesced: “I could find a recipe for quiche lorraine.”
“Good. I should tell you now that my half-sister has a weight problem, as you’ll see, so please don’t offer her dessert.”
I was sitting on the sofa with the cat on my lap when Gaston admitted Alexis. Her cold eyes were fierce above those chubby pudding cheeks, the hem of her overcoat swirling behind her. Fabienne was giving the boy his bath and Gaston, against his wife’s wishes, guiltily fled to the garden. Alexis and I were alone and she took the opportunity to sock my arms with her meaty man-fists. I hissed, “Don’t be so violent! This is the Villa des Bijoux! They’re letting us stay the night. My name’s Conrad Burns. We have to pretend we’re not Hitchcock fans!”
“Argh!” She hit me again. “I’m not a Hitchcock fan!”
ALEXIS WAS DRAGGED into a virtual shoot-‘em-up with young Marcel, and they became friends. Violence was their lingua franca (my arm was blackly bruised). Alexis’ persistent fury was united with the anxiety that we would be unmasked; in short, she was not amiable company for anybody.
Before heading to the kitchen to attempt quiche lorraine, Fabienne took me to the master bedroom, whose walls were overcrowded with mediocre female nudes for which she proudly claimed authorship. She opened the wardrobe and offered me the loan of one of Gaston’s clean shirts.
“No thanks,” I said. My pullover, soiled and stinking of drainwater though it was, would be necessary to bring into effect the moment of transcendence during dinner. Nevertheless, I was missing one article Cary Grant had worn. “Would you happen to have a thin grey sweater?”
“I don’t think a grey.” She sorted through the rack, withdrew a blue sweater, a red sweater, a black cardigan.
“No, they’re none of them right.”
Fabienne was reasonably puzzled. “Why grey? Is it feng shui?”
“Hmmm. I just happen to know the kind of sweater that would look well in this setting.”
Later, Gaston invited me to the gritty-floored cellar to select a table wine for dinner. I chose a ’92 Blanchot Chablis that, judging by the forcedness of Gaston’s smile, was a more expensive bottle than he’d meant by ‘table wine’. But considering his eagerness for reconciliation, I did not feel the choice was gratuitous. At my instigation we took the bottle to the outdoor ledge above the steps descending to the back garden. I poured pre-dinner drinks and clinked glasses with him in a spirit of forgiveness. The scene was nicely verging on a To Catch a Thief reenactment but, alas, it was happening in near-darkness. The sun had set so much as to steal the fine details of the olive trees.
“You like the place?” said Gaston.
This fortuitous question allowed me to interpolate a line of dialogue from my favourite movie: “Immensely. It’s a kind of travel-folder heaven where a man dreams he’ll go when he retires.”
Gaston nodded. Fabienne tapped the crystal dinner bell, a quaint but welcome custom, and we took our glasses and the bottle to the table. I was sufficiently agile to trump Gaston for Cary Grant’s place. The table had been laid – tea candles in glass orbs, a basket of husky pain de campagne, a long dish containing olive oil and a blob of balsamic vinegar. A pleasant scene, sure, but where was the vase of pink flowers as in the movie? Why wasn’t the cat on the wicker chair? I guess if you squinted the bustling and busty Fabienne coming from the kitchen might resemble the comically rotund Germaine, but you’d have to squint pretty fucking hard. Disappointment settled on me because too many little pieces of this mise-en-scène were wrong.
Alexis and Marcel joined us. Fabienne spooned me the first piece of her attempted quiche. The crust was discouragingly black-green. Gaston alone passed on the dish. Fabienne took her place and inquired if the quiche pleased me.
“It’s wonderful,” I interpolated without zest, because the middle was cold and wet, gluggy as liquid soap. “The pastry is as light as air.”
Alexis predictably tucked in but Marcel spat his first mouthful into a napkin and started to cry. Gaston projected an unstifled sneeze over the table. Wolfing Alexis managed a muffled blessing. I would definitely eat no more quiche. I was in a reckless mood because of the dinner’s failure to deliver an epiphany, so I decided to prompt Fabienne. “You said Hitchcock made a movie here?”
“Our misfortune,” sniffled Gaston. He dragged a flap of bread through the oil and vinegar.
“Why is that a misfortune?”
“Because we want to live in peace,” said Fabienne. She sawed into her quiche and frowned at the yellow mush. “A strange man came here a few months ago. A panting lunatic telling me he must see the Hitchcock villa. He must! What Hitchcock villa? I said. He said something about Grace de Monaco. He wanted to take photographs. I refused to admit him. He insulted me.”
“That must have been terrible,” I said softly. I did not look at Alexis.
“That’s very little of the story,” said Gaston.
“What next?”
Fabienne swallowed one mouthful and then put down her eggy knife and fork in defeat. “A letter. This disgusting man wrote that it was immoral to hoard a historical landmark, that we were criminals, that we would suffer for it.”
“And we have,” said Gaston.
“How?”
“A few weeks ago,” said Fabienne, “we came back from shopping and walked in on this lunatic fucking a woman on our sofa.”
“What?” blurted my shocked half-sister, choking on the quiche. Fabienne had not censored this information for Marcel’s ears. It took me a moment to remember Marcel was ignorant of English.
Fabienne sighed. “I know, unbelievable. Such insane audacity. The woman screamed and fled into the garden. The naked lunatic got up and charged Gaston.”
“He must have resembled a jouster,” I quipped.
“He shoved Gaston onto the floor, leapt upstairs, locked himself in the guest bedroom. By the time the police arrived, he’d escaped through the upstairs window. Naked, I presume.”
“Oh my God,” said Alexis.
“The poor woman in the garden knew nothing. A hooker from Nice. The lunatic had broken in, called from our phone, had her drive up here, made her wear costume jewellery, made her role-play she was Grace de Monaco.”
“Did the police get him?” I asked as a matter of appearances; I had, after all, seen Leon the day before in Paris.
“Not yet,” said Fabienne. “They don’t seem to care, either.”
Alexis stared at me across the table, fiercely revolted that I did not dob in Leon. But how to do it without revealing our real reason for being here? And to be honest I was impressed and humbled by Leon. He had earned my respect. A Grace Kelly lookalike. That was imagination and boldness. That was the Positivity Principle in action. This unfulfilling dinner on the balcony of the Villa des Bijoux was the predictable result of bad planning, misadventure, improvisation, poor imagination. That is why a moment of transcendence had eluded me.
“It’s been a horrible ordeal, horrible,” continued Fabienne. “Gaston and I had planned to move one day to Lille to be near our daughter’s family but because of this lunatic’s terror we’ve decided to go now. Isn’t that the sensible thing?”
“Don’t tell me you’re selling?” I said.
“Fortunately we have a buyer.”
“A buyer?”
“We sign the contract tomorrow. Good riddance to St Jeannet.”
“I TOLD YOU Leon was a crazy fan,” I said to Alexis when we were alone in the unimpressive guest bedroom. “We’ve uncovered the truth behind Leon’s academic pretension, those tweeds–”
“You’re just as crazy as him!” she hissed. “I’m freaking out that they’ll discover the truth about us. You’re a liar and you make me a liar.”
“How will they discover the truth, huh?”
Alexis heaved her backpack onto one of the beds, seized my arms in a pincer grip and rattled me. “We’re leaving on the first bus in the morning. Eight o’clock. No later.”
I struggled out of her cruel hold. “Come on, Porky, don’t be this way. You’re enjoying the food, aren’t you? Gourmet home cooking.”
She jabbed a finger into my face. “Or else I tell these lovely people why you’re really here.”
I went to bed in a pair of Gaston’s pyjamas under this threat of exposure. Of course I couldn’t sleep. ‘Freaked out’ Alexis, however, was snoring like a boar within minutes, all that dessert of peach tart with almonds and hazelnut cream rotting in her guts. It had been a severe misjudgment to let her come along. She was what Bumber called a “curtailer” – she was intent on curtailing my success. Under these restricted circumstances my only hope was for a sustained time alone in the back garden at dawn. If everything clicked into place I could achieve a perfect reenactment of one minor scene – Cary Grant tending the roses in the sun. I decided I could settle for that and go home.
But all night wind beat into the village. I watched long craggy shadows flash across the stucco ceiling when the lightening hit. Thunder sounded in the hills like distant echoes of Alexis’ snorts. The rain started at four, heavy on the terracotta roof, and the gutter overflows slapped the driveway. It was so disheartening that I resorted to listening to Georgie Auld through my earphones. I eventually lost consciousness as I drifted in those romantic sounds.
When I woke at seven the rain had not stopped, there was little light outside, and the window was entirely misted up. My wounded knees ached but nevertheless I dressed in my mud-encrusted pullover, torn grey slacks and red foulard. Alexis, drooling over her pillow, did not wake.
The house was silent. It seemed that everybody was sleeping in. Even the cat was supine on one of the sofas, her furry belly gently inflating and deflating. I went down the back garden steps, which was like a little muddy waterfall, and stood in the rain by the dancing roses. I got sodden. It was a cold, hideous winter morning that precluded any chance of an epiphany. I knew then that I had to jump in and buy the Villa des Bijoux for myself. That way I could remodel and recreate the To Catch a Thief interiors, spend the summer here, let the moment of transcendence – indeed, many such moments – happen naturally.
There were potential snags to this plan. Firstly, I was totally broke. I was in thousands of dollars of credit card debt for my memorabilia purchases. I owed my ex-wife a backlog of child-support and legal fees. Even this European vacation was being funded by Mother. Secondly, even if I could somehow swing a mortgage – which would require me to be a wage slave for at least the next twenty-five years – I did not see how I could possibly earn a living in France, as I spoke no French and had no skills. But goddamn it! Live on the edge, says Bumber, embrace risk, collect the dividends. I scooped a fistful of mud from the nearest flowerbed, mud that would soon be mine, and anticipated the pride of ownership. Whatever the price, the Villa des Bijoux would be the buy of the ages.
Through the noise of the storm I heard a car pull down the front driveway. The engine cut out, the handbrake jerked. I had a frightening thought – the buyer here with the contract! I must make an immediate offer to Fabienne and Gaston! I dashed up the steps and back into the villa, dripping water across the lounge room floor, and spied through the front door peephole. I was shocked to see lunatic Leon emerge from a sedan and try to unfold an umbrella. He quickly gave up in a wet flurry, unlatched the gate and jogged alongside the rosebushes to the front door. I was bold in defence of my villa. I yanked open the door, seized Leon’s wet bulk in a full nelson, dragged him down the cellar stairs, threw him to the gritty floor and locked him in. There were groans and a thunderous fists against the door. By the time I returned to the top of the stairs Gaston and Fabienne, half-dressed, were in the lounge room demanding an explanation for the ruckus. Marcel hid behind his grandmother’s leg. My half-sister appeared sleepy-eyed in her borrowed nightie.
“I have captured your lunatic,” I told Gaston and Fabienne. “He’s in the wine cellar. He tried to break in again.”
Leon’s voice boomed from the cellar. “Madame Gazeau! C’est Leon Beauregard!”
Fabienne, in a fright, raced down the stairs. “Professeur?”
“Oh!” moaned Leon. “Oh!”
Fabienne unbolted the door and Leon tumbled haphazardly up the stairs. His cheek was grazed, his brown suit coated with wet filth.
“The wrong man!” declared Fabienne, dismayed at my stupidity.
“Are you telling me this is not the man who broke into your house and fucked the girl on your sofa?”
Fabienne was furious. “This is Professor Beauregard, here to sign the property transfer!”
“No!” I cried. “It’s some sort of plot! He’s a fake, a crazy Hitchcock fanatic!”
“You are crazy,” Leon growled. He started brushing the matted dust from his suit. “And very stupid. There is no plot. The Musée de Cinema in Nice is buying the villa for a public Hitchcock exhibition. I’m the curator.”
I’m not ashamed to admit that I turned to Fabienne and Gaston and begged, “Please, I want to buy the villa for myself. I’ll do anything.”
Leon addressed a question to Fabienne and Gaston in angry French, which Fabienne answered in English: “No, he’s Conrad Burns, there was an accident.”
“He has lied to you,” said Leon. “He’s Mark Faber, a notorious and violent Hitchcock fan. Look – he is dressed up as Cary Grant. He’s just as crazy as your other intruder. I tried to prevent him coming down here and harassing you poor people.”
Fabienne’s eyes leapt out at me and she shrieked like a crow. “Out! Out! We’ll call the police!” She then turned on Alexis, who was hanging back beside the sofas, and started chasing her around the room.
Leon said to me, “I’ll make sure you’re banned from the property for life.”
I pleaded with Gaston, “My friend, let’s talk about this.”
But Gaston stood quietly with Marcel at Leon’s side. He made his allegiance clear. Meanwhile the powerful Fabienne caught the sleeve of Alexis’ nightie and dragged her across the room like a sack of blubber. Fabienne’s vicious shouts hounded me to the front door and Alexis and I were expelled with force onto the muddy driveway. Alexis got back on her feet and wailed, “My wallet and passport!” A minute later the guest bedroom window was thrown open and our belongings were dropped to the driveway. My CD player shattered, the batteries flew in several directions, the Georgie Auld CD rolled into the rosebushes. I realised at that point that the lunatic might actually have been the mysterious iamthecat@tocatchathieffanatic.com. Hmmm. With Leon on my mind, I hadn’t thought of that possibility.
Nevertheless, while Alexis retrieved our things from the downpour, I repeatedly stabbed Leon’s tyres with the blade of a pair of hedge clippers. You get the picture - Eek! Eek! Eek! My own shower scene. If not transcendent, it felt cathartic. Then I followed Alexis to the bus stop for a long silent wait
II. GUT BUCKET BLUES
“YOU’RE GONNA love Murray.”
“Am I?”
“Or maybe not. Maybe you’re too straight. This guy affronts the bourgeoisie. He’s bohemian. Lives by his own code: piano and pot and pussy. Shocking to a North Shore girl like you.”
“Shocking.”
“But so absolutely right. He’s figured it out. I see it, too. I’m not letting the suits bleed my soul any longer. I’m sick of having to play a record to remember who I am. ‘Corporation’ is a synonym for slow death of the soul, baby.”
“How much did you drink before I got here, Daddy-O?”
“I don’t know, not enough, that’s the whole point. Forget being sensible, following rules, ‘appropriate’ behaviour. I’m gonna play the piano again, create art, starve if necessary.”
“Live in a garret?”
Kenny put his schooner on the table. “Maybe that scares you, huh? You want the house in the ‘burbs. The SUV in the driveway with space for two point four kids and their bling.”
“Of course,” she said. “You better buy me all that or I’ll give you the flick.”
“I”ll be poor alright. But pure. I’ll have a boxer’s discipline.”
“And how will you afford your one-eighty gram Blue Note reissues?”
“Shoplift.”
“You’ll have to say goodbye to your bourgeois friends. Sell your bourgeois sports car. Move out of your parent’s bourgeois home.”
“Yes, us bourgeois Chinese with our money, money, money. It’s disgusting.”
He lit a cigarette and blackened the air between them.
Nelly rubbed her right eye. “That’s toxic.”
He tossed the blue packet onto the table. “I bought them on the Internet. Probably an illegal importation. Gauloise. French fags. No filter.”
“Do you have a death wish?”
“Bud Powell smoked them.”
“He died.”
“Not of lung cancer.”
Kenny lurched into the men’s room and took a piss. He spat the butt of the Gauloise into the trough. This would be a great night: the Murray Doyle Trio at the Bald Faced Stag in Leichhardt. It had been a long time since he’d seen Murray. Years. He used to take a train to Marrickville, cross a weedy lot rank with catshit, climb the backsteps of the flats, and find the old man at his piano. After the hour lesson, Murray would flare up a joint of hydroponic grass that plumed blue silk.
Back in those days Kenny had been seeing Rebecca Adler, a short Jewish girl whose hair was dyed all the colours of the rainbow. She studied trumpet at the Conservatorium of Music and read Bowles, Camus, and Kerouac in paperback. Manic depressive. Institutionalised in her teens. Volatile temper, but also a shameless nympho. She lived in a decayed Art Deco building in The Cross. Hard rain hit the panes. Looking out, you saw black roads sloping to Woolloomooloo beneath an iron grey sky. She had a thin mattress on the carpet for daylong fucking and Louis Armstrong on the CD player. Oh God, how did I fall out of that life? Try to connect the dots from jazz man to operations analyst at Barker & Wein. Impossible.
He soaped his hands and peeked at Nelly drinking an orange juice in the booth. Yes, a nice girl with fine cheekbones, rosy skin, and a hard white horserider’s bum. A privileged upbringing. She still laughs at her parents’ jokes, all very politically correct (Daddy sits on the committee of the Multicultural Business Association), as they welcome Kenny the Chinaman to the Sunday roast with glasses of cab sav. Only Nelly abstains: never drinks, never gets high. She is high on “life”. Of course she is. “Life” has given her beauty, intelligence, wealth, no failure, no demands, no humiliation.
Ergo: no character.
Rebecca Adler had character. Yes, she sometimes attacked me with blunt objects, but she wasn’t smug. And she wasn’t above getting down and dirty. Whereas I spend half my life on my knees pleasuring Nelly, my tongue just about to die, and she refuses to reciprocate. I hear well, you don’t have to, Kenny, of course I’m not going to tell you to stop but that doesn’t mean I’m going to…
Murray was at the bar sinking a schooner, standing six foot three with a white beard like Ernest Hemingway or Santa Claus. His T-shirt was spotted with dried soup. Veins lashed across the bones of his hands like guy ropes. Virile as a gladiator. A badass white man. Kenny strode across the pub, dried his hands on his jeans, and hugged the old man, who said, “Huh?”
“Five years,” Kenny said. “It’s Kenny Wong!”
“Oh hi, mate!” Murray patted his shoulder. “Here for the gig, hey?”
Kenny bought two shots of vodka and took Murray to the booth.
“This is Murray,” he said to Nelly. “He’s a real motherfucker on the piano.”
Murray sat down and felt Kenny’s tie. “Silk, is it? You’re moving up in the world.”
“No, I’m way down.” Kenny unknotted the tie and stuffed it into a pocket. “Way way down. Barker & Wein. Insurance. Jacket and tie. Every day.”
“That’s where I eat lunch in Newtown,” Murray said, winking at Nelly. “Jacket & Thai.”
“Might as well wear a straitjacket.” Kenny swallowed one of the vodka shots. “This corporate world, man, just forbids soul. No jokes. No ‘inappropriate’ comments. No sexual thoughts. Be very afraid of what your cock might make you do.” Kenny shook his head. “You never know, it might even lead a man to create something beautiful.”
“Like what?” said Nelly. “Two point four kids?”
“Like art, goddamn it.” Kenny turned to Murray. “Hey, tell Nelly what was the best moment of your life.”
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