Read Online Great Apes by Will Self - Free Book Online Page B

cleft. “Monkey, monkey,” he uttered in her mouth.
    The door to the car-deck room banged open and Tabitha stood there guffawing, a drink slopping in her hand. “What have we here?” She turned up the fader switch by the door. “Love in a dim climate, or what?” Sarah and Simon broke. His hand went to his nose, he added musk to mucus, cunt to cocaine. Tabitha threw herself in a chair. She was wearing a very short skirt and her legs were hosed in something matt yet shiny, emphasising their great length, their insulting shapeliness. “There’s fuck-all happening down there,” she continued, grabbing handfuls of her tawny hair and pulling them upwards, a characteristic gesture “The shiny happy people and I have dropped an E, but it doesn’t look as if you two need one.”
    Sarah still stood in the corner, she had hoicked her skirt up to rearrange her blouse and underwear. “Hoo, I dunno, Simon?”
    â€œGod, I really shouldn’t –”
    â€œShouldn’t, or don’t want to?” Tabitha’s tone mocked him, lassoed him with double meaning. She always fancied her sister’s men, wanted them. Although whether this was out of competitiveness, or genuine attraction, was impossible to say.
    â€œShouldn’t, mustn’t, really ought not to. I’ve got to work all day tomorrow and it’s getting edgy, I open next week.”
    â€œBut, Simon.” She rose and crossed towards him, came right up to him, so close he could smell her, see the saliva behind her lips. A pill appeared between her thumb and forefinger, she took it into orbit in the space between their faces. “Next week is on the dark side of this moon, wouldn’t you say.” The little white satellite rose again and was dropped into his open mouth. Simon turned away, picked up his whisky and washed the thing down.
    They stayed on in the club for quite a while, despite the fact that there was fuck-all happening. In fact they revelled in the fuck-alledness of it. Submerged themselves in this lukewarm footbath of anti-sociability, with its froth of tragic bathos. Until the ecstasy bit Simon drank to offset the great oubliette of emptiness and self-loathing he felt the cocaine about to tip open beneath his feet; and he took the cocaine to keep him sober. His natural geniality was not yet the aberrant genitality it would become; now it was simply crushed and then extruded from between the up and the down. And so he flowed all over the bar, talking, talking, talking. And always joking, hurling witticisms, looping in people he barely knew, people he didn’t even like.
    The shiny happy people formed a core group in one of the seating arrangements; those moving past would prop themselves on the arms of chairs to pick up their niblets, to insinuate themselves. It was nearly eleven when George Levinson turned up, plainly drunk and smartly dressed. He had lost the boy he’d picked up at the opening in Chelsea, but managed to acquire another one over dinner at Grindley’s. The good thing – as far as the clique was concerned – was that this boy had a girlfriend, a girlfriend who was even drunker than George. Drunker than any of them in fact,and as they saw it gauche as well. She lunged across the table knocking over glasses, she made jokes that fell utterly flat – providing no relief whatsoever – she lolled against the gay and inveighed against the straight, she talked about drugs, loudly. In a word, she was a
find.
A find because every clique needs to have a litmus paper on hand with which to test its acidity, its determination to dissolve and exclude foreign bodies.
    Simon joined in with this, assisted George in his bantering attempts to prise the boy away from the girl. Whenever they linked arms, or showed one another any physical affection, George would butt in, crying ‘Say no to hugs! Hugging is a crime!’ And then Simon would take up the cry,