Audacity

Excusing herself from his embrace, she padded over to the counter and produced a decanter of ominous black substance, proffering its contents to him in a manner to which he immediately decided he would never become accustomed.1

"Starbucks?"2

"Do you mean... coffee?"3

"Whatever."4

At this retort he felt a twinge of remorse. Memories percolated from his subconscious, and the erstwhile hegemony of his libido - now sated - swiftly gave way to an insurgent conscience, subdued mercifully in its turn by the increasingly strident chorus of a burgeoning hangover.5

"Yes. Please. God."6

"I keep thinking that if I pinch myself you'll disappear," she beamed, pouring his coffee first. He sat up from the bed - noticing with rancour that his stomach seemed determined to continue that trajectory - and squinted at her through eyes tinged by morning myopia; a slender apparition, delineated in milk-white, freckles conspiring intermittently to lend her aristocratic pallor the earthen lustre of one not confined to aristocratic pastimes. Reflected upon the vinyl of the counter-top, she seemed almost to emerge out of it, as though from a lake of perfectly still, dark water.
The twinge became a palpable wince.7

"I'm Rachel, but since we're sleeping together, you should probably call me Red." Red, he mused. Made sense. "And to whom do I owe this pleasure?"8

He tried to meet her gaze as she delivered a warm mug into his trembling hands, but her face was obscured by the rising steam and his rising nausea.9

"George. George Bush." He lied, estimating her knowledge of twenty-first-century history as being roughly commensurate with her age; her age being roughly half his. At the first dram of caffeine, his malaise abated, and he instantly felt like a pervert.10

"The one the Justice Committee tried for war crimes in '24?" Her expression betrayed the peculiar dissonance of one simultaneously defiant and yet eager-to-please: a familiar syndrome, he thought - in others. Nevertheless, she was not the first to have weathered that peremptory disdain, and he immediately pondered whether a veritable, clinical diagnosis of his increasingly flagrant misogyny as 'pathological and inveterate' might spare him this onerous self-recrimination every time he fucked the sort of person who couldn't help but make love to him.11

"That's right. Blair sends his regards."12

"Who?"13

Or perhaps he would avoid Dr. Quintock's chair after all. Who'd ever heard of a mid-life crisis at thirty-six? No: in a society whose elderly were seldom put out to pasture until they were literally compost, such behaviour could hardly be deemed anything short of premature - presumptuous, even.14

"I prefer 'Marcus', anyway," she reproached. "At least it's... authentically regal. I mean, sure, the notion of dynasty has been much maligned; but there was an integrity to the Roman regime, which—"15

"Well, I'm certainly a right royal bastard. If nothing else."16

"You won't, though, will you?"17

"What?"18

"Disappear."19

Not content at having ridden roughshod over the garden of his contentment, she now began tinkering with the furniture. Suddenly, as though activated by some hitherto-dormant firing-mechanism, his mind lurched out of the benighted doldrums of post-libation and into a vast, desolate wilderness of clarity; a gazelle eyed him quizzically from afar. Or was it a lion? Potential metaphors circled menacingly overhead.20

"How the scintillating fuck do you know my name?"21

"Your card. The one you left beneath the lamp." Her eyes averted - coruscations of blue and amber which, for the duration of that moment, imbued her aspect with the full-blooded character of temptation. As she pensively sipped the lukewarm beverage, her lips were a profuse curl of sensuality; it was enough to give him pause, among other things. "Are you always so formal?"22

"Only when confusing business and pleasure."23

"You can't mean—"24

"Not your business; mine." He grimaced. "Unlike the pleasure, I suspect. Where is my wallet?"25

The sun was a jaundiced smear on an ashen sky, diffusing its wan glow like so many fleeting embers into the firmament - the pyre of a deceased god, whose mourners would soon erupt with cataclysmic lamentation. Beneath this meta-tableau, a vast, neon undertow dissolved the sorrows of the disaffected in effervescent debauchery; true absolution would have to come later.