The Deflowering of Liam Laverty by Alan Warren

The Deflowering of Liam Laverty

by Alan Warren

Liam Laverty had loved Tom and Felicity Pettigrew since their college days together, more than twenty years earlier, but at the moment he despised them.

It was the post launch-party party celebrating the publication of Felicity’s first literary novel. Liam and around thirty selected colleagues, clients, and hangers-on, had ridden taxis up from New York City to continue their despicable fawning in the spacious lounge of Liam’s Sleepy Hollow weekend retreat.

His guests gathered around him, Liam was in the process of delivering, on autopilot, a shameless eulogy to Felicity. He had nothing but contempt for the sort of trash which had made her name, although he had to admit that it provided a financial basis for the real purpose of his agency, Laverty & Associates: the acquisition and placement of works of true literary merit. Liam cared only about fiction that stimulated the intellect as well as the emotions, fiction that could, without exaggeration, be described as art. However, he wanted to ensure that Laverty & Associates’ cash cow remained firmly within the fold.

With her latest book, Felicity had departed from her usual glitzy sex ‘n’ showbiz novels, which had seemed to be almost nailed to the bestseller lists. He knew that like him, she had long harbored ambitions of writing an immortal work of literature. Now, she had beaten him to the draw with the launch of ‘Three Lives Unlived’. Although nowhere near being immortal, it was certainly serious in literary terms, and it irked him that initial reviews of the book had been extremely favorable.

As Liam eulogized her, Felicity beamed with delight then blushed with self-effacing humility. He mused that she needed to work on the latter; she hadn’t quite got that fake sincerity licked. Husband Tom could coach her. As he thought of his own lack of success as a writer, he couldn’t help but infuse the superlatives he tossed in Felicity’s direction with contempt: ‘unsurpassed’, ‘trailblazing’, and ‘unputdownable’ positively dripped disdain into the ears of his guests. A hardening in Felicity’s smile warned him to rein himself in. He decided to wrap it up:

“Finally, Felicity has been hard at work on an as-yet untitled follow up to ‘Three Lives Unlived’, and has been good enough to permit me to read the first draft of the early chapters. All I am going to say is: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’”

Speech concluded, there was a stampede for the drinks cabinet.

* * *

Two hours later, at a quarter of midnight, most of the revelers had taken taxis back to the city. Liam’s drinks cabinet had taken a hammering, but that was fine by him. Booze was for houseguests; he was teetotal. He despised the loss of self-control that inevitably arrived when one drank, such as that currently evident in Felicity and Tom.

Tom must have worked his way through most of a bottle of Jim Beam. He had virtually melted into the dining table. His right forearm acted like an engineering support, the only thing keeping his face separate from the table’s polished surface. Felicity, who normally limited herself to a glass or two of white wine and soda, had been attacking the champagne this evening. Although not as wrecked as Tom, her complexion had reddened and gained a slick sheen, and her eyes were narrowed meanly; she was at the truculent stage of drunkenness familiar to bar-brawlers the length and breadth of the land.

The plan was that the pair of them would spend the night at his house. Although just an hour from Manhattan, Tom and Felicity rarely spent much time at Liam’s Sleepy Hollow home. They were stars of New York’s B-list celebrity scene, and thanks to Felicity’s avalanching success, fast moving into the A-list. Although they professed Liam to be an invaluable colleague and a treasured friend, he knew they considered themselves to be the brilliant binary star orbiting which he was the unremarkable asteroid. They undoubtedly considered that they were doing him an enormous favor by conferring their patronage upon his hospitality. Although Tom was far from being the sharpest knife in the drawer, with his accumulated life’s knowledge extending little beyond sport and haute couture, Liam found him to be an engaging companion. Tom was naturally charismatic; he spoke the most mundane of phrases with the passion of Olivier reciting Shakespeare. Liam had looked forward to a tete a tete with him this evening, but that now looked like it was out of the question. Felicity, on the other hand, was as sharp as a scalpel and immensely well read, but she was too clinical, less involving, and lacked Tom’s charisma.

“Is there something you’d like to get off your chest, Liam?”

Liam jumped, startled. She was looking in his direction, but her eyes were focused on a point some distance behind him. She was further gone than he’d thought. He recalled the previous occasion on which she had strayed from simple white wines and soda; she had become transformed from Hilary Clinton into Roseanne Barr, telling filthy jokes and at one point attempting to light a fart. She had been ill for two days afterwards and later professed no knowledge of her drunken exploits.

“I beg your pardon, Felicity?”

“You fucking heard me just fine. I shouldn’t ask – it’s quite obvious you’re jealous.”

He stiffened. “Jealous?”

“Jealous,” she confirmed. “Jealous of my financial success and now jealous of my critical success.”

Drunk or not, she was still dangerous. Liam had to be careful how he handled this; he couldn’t rely on her developing amnesia again.

“Felicity, my love, I don’t know what you mean. As you know, your success reflects on me. I discovered and nurtured you–”

“Ha!” she cried.

“– and I can’t tell you how delighted I am that ‘Three Lives Unlived’ has been received so well.”

“Substitute ‘devastated’ for ‘delighted’ and you’d be somewhere near the mark. What you believe, my dear Liam is that the literary world should be showering praise upon you and not me. ‘Three Lives’ is the Great American Novel that you’ve always deluded yourself has lain within, just waiting to be excavated. The fact is that you’ve already reached the pinnacle of your achievements. You’re a small Manhattan agent who’s been lucky enough to find himself a literary prodigy and cash cow rolled into one. Now, where’s the fucking champers?”

Liam was mortified. He couldn’t find an appropriate response, and even if he had, he doubted he would have been able to vocalize it. At that moment, unexpectedly, Tom leapt to his rescue.

“Fliss, honey, that’s harsh, very harsh. Liam’s a good friend–”

“To whom?” she demanded.

“– a good friend of ours. Let’s not spoil a good evening.”

Felicity stared at him, her contempt undisguised. “He’s no friend of mine. Did you hear that so-called speech he made earlier?”

“Yes, I thought it was swell. Very touching.”

Felicity spluttered in disbelief. “Swell? Swollen, is nearer the mark. He was being sarcastic, you moron. A five-year-old child could have seen that. ‘Unsurpassed, trailblazing, unputdownable’. He’s jealous; he thinks I’ve risen above my station. And who uses the word ‘swell’ in conversation anymore, anyway?”

Things were getting out of hand. Liam tried to step in. “Really Felicity, that’s not it at all.”

Tom waved his half-full glass of Jim Beam at her. “You know, honey, Liam could have a point. You have become a little stuck up lately. Like you think you’re better than the rest of us.”

She waved her hands, feigning distress. “Ooh, the washed-up male model dissects me with his penetrating intellect. Quick, send for my therapist. That’s it; I’m out of here.”

“Felicity,” Liam called. She paid no heed to him, simply grabbing her handbag and marching out the door.

“Let her go,” Tom said, topping up his glass.

Liam, the harassed but perfect host, told Tom he’d try to talk some sense into

Felicity, and that Tom should in the meantime make himself at home.

Liam found Felicity exiting his home into the driveway. He noticed that although her serpent-like tongue was enhanced by her drunkenness, her locomotion certainly was not. She crunched haphazardly across the gravel towards her Mercedes, fumbling her keys from her bag. Liam grasped her wrist gently but firmly.

“Get your paws off me, pervert,” she growled, shaking herself free.

“Pervert? Felicity, please.”

“I know you’ve always held a torch for me, Liam. You practically drool all over me each time we meet. But I’m afraid the feeling is most certainly not mutual.”

“I can assure you you’ve grasped the wrong end of the stick. Please, let’s go back inside. I’ll make us all a strong pot of coffee before we retire to our separate beds.”

“No way, buster. If you think I’m sharing a bed with that wandering pig of a husband, you’re even stupider than you look. I’m driving back to the city.”

God spare me an aggressive soak, Liam thought. His powers of restraint knew almost no limits, but this damned harpy was pushing them to breaking point. “Listen, Felicity, you’re in no state to drive. You’re rather the worse for wear. You’re drunk, in fact: frazzled, soused. If you were to have an accident… Please, if you insist on leaving, let me drive you to one of the hotels in town.”

He made a grab for her keys but she demonstrated her physical superiority over him, even in her current insalubrious state, by easily shoving him away. She climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine.

Liam threw his hands up in frustration, which by his standards was a powerful display of raw emotion. He was loath to leave Tom alone for an unknown period of time, and cast a glance back towards the house. Deciding that dealing with Felicity had priority, he ran around to the other side of the car, and pulled open the door as she screeched away. He sprinted to keep abreast, and then launched himself into the passenger seat.

“You fancy a night drive too?” He caught her teeth glinting in the moonlight that permeated the gloomy interior of the car.

She headed out of his driveway at a dangerous pace and along the narrow country lane that led into the village of Sleepy Hollow. He had to plead with her to switch on the headlamps. He wondered if he would get out of this alive. Maybe he should have let the spoilt bitch take off alone. He suspected he would gain at least a little satisfaction from reading of her demise in the following day’s paper.

Another mile or so of narrow, twisting road and they would arrive at the village. Trees whizzed by, unnervingly close. Liam hung on to the hang rail like grim death, his teeth clenched so tightly that his jaw began to ache. Felicity saw his terror and seemed to thrive on it. She tossed her hair away from her face and flicked on the hi-fi. ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ blared from the speakers at a fraction below distortion level. Liam had a vision of the Robert Duvall character from Apocalypse Now swaggering around bare-chested during a mortar attack, while all those around him cowered.

He turned to the madwoman. “Damn it, Felicity, I demand that you stop the car right now.”

There was a sudden heavy thud followed a second later by a vicious crunch. Felicity’s exuberance deserted her. Her face contorted into a mask of horror as she stamped on the brake. Liam turned to the front, thinking she must have left the road and hit a sapling or a rock.

The sight that actually greeted him was quite unexpected: a cyclist lay splattered across the windshield, which had fractured into a crazy paving under the impact. He stared at Liam, who blinked at him; the cyclist blinked back. As the car’s tires bit into the bitumen and heaved the vehicle to a halt, the cyclist’s momentum carried him forward off the hood and into the road.

Liam and Felicity sat rigidly for an unknown time, each staring at the fractured windshield. Finally Felicity snapped out of her stupor. She began to moan: “Ohmygod ohymgod ohmygod…” She cradled her cheeks in her hands. She appeared to have sobered up quickly.

Liam took a deep breath and climbed out of the car. He strode briskly towards the cyclist, who lay ten or twelve yards distant. Liam stood over his motionless body. Jesus Christ, she’d killed him. The man’s eyes swiveled in their sockets to meet his.

“I think I’m paralyzed,” he gasped. “That stupid fucking bitch, I think she paralyzed me.”

Oh fantastic, Liam thought. Our most lucrative client jailed for reckless endangerment, and Laverty & Associates’ pristine reputation flushed down the toilet. “I’ll call an ambulance,” he said.

While they were waiting for the ambulance, Liam set up a reflective warning triangle he’d found in the trunk of Felicity’s car. It was a warm night and so it was no great sacrifice for him to drape his cashmere sweater over the cyclist’s torso. He tried to engage the man – Carlton Deveraux – in conversation, but met a cold shoulder. He provided his own narrow shoulder against which Felicity sobbed and racked herself to a state of relative calmness. The wail of an ambulance’s siren approached.

How could they not have seen the cyclist? He was dressed in a garish futuristic lycra outfit in which were embedded a number of reflective stripes. In the glare of the Mercedes’ headlights he appeared to positively glow in the dark. Even if Felicity had been incapable, at least he, Liam, should have spotted the danger. He strode to the twisted bicycle, whose front wheel had buckled to a near-perfect diamond shape. The bike was fitted with both front and rear lights. The rear was smashed, but its switch set to ON. The front lamp, remarkably, had remained intact, and continued to broadcast a powerful beam. Without thinking about it, Liam wrapped his hand in his handkerchief and switched off the lamp. He returned to Felicity.

As the source of the siren rounded a bend into view it revealed itself to be a police cruiser and not an ambulance. Frowning, Liam approached the cyclist to adjust the position of his sweater. Deveraux had managed to switch position slightly. He clutched a cell phone in one hand. For a second time he locked gazes with Liam.

“That’s right, buddy, I’m going to make that bitch pay for this.”

Two patrolmen exited their vehicle and approached, each wielding a powerful flashlight. One of them knelt to make an assessment of Deveraux while the other looked Liam up and down as if he were Ted Bundy.

“The ambulance is two minutes away,” he growled. “What happened here?”

Liam opened his mouth to speak, but it was Deveraux’s voice that emerged. “The woman – she was swerving all over the road. I got as close to the right edge as I could but she hit me at maybe sixty, seventy. I think she’s out of her skull.”

Sixty to seventy? Liam thought. Admittedly she’d been driving too fast for even a sober person, but she’d been doing fifty at the absolute limit.

The patrolman who had taken an instant dislike to Liam hitched his thumbs in his belt loops as he presumably had seen some TV cop do, and said with an air of great calm:

“Oh, you’ll all be breathalyzed. You, miss – care to tell me what you were doing drunk at the wheel?”

Liam was surprised to find that Felicity had appeared at his side, her trembling over, but her pale complexion evident even in the artificial glare of the headlights.

“I think Mr. Deveraux is confused,” Liam said. “Mrs. Pettigrew was not driving this car – I was.” Liam stunned himself by the ease with which he’d delivered the lie.

“He’s a lying piece of shit,” Deveraux cried from the road. “She was driving. Ask her.”

Liam smiled sadly at this unfortunate turn of events. “The poor fellow must be concussed. He just appeared out of nowhere on my side of the road. If only he’d been using his lights we might not be having this conversation.”

Liam felt Felicity slip her arm through his and draw herself into him. He half-expected her to breathe ‘my hero’.

* * *

At 6.30 on a Sunday afternoon, Liam was revising the final chapter of his own Great American Novel, which alas, although only a first draft semi-revised, lacked that quality of greatness, which he so achingly sought. It was painful – physically painful – to be confronted with the damning evidence that the soaring prose in his mind somehow failed to transmit itself through his pencil and into words

Each workday since the launch of ‘Three Lives Unlived’ Liam had devoted six hours to the craft of writing his own novel. After supper he would work in two sets of three-hour shifts, from seven to ten, and from midnight to three. At weekends he’d commit himself to five punishing shifts of three hours each. He habitually arose at six, and so was averaging less than three hours sleep a night. For years he’d survived on only five, and taking a forty per cent cut was, for the moment at least, not a problem. He was driven. Just as well, too, he thought, because the words were not exactly flowing; more appropriate verbs would be: ‘crawling’, ‘staggering’, and ‘limping’. Adding insult to injury, ‘Three Lives Unlived’ was currently riding the top half of the bestseller list.

The wall-mounted phone rang. He took a series of deep breaths, shutting his eyes, waiting for the caller to ring off, resisting the catastrophic break in concentration that would result if he were to leave the temple of his escritoire.

A full minute went by – Liam counted his breaths. The phone continued to ring. He resolved to ignore it. He breathed a little deeper, a tad slower.

A second minute passed: still Liam counted his breaths.

The caller persisted. Liam stamped to the wall to answer it.

“Liam, how the devil are you?” Tom trilled.

“Tom,” he replied through gritted teeth. “Actually I’m in the middle of a writing session.”

Tom chuckled. “I know. That’s why I didn’t give up.”

Liam chuckled himself and wondered if he’d just toppled over the edge into madness. He politely enquired as to the nature of this idiot’s call.

“Wouldn’t you know it, I’ve just had simply the greatest brainwave. I’ve realized what my new career should be.”

“That’s wonderful, Tom. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

Tom was one of those fortunate individuals who had rolled merrily though life, meeting minimal resistance along the way. Born with an athlete’s physique, a natural aptitude for sports, and TV-doctor good looks, Tom had first found success in tennis, turning pro at the age of twenty. A badly broken ankle attained during a quarterfinal cliffhanger had put an early end to his tennis career, but just as that door had slammed shut on him, he’d bumbled through another in the form of a modeling career. He’d advertised everything from luxury cars to fashion wear. Recently, as the years advanced, and with his brand of debonair, healthy wholesomeness falling out of favor with current ideals in the modeling business, that particular door had groaned shut and rusted into position. For almost eighteen months Tom had been like a geek with a metal detector probing around under a seaside boardwalk, searching for the next open door.

As he now informed Liam, that door had presented itself in the form of a career as a writer. He thought he would begin with an autobiography (of himself, just in case Liam was unclear), which obviously would sell like hotcakes due to his massive popular appeal. After that he believed he would travel the world researching international espionage thrillers. Obviously as a dear and trusted friend, Liam would have the honor of representing this major new talent on the literary scene.

The gall of the man staggered Liam. After that unfortunate incident with the DUI-that-never-was a fortnight previously, Liam had for two whole days enjoyed the undying gratitude of the Pettigrews. From the third day on it had been business as usual: they treated him as a convenience, an occasional friend. He knew that he should tell Tom to go to hell, but he found the man’s charisma hard to defy.

When Tom grew tired of espousing his own limitless potential, he abruptly terminated the conversation, freeing Liam to return to his escritoire and his revision of the final chapter.

Three minutes into this activity, the phone rang again.

He ran through a string of profanities before deciding he would answer this call then unplug the jack from the wall. Maybe as an encore he would drop the damn phone in the garbage disposal.

“Liam? This is Felicity. How are we today?”

“We’re… frustrated, I believe is the word,” he said. Jesus Christ, she was now using the royal ‘we’.

“That’s wonderful,” she cooed, as usual, hearing only what she wanted to. “Liam, I’m going to cut to the chase, as there’s no easy way of saying this: I’ve decided to terminate my relationship with Laverty & Associates. Although I cannot praise highly enough your efforts to date, I feel that Laverty just doesn’t pack the necessary clout to handle an author of my stature. I’m moving to HarperCollins.”

Liam felt he should have been mortified, but instead he simply felt resigned. He really should have seen this coming. He thanked Felicity, hung up, unplugged the jack from its socket, and returned to his escritoire. He reread the first paragraph of the final chapter of his Great American Novel, confirming his initial impression that what he had written was indeed excrement of the most malodorous variety. In a Zen-like state, he fed each of the four hundred and eighty-six handwritten manuscript pages into his shredder.

* * *

Liam was born on 12 August 1955, the day that Thomas Mann died. He felt a great empathy with Mann, whom he considered to be vastly underrated in the canon of great twentieth century writers. He’d first read ‘Death in Venice’ at the age of twelve, beginning with the Lowe-Porter translation. The protagonist, Aschenbach’s, feelings of longing and repression, had resonated with him, as if Mann were speaking directly to Liam. Subsequently he’d devoured the literal Appelbaum translation, which he’d enjoyed even more, and then taken it upon himself to master the German language in order that he could read for himself Mann’s original prose. For three years he studied hard, taking tuition both in and out of school, practicing obsessively while his contemporaries were out indulging their base desires. At the age of seventeen he felt he was ready to tackle the book. It surpassed his expectations. As he completed the book after a marathon unbroken thirty-two hours, Liam realized that his only ambition was to write a great literary novel. His focus was to match the brilliance of ‘Venice’.

* * *

“Come on in, old chum,” Tom gushed, ushering Liam into his plush Yorkville duplex and through to his lounge. Liam noticed that Tom wore a mild frown as he noted Liam’s empty hands. Perhaps he had expected Liam to be carrying a briefcase containing a lucrative agency contract for him to sign. Once Tom had recharged his glass with Jim Beam and joined Liam on the settee, he confirmed this suspicion.

“I expect you’re keen to clinch this opportunity with me. But there’s some ground rules we need to hammer out first. I understand completely.”

Liam didn’t rise to the barefaced cheek of the man, nor would he ever again. He was the one in control now. He smiled at Tom, but kept quiet. He watched a fine crease in Tom’s forehead pucker into a ploughed furrow of apprehension. Finally, Liam spoke.

“Tom, can I remind you of the recent sacrifice that I made in order to keep your beloved wife out of jail?”

Tom’s glass paused on its way to his lips. Liam had his utmost attention.

“Good, I can see that you do. I’ve been thinking about the whole matter, and I’ve concluded that the arrangement is, to say the least, one-sided.”

Tom’s features performed a huge range of expressions as he attempted to order his thoughts preparatory to vocalizing them in a coherent response. Finally he settled for: “Oh!”

“In case you still don’t get my drift, I’m asking what’s in it for me.”

Tom finally managed to engage the transmission unit connecting his brain to his mouth. “You’re asking for money. Gee whiz, Liam, that’s blackmail, you know.”

“No and yes. No, I’m not asking for money, but yes, I intend to blackmail you. You’re not going to say ‘gee whiz’ again, are you, Tom?”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “If you don’t want money, what do you want?”

Liam cast a dreamy look out of the lounge window at the Manhattan skyline. “I’ve led rather an austere life. Spartan, one might say. Abstemious, even.”

Tom’s expression remained unchanged. Liam put him out of his misery. “I’m fifty years old, Tom, and a virgin. I remain un-deflowered, my cherry un-popped.”

“My Lord,” Tom whispered. “You’re after sex as payment in kind.”

“One good turn deserves another.”

“You’re asking me for my blessing for you to screw Fliss. You want me to pimp my own wife?”

Liam beamed at him, a twinkle in each eye. He waited while Tom wrestled with this dilemma, his head hung in his hands, his fingertips clawing at his scalp. His head shot up, his eyes defiant.

“It’ll be your word against Fliss’s.”

“Not so. You’ve forgotten the unfortunate Mr. Deveraux, who had a bug’s eye view of exactly who was driving that car. I understand that his doctors are doubtful he’ll ever walk again. One might say that that serves him right for cycling at night without lights.”

Tom’s defiance departed. His head returned to his hands, his fingertips to his scalp.

“I’ve always been confused about sex and my own sexuality,” Liam murmured, not wanting to intrude too deeply upon Tom’s thinking. “During my adolescence I felt completely out of step with my contemporaries. I couldn’t understand for the life of me why they wasted all their energies on trying to reach orgasm. Sex has always seemed a pointless and – pardon the pun – seedy activity to me.”

He paused for effect. “Until now, that is.”

Tom raised his gaze to meet Liam’s. “Yes, OK, you can have Fliss if it’ll save her from prison.”

Liam smiled and patted Tom’s knee. “Thanks for the kind offer, Tom, but I’m not interested in Felicity. It’s you that I want.”

Tom’s mouth fell agape.

“I’ve spent a lot of time on the Internet in the last couple of days – and you know how I loathe computers. Those chat room gizmos are fascinating though, aren’t they? One can canvas so many opinions so easily. You know, one chap was telling me that he doesn’t believe that a man has really experienced sensuality until he has given a blowjob. He highly recommends the practice.”

A tear rolled from the corner of Tom’s eye. “My Lord, you’re sick,” he croaked.

Liam shrugged, apologizing for his helplessness. “I’m afraid that you’re going to have to learn to play the pink clarinet if you want to keep dear Felicity out of Rikers Island.”

* * *

As Rick Vasquez handed her a manila envelope of 8x10 photos, Felicity reminded herself that she must wash her hands upon his departure. At a little under six feet tall with lank hair the color and sheen of sump oil, said hair carelessly pulled into a ponytail, and a cheap polyester suit a size too large for his beanpole frame, Vasquez gave her the creeps. However, his reputation as a first rate matrimonial PI had come to her attention by way of a glowing testimonial from one of her closest friends.

She leafed through the time stamped photographs carefully, pausing on each for a second. They clearly showed Tom both entering and leaving a number of adult entertainment establishments over the last month. On each occasion he was alone.

“What do these show?” Felicity demanded. “A middle-aged man with time on his hands visits strip bars and massage parlors? It hardly constitutes conclusive evidence.”

Vasquez tossed his ponytail as he rose to the challenge. “You don’t like those, lady? See what you think of these.”

He handed her a second envelope of photos. Evidently these had been snapped from an elevated vantage point in a motel room using a wide-angle lens. Each of the photos depicted Tom in fragrante delecto with a pair of young surgically enhanced hookers, one black, and one white. The photos left little to the imagination.

She sighed. She had been right: Tom was cheating on her. She was hardly surprised; the signs had been there. He’d become a changed person in the last year or so, as his modeling work had dried up. He struggled to fill his days, and she would have been plain naïve to believe he’d have been content with simply developing an affair with Jim Beam.

“Very good, Mr. Vasquez-“

“Call me Ricky, lady.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Vasquez. You’ve delivered what I asked for, and now I have to deal with it. Would you like me to settle my account now or will you invoice me in due course?”

Vasquez broke a cheesy grin and performed a Mexican wave with his eyebrows. “Don’t be so hasty – there’s more. I saved the best for last.”

He handed her a third envelope. The photos depicted her soon-to-be-ex-husband and her soon-to-be-ex-agent acting out several positions from the gay edition of the Karma Sutra. In particular Liam surprised her with the variety and difficulty of the rather gymnastic poses he had adopted. She felt on odd sense of unreality.

She didn’t look up when Vasquez said: “You can pay me now, thanks, lady.”

* * *

Felicity had loved Tom ferociously from within a week of meeting him back in their college days up to around a year back. Since then the embers of their love had rapidly cooled. As a doctoral research student in the English Department at Cornell, she had developed an interest in creative writing from her tutor, Liam, who even then had had ambitions of taking the literary world by storm and leaving his bite marks upon it. Tom, after reading her first couple of efforts – highbrow, overly-verbose tales of unrequited passion between academics – had bet her twenty dollars she couldn’t write a by-the-numbers sex ‘n’ scandal pulp novel. She’d accepted, being a couple of glasses of white wine and soda the worse for wear, but once she’d planned the story on a couple of sheets of legal paper and hammered out the first chapter, she’d found she’d thoroughly enjoyed the project. She’d finished it in six weeks and given it to Liam to read, thinking he’d deride it given his contempt of all things lowbrow. To her surprise he’d praised it, given its inherent limitations, of course, and asked if she’d like him to represent her via the literary agency he was in the process of establishing. She’d written the book as a joke but it had become a bestseller.

She’d been convinced that Liam had agreed to read her novel, and then offered to represent her, because he held a torch for her and thus would go to any lengths to win her affection. Now, as she watched Tom sobbing into his hands, his tears dripping on to the 8x10 photos laid out in front of him, she understood that it was Tom who had been the object of his desire. That explained how two such incongruous characters could have initiated and maintained a long-lasting friendship.

She’d cross-examined this pathetic shell of a man in front of her about his relationship with Liam. He’d sworn blind that he’d never had any homosexual urges before; he’d been having this affair for less than a fortnight and Liam was the only man with whom he’d ever done anything like this.

“Then why did you cave in to his advances?”

She felt her admittedly self-satisfied superiority disintegrate as Tom sobbed the details of Liam’s blackmail demands to her.

* * *

Felicity was in the process of wrapping up the first draft of the seventeenth chapter of her latest literary effort when the doorbell rang. As she was on the verge of terminating this writing session anyway, she decided to answer it. The CCTV’s monitor showed Liam’s serene face beaming up at her from the street. Impressed by his forwardness, she buzzed him in.

“Felicity, my love,” he said, brushing his lips against her cheek. “How’s life?”

Strange, she thought, he’s like a different person. Since he’d shed his straitjacket of conformity, she hardly recognized him. “In general, fine, but with the odd marital problem. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

Liam clicked his tongue and winked at her. She noticed a ruby piercing glinting in his left earlobe.

“Incidentally, if it’s Tom you’re after, you’re out of luck. He’s out somewhere drinking or whoring, or maybe both. I believe he still occasionally shows a weakness for women.”

If this fazed Liam he hid it skillfully. “Actually, you are my current focus.”

“Really? Come through to the lounge.”

He led the way. En route he made a detour into her writing study. She followed, her hackles raised. No one was ever invited into her inner sanctum, not even Tom.

“Let’s talk here,” Liam said, peering at the open word-processed document on her computer monitor. “I see the latest magnum opus is progressing nicely. Are you satisfied with its quality? I must say I was impressed with the first couple of chapters that you let me read all those weeks ago.”

Felicity briskly locked the screen, obscuring Liam’s view of the document. “I firmly believe it will surpass even the heights of ‘Three Lives’.”

“Have you settled on a final title?”

“I’m ninety-five per cent settled on ‘The Ecstasy of Betrayal’.”

Liam chewed this over. “’The Ecstasy of Betrayal’ by Liam J. Laverty. It has a certain resonance. I think it might work.”

Felicity felt her throat constrict. Her voice came out as a croak. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Too late. I’ve thought of nothing else since I bagged and tagged your dear husband.”

“You’re welcome to him.”

Liam waved his hand in dismissal. “Tom’s fine as a bit of fluff. You know what I really want. And I’m not talking about that cute yoga-toned ass of yours which Tom tried to pimp to me.”

“Do you really think you could get away with such a deception, even if I were willing to go along with it? The world knows the style and voice of Felicity Pettigrew.”

“Obviously I’ll apply my own distinctive veneer. The critics won’t doubt me. They’ll just love me.”

“No way in hell.”

“I promise it will be my last demand upon either you or Tom.”

“The answer is still ‘no’. Now please get out.”

Liam was the epitome of polite agreeability. “Of course, my love. I’ll leave you alone to mull it over. Maybe you’re right. A spell in the clink didn’t do Oscar Wilde any harm, did it?” He paused theatrically, and then continued. “Silly me, I got that completely wrong. Jail robbed him of his health and left him penniless.”

He winked at her, turned, and left, leaving her glaring at the space he’d vacated.

* * *

Tom had not had a good week. First he’d unexpectedly had his understanding of his own sexuality twisted around the yin-yang by a blackmailing fifty-year-old homosexual with the appetite of an adolescent. Initially submitting in appalled resignation, he’d come to actually enjoy the flowering of sensation it had revealed to him. It wasn’t as though he’d gone to bat for the other team; he considered himself merely to be on sabbatical. Soon after, his wife had confronted him about this latest development, whereupon she’d informed him their eighteen-year marriage was over. After she’d banished him from their home he’d spent the rest of the day in a gentleman’s club, where he’d convinced one of the dancers to let him spend the night with her. To round off this perfect week, he’d discovered he’d been unable to perform with the dancer.

He’d awoken this morning face down in a puddle of vomit to its side. He was grateful the dancer was nowhere to be found in the apartment. He performed a quick clean-up and jumped into the shower. Beneath a piping hot jet of water, as he cleansed himself of sweat, vomit, and the miasma of yesterday’s bourbon, he pondered his future.

He shuffled out into the street and hailed a yellow cab. Handing the driver a $100 bill, he told him to drive around the city until the bill was used up. He stared out of the window. Where could he go? He didn’t have a home any longer and was convinced he would be unable to sweet talk Felicity into giving their marriage another go. He didn’t have a job. He didn’t have any real friends, he’d realized, just hangers-on and fellow barflies. He didn’t have a real girlfriend either – just a list of hookers who aspired to be lap-dancers.

Some time later, the cabbie pulled in on 42nd Street, near Grand Central Station.

“There’s your hundred bucks, pal.”

Tom wandered into Grand Central Station in a daze. He sank on to a bench and stared up at the departure board. There was a Metro North train leaving in ten minutes. He noted that it would be stopping at Sleepy Hollow en route. He took this as being a sign from a greater intelligence.

* * *

From Sleepy Hollow station, he caught a cab out of the village and got out at the entrance to Liam’s estate. Plodding apprehensively up the driveway, he tried to view in a positive light the fact that it was not three days since Liam had discarded him like a broken toy; his tone of finality had suggested their long friendship was officially over.
Tom prayed Liam was at home. He knew Liam had been working obsessively on his novel for weeks now, and spent virtually every waking hour that he wasn’t out blackmailing friends, on getting the thing down on paper. Tom needed some kind of familiarity, if not a feeling of acceptance, then a begrudging offer of a place to stay until he sorted out his head. Liam would be resistant, but Tom was prepared to grovel if necessary. He peeked through a window, but Liam was not visible within. The curtains to his study – the room in which he was most likely to be found – were drawn. Tom rapped the old-fashioned lion’s head knocker tentatively at first, then more firmly. He waited for a whole minute but no movement was audible, only the faint waft of a violin concerto.

Tom knew Liam was far too much of a control freak to feel the need to leave an emergency key hidden under the mat or inside an urn, but he usually left the door unlocked when he was at home. Tom tried the door. It opened. He entered, calling out his presence, but no answer came; he shut the door and followed the music through to the study.

Liam lay on his back next to his escritoire, limbs strewn untidily, one leg draped over his upended writing chair. It looked as though he’d been shot at least twice. A large circle of dark blood had stained his sweater, turning the cream weave nearly black; another bullet had caused major trauma to the chin. Tom saw what he took to be debris of soft tissue, bone, and teeth strewn nearby.

He was so stunned by this vision that he almost neglected to notice the assassin on the other side of the escritoire. The man appeared to be on his hands and knees, swaying vigorously. Later, Tom would muse that maybe the wise course of action would have been to run, but a morbid fascination, and perhaps personal disregard brought on by his rock-bottom self-esteem, compelled him to investigate. As he rounded the escritoire he saw that the man was not praying to Allah, but scrubbing with cleaning materials at what appeared to be a puddle of vomit. Tom was reminded of the start to his day.

The assassin spotted him and froze like a rabbit in the second before it becomes road kill. As his composure returned, his eyes shifted away to the surface of the escritoire. Tom followed his gaze and saw an automatic pistol lying next to a pot of pens. The assassin sprang to his feet; Tom reached across and picked up the gun. It was heavy, ugly, and lethal-looking. A bulbous silencer was attached to the muzzle. Tom held the weapon, didn’t even point it, but the assassin raised his hands high.

“Don’t hurt me, man, huh?” he pleaded.

Tom looked him up and down. He was a tall, skinny Hispanic sporting a greasy ponytail and a cheap suit. Tom glanced at the semi-scrubbed puddle on the carpet. He could now detect the stench of vomit and disinfectant, which confirmed his earlier suspicion. He deduced the assassin wanted to remove any forensic trace of his presence in Liam’s house.

“What sort of hit man are you?” Tom asked.

“I ain’t no hit man. I’m a private detective.”

“And your name, if you’d be so good.”

“Rick Vasquez.”

“Why did you throw up? Who sent you? Answer the vomit question first.”

Vasquez blushed. “I never killed a guy before. It’s horrible, man. There’s all this blood and stuff. I just had to toss my cookies.”

“Why Liam? Who sent you?”

“The writer broad – Felicity Pettigrew. Why? Cos she paid me, and real well. I could’ve retired off of this.”

Felicity? Tom could scarcely believe it. He stared at the bloody mess on the floor that was Liam; he thought of the mess his own life had become. How could the golden couple of New York’s B-pushing-A-list social scene have degenerated so completely?
Liam blew a bloody bubble from his shredded lips with a low moan. Great Scott, he was still alive. Tom grabbed the phone and punched 911.

“Lie on the floor, face down,” he instructed Vasquez, who practically dived at the carpet in his eagerness to comply. Tom put the gun down and knelt next to Liam. He took off his jacket and draped it over Liam’s chest. He grasped both of Liam’s bloody hands and squeezed.

“Hang in there, old chum. Help is on its way.”

* * *

Liam stood facing the full-length mirror, fastening his bow tie. Downstairs he could hear the first guests being greeted by his live-in lover, Kwai-See, a marketing student from Beijing who was gaining work experience at Laverty & Associates during her placement year. After four separate sessions of maxillofacial reconstruction, Liam was beginning to look human again. He was also re-mastering the faculty of speech. Kwai-See was a bright and pretty little thing, less than half his age, and he hadn’t allowed himself the indulgence of a fantasizing that they had any chance of a future together. But no matter; for the moment he was getting more than his fair share of gymnastic poontang and father-figure adoration, and that made him happy.

He reread the card from Felicity. Of course, she would have been aware when she wrote it that the prison authorities would censor it. Even so, he believed that her hearty congratulations on his success were genuine. The tone of her note was surprisingly upbeat seeing as she’d only recently begun to serve a twelve-year stretch for conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, and reckless endangerment. The publicity surrounding her trial had been huge; she had received half a dozen pleas from major publishing houses for the rights to publish her autobiography. It looked as though her career would suffer not a jot from this temporary setback.

Liam reflected that Tom, too, had found something positive to emerge from his experiences. He had filed for divorce and set up home on Staten Island with a particle physicist from NYU by the name of Brandon. He, too, had been approached to write his autobiography, which had been the door against which he’d been pushing.

Liam, after having his previously comfortable life put in perspective, had decided that his own ‘Death in Venice’ would emerge in the fullness of time; he couldn’t, nor should he try, to force it. Meantime he would settle for simply being published. ‘Lowbrow’ wasn’t the four-letter word he had once considered it to be. Admittedly, his pulp novel of sex and intrigue in the publishing industry was glitzy trash of the highest order, but it was glitzy trash with panache.

He was looking forward very much to the evening’s launch party. He picked up his cane and descended the stairs.

_______________

Alan Warren recently emigrated from Swansea, in the UK, to enjoy a better quality of life in New Zealand. He lives in Christchurch, where he works as a software engineer. His main writing focus is on erotic crime fiction. Currently he is working on a screenplay.

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