The Butt Read Free Page B

cones of hair – swiping his credit card. By what means – telepathy? – Tom could not comprehend, but by the time they’d reached the hospital room his Mastercard had secured a gaggle of Atalaya’s tribeswomen were already there. Tall, burly women, with pumped-up parodies of her lissom figure, who chattered loudly as the nurses hitched the unconscious old Anglo to tubes and monitors.
    The detachment of the desert tribeswomen, and of Martha, had seemed, to Tom, to be two sides of the same strange coin. For, when he finally returned to the apartment, stripped off his short pants, dragged his sore head through the neck of his T-shirt and clambered on to the bed, she only roused sufficiently to hear the sorry tale in sullen silence, before saying: ‘Look, Tom, right now I couldn’t give a damn how you screwed up this time. The kids’ll be up in an hour, and someone – meaning me – will have to look after them.’
    Now, observing a long rivulet of dark red leaf-cutter ants that trickled along a branch, bearing upon its crest-wavering, translucent, sail-shapes of vegetation, Tom was ashamed to catch himself – despite all the stress and anxiety of the previous fifteen hours – searching, automatically, through the pockets of his pants.
    Perhaps a crumpled paper tube of tobacco would be nestling in there, offering the prospect of temporary repose. Reclusion in a private cubicle, separated from the rest of the world by comforting, hazy, blue, blue-grey, grey and brown drapes.

2
     
    T he Consul – whose name was Adams – found Tom sitting in the breakfast room of the Mimosa, warily contemplating a bowl cluttered with sharp-angled chunks of some strange fruit.
    Adams, who wore a faded tan seersucker suit and lace-up shoes, and whose button-down collar had trapped a tie embroidered with the insignia of a major institution – university? military formation? corporation? – that Tom half recognized, sat down across from him, offered a hand clasp as cursory as a dog pat, then began withdrawing papers from an old leather briefcase, talking the while.
    ‘This, ah, Mr Brodzinski, is a retention guarantee, this is a visa-rights waiver, and this is a credit-rating form issued by the Interior Ministry. I’ll need your signature on all three.’
    He offered a fountain pen, which Tom, abandoning his syrup-sticky spoon, took. Adams smiled, exposing bleached teeth in his heavily tanned face. He was, Tom supposed, in his late fifties. Wire-wool hair bunched on top of his long equine head. The Consul sported Polaroid lenses in severe, oblong, wire frames, which, even as Tom contemplated them, were becoming clearer, and revealing watery blue eyes caught in a net of laughter lines. Adams’s shirt collar had wing-tips, there was a plastic pen holder in the breast pocket of his jacket, and a heavy gold signet ring on the pinky finger of his left hand.
    ‘But, why?’ Tom queried. ‘Why have I got to sign them?’
    ‘Purely a formality,’ Adams snapped. ‘In a case of this, ah, nature, all the relevant departments want to keep their backs covered, just in case you . . . Well, just in case you leave the country.’
    ‘Leave the country?’ Tom was incredulous. ‘Why in hell would I do such a damn-fool thing?’
    Adams sighed. ‘People panic – I’ve seen it plenty of times. They’ve heard . . . things, rumours about the way the justice system works here. They figure it might be, ah, better to get out while the going’s good.’
    ‘Rumours? Justice system? I dunno what you’re talking about – what’s this got to do with the local authorities? Surely, Mr Lincoln and I, I mean, we’re fellow citizens, can’t all this be sorted out by you, here, right now? And if Mr Lincoln requires some kind of, well, compensation, that can be organized back home.’
    Adams didn’t answer this immediately. Instead, he pushed himself back on his chair and, breaking from Tom’s fierce stare, trajected a stream of liquid syllables