Will Self - The Book of Dave

'The one under Bowater House? The Epstein — Pan chasing the Family of Man?' Dave lapsed into his mother's pedagogic manner. Bloody 'ell, Michelle sniggered to herself, it's Fred Housego, then said: 'Er, yeah, that's the one, but I thought he was the Devil.'

'I love this statue,' Dave remarked, because they were by it, shuddering through the arch, past the oil-dark goat legs of Pan. Michelle looked up at his fig-leaf scrotum. He was pursuing the primordial couple with their kids and pets. Their hard faces were flattened against the future, the whole bronze gaggle pelting full tilt from the swamp of Belgravia towards the greying greenery of the Park.

Rolling up the South Carriage Drive … a fine brougham, milady. . Dave imagined there was now some complicity between them — although he had no idea what in. The glass partition had been slid open, he wanted to talk about the statue, but Michelle had slumped back in the corner, her eyes vacant and her coral pink nails worrying at the neck of her dress.

When they got to Olympia and Dave pulled up on the empty rank alongside the overground station, Michelle got unsteadily out of the cab. 'Can you wait?' she asked. 'I'll leave my bag.' When Dave saw the security guard disputing with her, he decided to intervene. What must she think of me in my sweaty T-shirt with my spotty nose and mucked up, thinning hair? Michelle saw a tall, commanding figure. 'The young lady needs to pick something up from the stand she's working on,' Dave said, and to back this up Michelle produced her exhibitor's badge in its plastic sheath. 'Strictly speaking no one's allowed in, mate,' the guard said, already unlocking the door.

'We'll only be a few minutes,' Dave replied, ushering Michelle in. He darted back to lock the cab, before following on behind.

Padding along the shadowy defiles between the half-built stands, slapping the rubber treads of the stairways, their complicity grew — they were children infiltrating a school by night and the cardboard cut-outs of winsome computer salesmen were caricatures of derided teachers. On Level 5, at her clients' stand, Michelle found the ring-binders of plans and specifications where she'd left them in a steel cabinet, and Dave took them from her.

Back in the cab, he homed in unerringly on Danebury Road, using the North End Road as a flight path into the heart of Fulham. IVERS MARMA, OCKINGS, ETERKIN'S CUSTARD: the revenants of Victorian advertisements remained, haunting the pitted redbrick shopfronts. Feeling the city wheel about the cab — a widening gyre of miles and years — Dave thought, I'm never going to be this connected to anything ever again … I'm falling.

In the small hours of the following morning it dawned on Michelle that she should be able to locate that precise point where drink, drugs and anger were mixed inside her in exactly the right parts to simulate lust. It was mostly anger. The flaming thought of what devastation it would wreak on him if he were to know that within hours of leaving the Hilton she was fucking someone else heated Michelle up enough, so that when the cab finally turned into Danebury Road and jounced to a halt outside No. 43, she slid herself off the greasy seat and said, 'You couldn't help me with these, could you?'

Confessions of a bloody lucky cab driver … Dave plodded up the stairs, the binders under each arm. He knew a cabbie called Stan who liked to be stood upon. That's how he got his moniker: Stood-upon-Stan. If he got an overweight woman fare and she looked biddable, he'd strike up a conversation and eventually make the peculiar proposition: 'If you'll stand on me for a few minutes, luv — juss stand on me chest in yer stockinged feet — nuffin' kinky — I'll waive the fare.' Nothing kinky! That's fucking kinky. . Yet according to Stan lots of them would. Apart from this oddity, although Dave had heard a few stories about the allure of the cabbie to women of a certain age, he mostly discounted them. He no more thought of trying it on with a fare than he considered picking up a black guy heading south. No offence, mate, he'd mutter to an archetypally good black man as he swept past, too many fucking nose bleeds. 'None taken,' replied Nelson Mandela, and bent back to pulverizing the York stone kerb with his prison mallet.

In the strongly perfumed interior of Michelle's flat — with its framed film posters, draped silk scarves and potted geraniums — events took a queer course. She slopped warm vodka and flat tonic into tumblers, which they then drank on a tiny rooftop terrace. They sat awkwardly on metal chairs, looking at the green belt of gardens three storeys below. Then the alcohol got her dander up again and Michelle said, 'I asked you up here to fuck me.' I never speak like this, never … 'Don't you want to?'

'Oh … well…' Oh? Well…?! 'I dunno.' She stood and pulled him back inside. She turned and, lifting up her hair, snapped 'Zip!' Dave unzipped the suede dress and she stepped out of it. As he'd suspected she was naked underneath — but it was a flat declaration, this nudity, not a form of allure; and just as her command had imposed a marital note on this encounter between strangers, so her sudden, bare body had an accent of familiarity. She brushed his lips with the back of her freckled hand. If Dave found her sexy at all, it was because there was no intimacy between them. He wanted — while not being able to conceive of such a thing — an entire society in which women were kept this way: strange, distant screens of taut skin, on to which the most preposterous imaginings might be projected.

Their sex was conducted right there on the living-room floor, assisted by cushions grabbed from chairs and the sofa. Through her haze Michelle was pleased that Dave wasn't repellent, although since it wasn't him who she was fucking, but the other she was fucking over, it hardly mattered. With him there was no need to worry about any uncalled-for embryo — he's had the 'snip-snip' — and so for vital moments, as she gagged on the cabbie's shoulder, Michelle forgot who it was who was bearing down on her. As for Dave, he muttered, 'You on the pill, luv?', took her silence for acquiescence, then approached Michelle as he would call over a run: leave on left tit, comply throat, comply mouth, left shoulder, right hip, forward cunt … The junctions of her body were well signed, and his Knowledge was sufficient to hold her.

Yet in the friction of their final lunge there was an anticipation of more than arrival. Their jerking bodies prefigured the bondage of shackled partners. They both sensed this and struggled to avoid it — backpedalling into the present. Dave came in desperation … while the mere cessation of bucking was Michelle's end.

Rising groggily from the carpet, eluding his helping hands, Michelle staggered down the three stairs to the bathroom and locked herself in with a desperate 'click'. Crouching in the bath, carpet-burned bottom cooled by the enamel, she shook her ginger head with disgust as she sluiced Rudman out of her. 'Are you alright in there … Michelle?' At least he knows my name … She tried to smile ruefully into the mirror over the sink, but her reflection only looked ashamed. Bitterly ashamed: — and worried No condom … no fucking protection. When Dave left, he gave her a cab receipt with his phone number scrawled across it. That night, in bed, he marvelled at her musk still strong on his belly and balls. He never expected her to call … she thinks she's well out of my league. . and for seven months she didn't.