Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Michael rolled the duvet over them both. Al spent most of the night curled like a baby. The sky greyed and for some reason the song of the garden's blackbirds was replaced by the cries of seagulls. Michael was both awake and asleep, his body unmoving as lead, and his mind dull. Michael thought to himself: all right then, go now.

In the morning Michael sat up in his big bed. Right, he thought, and stood out of bed alone. That is it. I am fed up with all this tragedy. Henry, he told the air. You were right. God dammit, I want to have some fun.

And, as if in answer, the curtains round the bed stirred.

That night, after work, Michael called up Bottles again.

Bottles showed up in her punk Egyptian phase this time, wearing a Tom of Finland T-shirt showing two men tweaking tits. She wore a leather glove with studs that was clenched around a bottle of champagne.

There was the elaborate ritual of Continental kissing. It had scared Michael once. Then he saw: we were poor suburban kids trying to be different, smarter, sharper, harder.

'You're looking so old,' she said. 'That's a compliment.'

'And you're looking so over the top. And that's a compliment too.'

She smiled in approval. You don't take any shit if you want to sit at the right table. 'I bought us a bottle,' she said with a swagger.

Michael led her into the dining room, where there were champagne glasses. 'Babe,' he said, expertly feigning a seventeen-year-old feigning sophistication. 'Tell me. Who should I screw next?'

'A woman,' she said and blew out smoke. 'A woman definitely. It's just so naff being trapped with one sex.'

'Well OK, but who? I've already slept with you. If you count as a woman, that is.' He opened the cabinet for glasses.

Her face started out mean and bitchy. 'If you ever sleep – get to sleep with me and I get to – oh bollocks!' She stamped her foot, and started to laugh at herself.

'The line you're looking for goes: if you do sleep with me and I ever hear of it, I shall be very, very annoyed.'

She nodded yes, yes, I screwed up.

'The implication is that my dick is so small you'd either be asleep or you wouldn't notice.'

'All right.'

Michael had another one at the ready. 'It's a wonderful old joke, I haven't heard it in months.'

Being bitchy was such a simple, innocent game really. Why had he been so scared of it? Bottles laughed and gripped his arm. 'All right then, but at least I bought us a bottle.' She was suddenly the gauche loud girl of years before. 'And, just to complete the image of sophistication, I bought us… a couple of straws.'

And that made Michael laugh.

They sat down at the kitchen table and Michael expertly turned the bottle around the cork and not the other way around so it didn't gush. This impressed Bottles beyond all reason. 'Tch. I usually get it down my front. Here you go.' In went the straws. They had accordion bendy bits, which Bottles adjusted to face each of them.

'Honestly, it's like we're at an American soda fountain or something.'

She nodded and laughed, yes, yes, that was the joke.

Something about Bottles changed who Michael was. Around her, he was able to tell jokes. 'Do you want to put ice cream in it? I mean, really come on like an urban sophisticate.'

Bottles mimed laughter silently. Silence was her way of controlling what she knew could be an ungodly squawk. Silence did indeed give her a certain lacquering of dignity. She wobbled her eyebrows, stuck the straw in, looked him dead in the eye, and began to blow into the champagne, frothing it up. Bottles doubled up with laughter, and let rip a horrible, piercing screech of a laugh. Michael looked at her, maintaining a stone face. That set her off again. Just as she was recovering, he leaned forward as if in sympathy, to pat her arm.

'Suck, dear. Blow is just an expression.'

Bottles had probably arrived stoned, which might account for the callisthenic effect the next laugh had on her; she looked like she was doing some kind of warm-up exercise. Conversation took a back seat to the recovery of composure.

Bottles wiped her face. 'Oh, man, if you had done that back in 1977, you'd have been in a band.'

'Now then. You will recall, we were discussing who I should fuck next.'

'Indeed. And I have just the gel for you.' She was imitating some kind of school-ma'am. 'That American singer you like so much. No, not Julie Andrews.'

It was Michael's turn to laugh.

'The other one.' Her voice returned to normal, perfectly serious. 'The good one.'

Why are men satisfied with whores?

There were some pretty weird radio stations in Southern California in the 1970s. They were meant to lose money. Tax-loss radio, it was called. Tax-loss radio broadcast from trailers or the basements of disused churches. The DJs played whatever they liked: Black Flag next to Tony Bennett next to Miles Davis next to Magazine.

Next to Billie Holiday.

At fourteen, Michael didn't really know who Billie Holiday was, except that maybe she was something to do with Motown. Lost in the doldrums of knowing no one in California, being a teenager, being gay, Michael suddenly heard a voice that sounded like he felt.

Jazz was supper-club music for people who wore slightly transparent socks and liked it when Frank Sinatra sang 'hot damn'. It was in old movies. And in this old movie-music style was someone singing about a lynching. The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, drawled a slow, sad, horrified voice.

There was something relentlessly modern about it, like someone singing Brecht or a song about a serial murder. It was perfect, just perfect. It was cool. Michael could see himself coming back from California with that kind of music and being cool.

He reckoned that the stores in the camp would be good on jazz, so he went there and asked by name for Billie Holiday. They stocked a lot of her product. By luck alone, he landed on the fifties album, Lady Sings the Blues. He read the song titles, which for the last time, would mean nothing to him: 'God Bless the Child', 'Lady Sings the Blues', 'Strange Fruit', 'I Thought About You'. Walking back to the bus stop, he met someone who was almost a friend, a Marine's son on the baseball team. With him was the coolest guy of them all, the son of a black officer. His name was Hendricks, Rousseau Hendricks, and he claimed to be Jimi Hendrix's cousin.

By now Michael's taste in records was a reliable source of scoring social points for the children of Marines. Nobody, but nobody, bought Julie Andrews records except Michael. So when the white kid said, with a hooded smile, 'What have you got now?' Michael had a sudden surging stab of pride. I'll show you.

Out came the blue album. 'Oh, man,' said the white kid in real embarrassment. The record looked old.

But Rousseau Hendricks looked up, his eyes widening. 'You bought this?'

'Yeah, it's got all her best stuff on it.' At least, that's what the guy in the record department said.

'And that's the best there is,' said Rousseau. The white kid scowled. Michael had scored cool points plus. Michael knew then that his instinct had been right; Billie was what he needed.

Michael returned to Britain and scored cool points all through his brief period of glamour. He played Billie Holiday for Bottles in the long magic afternoons before parents came back from work. It was like listening to the Bible.

'Oh, that is the story of my life,' Bottles had declared. It wasn't then, but it was soon to become so, for a while.

Later, Michael read the biographies. Her voice had not always been sandpaper; she had not always sung in a heightened style. The recordings from the thirties were smooth, dapper, even merry.

It was that Billie he called up. She arrived direct from 1938, having left the Artie Shaw band.