Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

The band from Ronnie Scott's came in, to much shaking of hands. Dave swivelled all his attention on to them. There was laughing about the night's set, scornful dismissal of a colleague who hadn't shown up, a reference to Dave's domestic situation… everything that could help make Michael feel spare.

Billie sizzled back to the table, ready to snap up more people. Alphonse sat next to Jack the bass player and started to sparkle, his eyes and glasses gleaming.

It was past Michael's bedtime. He was in a dive with Billie Holiday, and he kept nodding off. He saw the rest of the evening in a series of fast cuts. He glimpsed Billie back at the table, wreathed in smoke, barking with laughter. He saw Billie with eyes shut, swaying as Al and Dave played together. Billie and Dave danced. Dave, looking fat and awkward, tried to keep up with a woman who could genuinely do the Lindy Hop.

Michael looked up at Alphonse and said in a voice that sounded like dirty tapeheads, 'I'm not really up to having a good time.'

Alphonse laughed, and unsteadily gripped Michael's knee. 'You look shattered, mate.'

'Work in the morning,' Michael remembered. His watch said 2.00 am. He stood up and murmured excuses.

Billie jumped up and smooched him on the cheek. He gave her the keys and explained how they worked and made sure she had the address. 'You take care now,' she said and sounded like she meant it. Michael stumbled out into the balmy night air and somehow staggered safely across Tottenham Court Road to the flat.

Very suddenly he was alone in his own bed, and wide awake. He thought of a potbelly under a red jumper. He was very sure that the skin on the stomach would be smooth and warm and the flesh loose and gentle to the touch.

Experimentally, he called up Dave.

Michael asked him, 'I don't suppose you would ever normally consider sleeping with me?'

Dave looked surprised and responded, 'Not to be rude, but normally no. I've got a wife. And a girlfriend. My time is taken.' The Angel began to look about the flat and wonder how he got there. Suddenly his hand went to the bridge of his nose. Knowledge had come to him. 'I'm…' he stopped.

The Angel sensed what he was, and therefore, what Billie was. 'That means that she… she really is…'

Michael nodded yes.

Dave bowed slightly to the miracle. Suddenly he chuckled, as if surprised by something. Smiling, he sat down next to Michael and reached up and pulled off the sweater. The real miracle was not that the Angels had physical presence. The real miracle was that no matter who they were, they wanted Michael.

Michael looked at the swollen belly covered in tight curls and remembered the clunking way Dave danced. It sometimes happens that when you see the body, desire burns away like a fog.

Michael remembered who he had spent the evening actually talking to. He remembered glasses and the coincidence of nicknames, and a hand on his knee. He called up Alphonse. Alphonse smiled sweetly and evidently did not need a miracle to make him say yes. There was no potbelly under his jumper. Michael did have a good time after all, within his limits.

Billie trawled her way back at breakfast time. Michael was downing repeated cups of coffee in an effort to jolt himself awake. Billie was listless, dragging her stole across the carpet. Michael told her, 'Go sit in the sitting room, it's more comfortable. You want a cup of coffee?' Tame, somehow, she turned and went into the front room with its sofas and bay window, and she slumped, staring.

'Worse for wear, huh?' he said, trying to keep his own pecker up.

She shook her head. 'It's not that,' she said, and accepted the coffee. 'We all went back to Dave's place and they played me this stuff.'

She shook her head again, and sipped the coffee. 'Man I heard metronomes with more swing than that stuff. What did they call it?'

'Hip hop? Drum'n'bass?'

'Drum'n'bass. Man. I mean we had technology. We got mikes. We used it to make music more human. The mike meant you didn't have to shout at a song and deafen it. You could seduce it, make it relax and start talking to you. I mean that stuff don't even have songs. It just goes tick tick tick as fast as it can. There ain't any time even for a tock.'

She rubbed her eyes.

'In the future,' Billie Holiday said, 'there will be no such thing as swing.'

Michael heard sadness in her voice, and sat next to her.

Her eyes didn't blink. 'It's all gone. My whole world. My music. There are no little clubs like I remember. The life isn't there, even the black folks've got their mortgage in the morning. They all think I'm just play-acting for a while. They don't know I'm stuck in it, up to my knees.'

Billie looked up at Michael. 'Guess what I'm saying is easy. They're all dead: Prez, Bean, Fletcher. We're just stuff in the history books that a few professors play.'

Michael put an arm around her. 'Everybody plays you, Billie. Anyone who likes music at all plays you.'

'Big deal. I'm talking about how a whole world can die.' She sighed and patted his leg. 'I get fragile sometimes. I get fragile and I slump back. Or I get high. You got anything other than hootch?'

Michael shook his head, no.

'Good boy. Keep it that way for mama. That stuff kills.' Billie sighed again. 'I would like to think that this had some kind of point. If I did sleep with you, what else would you learn?'

'I think I'd be like one of those standard tunes that you first have to teach to be still before you can teach it to swing.'

That's what she did. She kissed him as if he were a microphone, to amplify and quieten at the same time. He lazed in her grasp, kissed her beautiful breasts, let himself be played. Nothing much happened, except that it was happy and sad at the same time.

Even the way she made love was old-fashioned. No biting of nipples, no women on top. When Michael didn't get erect, she just shrugged.

'Between the booze and the scag, baby, half the men I've been with couldn't get it up. And in the end this is what they wanted, just this human touch.' Her fingernails traced something on his chest, like a child's drawing. 'I mean that is what this is all about, baby. People want love. I think I find it sometimes, but then it always seems to go away again. I get mean. Or worse, I turn into a doormat and eat my heart out for some worthless slicker.'

The hands suddenly seemed seized and she looked up. 'That's what I don't understand. Men and women, they're no different. They both want love. So why do you take it, this miracle of yours?'

'Take what?'

'Substitutes. The quick fix. Hell, opium is a better deal. I mean if I were you, I would go tell God to go monkey with somebody else's life. How is it that you men are so easily fooled?' Her eyes were outraged; she pulled back from him.

'What is it, Billie?'

Her head was doing quick little sideways shakes, rejecting something, fighting her way through it. 'That look on a trick's face when he's had a fourteen-year-old girl, and she's hated every second of it, but she's just kept smiling and smiling because she's scared and her mama needs the money. She been dry through the whole thing, and he sure as hell knows what that means. But he puts on his socks that his wife washes for him, and you know? He looks perky. He looks pleased. He looks like he's just had something real special and sweet from that young girl.'

Billie slumped back, shaking her head, now a slower gesture of stupefaction. 'Why are you fooled, baby? Why are men fooled by whores? We hate you sons of bitches.'

Michael was saddened. 'Do you want to go now?'

'Yes. Now.'

Billie stood up as if her joints were aching. Her eyes were desolate. Suddenly she was back in her polka-dot dress, as if it were a home or a bad habit. Her history, Michael saw, was always dragging her down, behind the beat.