Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Picasso finished, slapped Michael's buttocks, and hopped out of bed. 'You are dirty, wash,' he said.

He commandeered Michael's kitchen to make coffee. Michael padded dazed and flushed from the bathroom. Picasso was wearing a pair of Michael's best long grey knickers, but he used one of his ties to make a kind of pirate sash around his waist. He was so short he had to lunge forward on tiptoe to reach things on top of the counter.

'We will move,' Picasso announced.

'I'm sorry?' burbled Michael.

'This apartment faces east, good, but it is low down and has trees in front that block the light. And it is too small. I cannot paint here. We will move.'

Michael felt a jumble of feelings. No other Angel, no other man had ever made the decision so quickly and simply to live with him. No other man had demanded that Michael sell his flat after the first date.

Michael said, 'I like the trees. This flat is worth money because it faces a garden.'

'Humph,' grunted Picasso, unimpressed.

'It's not that easy.'

'I will make it easy.' Picasso turned and his expression surprised Michael. Picasso was smiling, affectionately, gently and sweetly. Life is ours, the smile said. We can do with it what we want. It was a smile that promised: no harm can come. Michael found that he would do anything to make that smile continue.

Picasso passed him a tiny cup of what looked like tar. 'You cannot make coffee. I can tell.' He led Michael out to the sitting room, in front of the bay window. It was only just beginning to get light and everything was grey, as if wrapped in cushioning plastic. They sat at the table in the bay window.

'My friend,' Picasso said. 'You give me life, and I am grateful. You are like a mother to me. You are like a physician who asks only kindness in payment. It is easy to be kind, that is why I don't trust it. But I will be kind to you. You are a sweet man. So understand. I will give you kindness and love, but I will want to screw women, so I will bring them back. Don't try to stop me; that would make me mad. If you are a jealous man, that will be a pain in your heart, not mine, so learn not to be jealous. All right?' Picasso's own eyes were kind, and stroked Michael's knee.

'All right,' agreed Michael.

'All right,' said Picasso, grinning and slapping his knee. 'So now we look for a new place to live. How do we do that?'

'I don't know,' Michael admitted. 'When I first came here to live, I rented, and then they sold it to me for a low price. So I don't know how to find houses, or get another mortgage.'

Picasso tutted. 'You are a child. Are you poor in spirit to stay here without thinking? For how long have you lived here?'

'Thirteen years.'

'You need a new life?'

Michael found that the answer was, 'Yes.'

It was a trifle. 'We move,' said Picasso. He stood up abruptly, walked away, and came back with heaps of newspapers that looked like an unmade bed. He pushed these at Michael, and growled, 'My baby boy. My baby boy needs to grow up.'

It could get awfully tiring living with somebody who went straight to the truth without passing Go.

'Here. They have ads for houses? You read the ads, I will go get us bread to dunk in the coffee.'

Michael began to look. Everything seemed to start at £200,000. Picasso came back from the shops with croissants. He flung the grease-spotted bag on the table, dunked a croissant in Michael's cup and demanded, his mouth full, 'You have found somewhere?'

'It's not that easy.'

'And that one there?'

'I've already looked.'

Picasso seized the newspaper and read out loud in criminal English: 'Two-bedroom apartment three floor roof garden? Garden. Camden Town. One hundred eighty thousand. Sounds OK!' he declared and pushed the billows of newspaper back down onto the table.

'Sounds good,' repeated Michael, mystified, and picked up the newspaper again to look again at the page of ads to make sure it was actually there, and try to understand how he could have missed it.

'We have to make an offer quickly, if it is a bargain, yes?'

'I think so. But I have to go to work today.'

'No you don't. No one has to do anything. They choose to do it. You choose not to work today, so that we can buy this apartment.'

'I'm sorry, I can't do that.'

'Hmm.' Picasso looked suddenly worried and concerned, and he swallowed. 'My friend,' he said and took Michael's knee again. 'Look at me. Look at me in the eyes. I am hungry to paint. If I think you are stopping me painting, I will go evil. Do you believe me?'

Michael rang in sick.

Picasso sang while he washed up, and Michael looked at his pay slips and his bank balance and tried to find ads for apartments similar to his own to see how much it might be worth. He only earned £35,000 a year, partly from the lab project and partly from teaching. The bank would be nervous about the temporary nature of the project, but even so, he should be able to get a mortgage for about £99,000. If you called the study a bedroom, this was a two-bedroom flat. One of those in a mansion block around the corner was selling for £350,000.

He could do it. He could do it and make money.

Michael looked at the sunlight streaming in through the bay window, on the old sand-coloured carpet, the old sofa, and the old wallpaper. There was a butterfly fluttering inside him that made him smile. It was time to go. It was time to find somewhere new.

Picasso had them down into Goodge Street tube station by 8.15 am. He breathed in the stench of the trains and strutted up and down the platform, taking possession. He looked at the posters and beamed.

'I was right,' he said. 'This is my world. I made it.'

He pointed to a poster for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A computer-distorted Johnny Depp grimaced out of a field of white, amid Gerald Scarfe-like splashes of black. 'That is a photograph, yes? What did that to a photograph?'

'It's a computer graphic. Ordinateur . Oh shit.' Michael took a deep breath and tried to explain computers in French. He knew none of the words. He got across the idea that it was a machine that could add and subtract, and could turn anything into numbers, even images. So by changing the numbers, you changed the images.

'You can make anything.' Picasso looked impressed.

'They made dinosaurs.'

'Tuh. They did that in King Kong.'

'These looked real. They can make people look real.'

Picasso's jaw thrust outwards. 'You have one of these ordinateurs ?'

'I use them at work. I also have one at home.'

'You have one at home? Do many people have these things at home?'

'Yes.'

Picasso laughed aloud and did a little dance. 'I am in the future. You have brought me into the future, my friend.' His eyes were sparkling.

The apartment looked unprepossessing. It was on a corner over a shoe shop, with a battered multi-locked door on a side street facing a recently closed ex-supermarket. Picasso rang the buzzer and then shouted up, 'Hallo. Hallo. We want to buy your apartment!'

A woman looked out from the top of the wall. Evidently, she was sipping coffee on the roof. 'I'm sorry, but you will have to talk to the estate agent first, if you want to see the property.' She had what might pass for an American accent. She did not look at all offended. If anything, she was rather amused.

'Estate agent, qu'est-ce que c'est?' Picasso demanded of Michael.

'Hold on, I'll be down,' the woman said.

Michael tutted. 'It is not possible to arrive at people's apartments at this hour of the morning.' They heard footsteps. The door was opened by a tall woman, grey-haired in a blue-patterned kimono. She explained. 'Estate agents sont agents immobiliers.'

'Uh, estate agents!' huffed Picasso. 'They are only after your money. It is us who want to buy your apartment.'