J.G. Ballard - Cocaine Nights

She watched me uncritically, curious to see what I would do next. Without moving my hand from her breast, she said: 'Charles, this is your doctor speaking. You've had enough stress for one day.'

'Would making love to you be very stressful?'

'Making love to me is always stressful. Quite a few men in Estrella de Mar would confirm that. I don't want to visit the cemetery again.'

'Next time I'm there I'll read the epitaphs. Is it full of your lovers, Paula?'

'One or two. As they say, doctors can bury their mistakes.'

I touched the shadow that lay across her cheek like a dark cloud on a photographic film. 'Who bruised your face? That was a hard slap.'

'It's nothing.' She covered the bruise with her hand. 'I was working out in the gym. Someone ran into me.'

'They play tough in Estrella de Mar. The other night in the car park 'What happened?'

'I'm not sure-if it was a game it was a rough one. A friend of Crawford's was trying to rape a girl. The odd thing is, she didn't seem to mind.'

'That sounds like Estrella de Mar.'

Leaving me, she sat on the bed and smoothed the coverlet, as if searching for the imprint of Frank's body. For a few moments she seeemed to forget that I was standing in the room beside her. She glanced at her watch, reminding herself who she was.

'I have to go. Amazingly, there still are a few patients at the Clinic.'

'Of course.' As we walked to the door I asked: 'What made you become a doctor?'

'Don't you think I'm a good one?'

'I'm sure you're the best. Is your father a physician?'

'He's a retired Qantas pilot. My mother left us when she met an Australian lawyer on a stand-by flight.'

'She walked out on you?'

'Just like that. I was six years old but I could see she'd forgotten us even before she packed her suitcases. I was brought up by my father's sister, a gynaecologist in Edinburgh. I was very happy, really for the first time.'

'I'm glad.'

'She was a remarkable woman-a lifelong spinster, not too keen on men but very keen on sex. She was amazingly realistic about everything, but especially sex. In many ways she lived like a man. Take a lover, fuck all the best sex out of him, then throw him out.'

'That's a hard philosophy-awfully close to a whore's.'

'Why not?' Paula watched me while I opened the door, pleasantly surprised to have shocked me. 'Whoring is something a good few women have tried, more probably than you realize. That's one education most men never get I followed her to the lift, admiring her brazen cheek. Before the doors closed she leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth, her fingers lightly touching the bruises on my neck.

Soothing the tender skin, I sat in the armchair and tried to ignore the orthopaedic collar on the desk. I could taste Paula's kiss on my lips, the scent of lip-gloss and American perfume. But passion, I knew, was not the message conveyed. The fingers on my neck had been a reminder, cued into the keyboard of bruises, that I needed to find fresh spoors on the trail that led to the Hollingers' murderer.

I listened to the tennis machine firing its serves across the practice net, and to the splashing of the butterfly team.

Searching for a cigarette, the best antidote to all this health and exercise, I pulled my jacket from the desk and hunted through its pockets.

The cassette I had taken from Anne Hollinger's bedroom protruded from the inner pocket. I stood up and switched on the television set, inserting the cassette into the video-player. If the tape had recorded a live satellite programme while Anne sat in the bathroom with a needle in her arm, it would fix the exact moment when the fire engulfed the room.

The tape spooled forward, and the screen lit up to reveal an empty bedroom in an art deco apartment, with white-on-white decor, ice-pale furnishings and recessed lights in porthole windows. A queen-sized bed with a blue satin spread and a quilted headboard occupied the centre of the scene. A yellow teddy bear sat propped against the pillows, a sickly green tinge to his fur. Above the bed a narrow sill carried a collection of pottery animals that might have belonged to a teenaged girl.

The hand-held camera panned to the left as two women entered the room through an open, mirror-backed door. Both were in wedding regalia, the bride in a full-skirted gown of cream silk, a lace bodice giving way to a sunburnt neck and strong collarbones. Her face was hidden behind her veil, but I could see a pretty chin and strong mouth that reminded me of Alice Hollinger in her J. Arthur Rank days. The bridesmaid wore a calf-length gown, white gloves and toque hat, hair swept back from a deeply tanned face. They reminded me of the sunbathers at the Club Nautico: sleek, light-years beyond any concept of boredom, and happiest lying on their backs.

The camera followed them as they kicked off their shoes and began to loosen their clothing, eager to return to the sun-loungers. The bridesmaid unbuttoned her gown while helping to unzip the bride's wedding dress. Leaving them to share a joke and giggle into each other's ears, the camera focused on the teddy bear and began a heavy-handed zoom into its button-nose face.

The mirrored door opened again, reflecting a glimpse of a shaded balcony and the rooftops of Estrella de Mar. A second bridesmaid entered, a platinum-haired woman in her forties with a heavily-rouged face, barmaid's breasts straining through her jacket, neck and cleavage flushed by something more potent than sunshine. As she tottered about on one heel I guessed that she had made an early detour from the church to the nearest bar.

Stripped to their underwear, the women sat together on the bed, resting before they changed into their day clothes. Curiously, none of them looked at the friend shooting this amateur video record. They began to undress each other, fingers teasing at the bra straps, caressing their suntanned skins and smoothing away the pressure lines. The platinum-haired bridesmaid raised the bride's veil and kissed her mouth. She began to play with her breasts, smiling wide-eyed at the erect nipples as if witnessing a miracle of nature.

The camera waited passively while the women fondled each other. As I watched this parodic lesbian scene, I was sure that none of the women was a professional actress. They played their roles like members of an amateur theatrical group taking part in a bawdy Restoration farce.

Resting from their embraces, the women looked up with mock surprise as a man's torso and hips entered the frame. He stood by the bed, penis erect, thighs and chest muscles like oiled meat, the passive bull-shouldered stud of countless porno-films. For a moment the camera touched the lower half of his face, and I almost recognized the heavy neck and chubby chin.

The women sat forwards, displaying their breasts to him. Her face still veiled, the bride held his penis in her hands and began to suck its head in the distracted way of an eight-year- old with an over-large candy bar. When she lay back and parted her thighs I pressed the fast-forward, waiting as the manic, jerky spasms rushed to their climax, and returned to play-speed when the man withdrew and ejaculated, as custom demanded, across her breasts.

Sweat bathed the bride's shoulder and abdomen. She pulled back the veil and used a tissue to wipe away the semen. Again I saw an echo of the Rank Charm School in her refined features and perky gaze. She sat up and smiled at the bridesmaids, using the veil to dry her cheeks. Needle punctures marked her arms, but she seemed in ruddy health, laughing when the bridesmaids slipped her arms into the wedding dress.

The screen moved to the left, the camera jarred by the operator's confused hands. The lens steadied itself, and caught the bodies of two naked men who had broken into the bedroom from the balcony and hurled themselves across the floor. The bridesmaids seized their waists and pulled them on to the bed. The bride alone seemed startled, trying to hide her naked body behind the wedding dress. She wrestled helplessly with a thickset man with a hairy Arab back who seized her shoulders and threw her on to her face.