London Calling - James Craig [9]
He finally worked up the energy to rise from the table and head towards the front door. Standing in the hall was his Cannondale Super 6 Dura Ace Compact Road Bike. Costing more than four grand, it depressed the hell out of Xavier. His brother had talked him into cycling to the Commons as another grand statement, demonstrating the party’s vitality, as well as its ‘green’ credentials. When had everyone gone green? The whole eco-thing was so ubiquitous now that you forgot that only a very few years ago, no one had mentioned it at all, or had cared in the slightest about the melting ice caps or the fate of bloody polar bears. It was such a bore, and such a fraud. Xavier was sure that it was only a fad that couldn’t last. He certainly hoped so.
Whatever he hoped, he knew that all this green business wouldn’t fade this side of the election. So, in the meantime, he was stuck with the harsh reality that they had set the bar too high for him, bike-wise. Now every time he stepped into a car, even his much trumpeted hybrid, he faced cries of ‘hypocrite!’. The bike thing had become a complete liability, but Edgar insisted that he couldn’t give it up. Even though he was followed every morning by a chauffeur-driven limo containing his suits and papers, he still had to get on the bike. It was ridiculous that he couldn’t just jump in the back of the car and have a well-earned snooze or read the Sun. It wasn’t like the cycling image-wise was risk-free; there were several videos of him on YouTube breaking basic traffic laws and almost mowing down pedestrians. He had been dubbed ‘The most dangerous thing on two wheels’ and some joker had started an online petition to get him back in his car. Xavier had signed it himself, using twenty-five fake names, in a failed attempt to get Edgar to relent.
At one stage, almost inevitably, the bike had been stolen. Xavier had been ecstatic but to his horror, in defiance of statistical possibility, it had been found again. He couldn’t believe it; he owned the only bloody stolen bike in the whole of London ever to be safely returned to its rightful owner. It was just his rotten luck. Xavier dropped the book in his pannier, sticking a bulky fleece underneath, so that enough of the title was visible for the photo op. With gritted teeth, he grabbed the machine and pushed it towards the front door. It was light as a feather and an object of genuine beauty and craftsmanship, but the first thing he was going to do, after their election victory, was to throw the sodding thing under a bus and jump back into his official Jag.
FOUR
Ian couldn’t believe his luck. Naked and sated, he stretched out on the bed and savoured the cool white crispness of the hotel sheets beneath him. Hooking up with people in chatrooms was, he knew from bitter experience, hit and miss at best. But tonight had been an epiphany. Closing his eyes, and grinning like an idiot, he recalled the gentle but insistent pressure of cool, unyielding enamel on tender flesh and the demented explosion that followed. His heart rate was only now beginning to return to something like normal. Looking down, he ran his left foot over the nine-inch ‘Heart of Glass’ ribbed dildo lying on the bed and felt a shiver of anticipation. But even here, even now, he was a pragmatist. He didn’t want to push his luck. There would be other times. For now, he told himself that he should be happy to let the mixture of endorphins and champagne bliss him out as he waited for sleep.
‘Turn over.’ He felt playful fingers on his warm, damp balls, and the cool, wet probing of a tongue on his