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By Root 683 0

his rapt face upturned, the hands both summoning and offering the revelations which the gods now fraternally distributed. Like all filmstars Lorne was about two foot nine (something to do with the condensed, the concentrated presence), but the old prong was in good nick, you had to admit, with that tan-and-silver sheen of the all-American robot-kings. Yeah, that was it: this isn't a man, I kept thinking, it's a mad old robot, all zinc and chrome and circuitry coolant. He's like my car, he's like the fucking Fiasco — way past his best, giving everyone grief, and burning up money and rubber and oil.

Lorne had gone on to explore Garfield's sumptuous lifestyle, the art galleries he superintended in Paris and Rome, his opera-nut vacations in Palma and Beirut, his houses in Tuscany, the Dordogne and Berkeley Square, his Barbadian hideaway, his stud ranches, his Manhattan helicopter pad ... And as this fizzy old dog bayed and barked into the night, I spared a tender thought for my project, my poor little project, which I had nursed in my head for so long now. Good Money would have made a good short, with a budget of, say, £75,000. Now that it was going to cost fifteen million dollars, though, I wasn't so sure. But I must keep a grip on my priorities here. A good film didn't matter. Good Money didn't matter. Money mattered. Money mattered.

'Lorne,' I said. 'Lorne! Lorne? Oh Lorne?'

'Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and an amethyst worth one-and-a-half million dollars.'

'Lorne.'

'Speak your mind, John.'

'Lorne. If Gary's so rich, who cares if he's got a couple of million dollars' worth of heroin in the kitchen?'

'Pardon me?'

'It cuts down on the drama, no? Think a minute. Think a second. If Gary is rich, then so is Doug. Of course they give the heroin back. No problem. No film.'

'Bullshit! Garfield wants to give the heroin back. But the other guy, Doug you call him, he wants to keep it. Why?'

'Yeah, why.'

'Jealousy, John, jealousy. He's jealous of Garfield.'

For twenty minutes Lorne talked about jealousy, how powerful and widespread it was, and how a man like Garfield (I think he even said Sir Garfield at some point) was especially likely to promote such a feeling in one as low, as weak, as vile as Doug—Garfield, with his connoisseurship, helicopter pad, erudition, Barbadian hideaway, and all the rest. This took another twenty minutes.

'Plus,' said Lorne, 'he's jealous of what I do for Butch.'

'Why? He can't be that jealous if he's fucking her too.'

'I'm glad you raised that. You know, John, I don't think — and I never have thought — that it's dramatically convincing that he should, that he should fuck her too, John.'

I stared heavily at him.

'It makes no sense. It just doesn't add up.' Lorne laughed. 'If Butch is fucking Garfield, how could she risk that happiness, that fulfilment, John, on a young punk like ...' He shook his head. 'Okay.

Over that we can argue. But my scenario still holds. The way I see it, Butch has never had an orgasm before she meets this wonderful guy, who shows her a world she's only dreamed of, a world of Othello jets and Caribbean mansions, a world of...'

I stared on. Time passed. Abruptly Lorne halted in mid-sentence, in mid-spangle, and said, 'I think it's time we talked about the death scene, John.'

'... What death scene?'

'Why, Lord Garfield's,' said Lorne Guyland. 'This is how it happens. The mob guys, they're torturing me, naked as I am. I fought like crazy but there were fifteen of the bastards. They want the heroin — they also want my cultural treasures from all over the world. But I tell them nothing. Now. As these cocksuckers torture me, Butch and Caduta are forced to watch. Maybe they're nude too. I'm not sure. John, you might think about, about that. And these two women, as they see me, suffering, silent, naked, this guy who's given them everything and who's the greatest fuck they ever had in their goddam lives — these women, these simple, nude women, they forget their rivalry and weep in each other's arms. Credits.'

'Lorne,' I said, 'I've got to run.'

In fact it was