CHAPTER 1
Mandy Jack had another of those useless thoughts: Why had she given up smoking?
For health reasons you useless dope, she sniffed, waiting for coffee. She wished she could have thought useless slut but a guy hadn't popped her for close to a month and so the word slut was inappropriate. Also why give yourself a bad name?
God she was bored. She hadn't found work since returning home fifteen months ago.
No sex was a worry. What was happening? Had she lost her sex appeal overnight or had half the city's eligible males turned gay?
"Enjoy," said the surly waitress, dropping the coffee in front of Mandy. Liquid sloshed into the saucer.
"I'll get your another coffee."
"Don't bother," Mandy sighed.
"I don't drink coffee here," said the waitress with a knowing smile.
What the hell did that mean?
Mandy took a sip and almost spat it out.
It tasted like shit. Er, whatever. Certainly not like top coffee. Ownership of the coffee shop had been taken over by foreigners.
She left the liquid masquerading for coffee and walked out, still thirsty.
The twenty-four-year-old with an MA in Art History (19th Century) eyed the bar across the street, knowing her parents didn't like her frequenting bars... and probably not brothels although that had never been discussed. It scared her witless just thinking about entering one to try the male service or perhaps a female whore if they had any under forty. God their dorm in her final year at college would have made a brothel look like a church, only she had no idea of how much of a cesspit was a house of ill repute.
Conscious that her parents were continuing to fully support her, otherwise she may have starved to death or fallen into prostitution (that may have meant an early death anyway), Mandy ignored the bar and walked down the street for fifty yards before temptation won through. She crossed over and walked up the street and entered the bar.
The bar was empty apart from the bored bartender and a guy at a table.
He called, "Hi gorgeous."
She ignored him.
He tried again. "Hi Mandy."
Startled she turned, recognized him and said, "Hi Harris."
"Buy you a drink?"
"Yes please. Single shot vodka on the rocks."
"Kate?"
"I heard," said the bargirl.
Mandy went over to Harris who rose and kissed her, flush on the lips. So she flushed.
Harris went over to fetch her drink and Mandy recalled who he was, the youngest son of Rev. and Mrs Walsh, good friends of her mother although none of their family ever attended church except for births, deaths and marriages and there had been quite a few of those in Mandy's time in her extended family.
"You're looking great. Who's fucking you?" Harris said, sitting and sliding her drink over and picking up his bottle of beer.
Mandy thought he couldn't have said that, not the son of a minister.
"Same guy who's shafting you," she grinned and was relived he greeted that with a full laugh.
"God you are funny."
Mandy looked nervously at the ceiling. A minister's son saying God like that could produce a thunderbolt.
But none came.
Harris looked up at the ceiling and asked, "Looking for copulating flies?"
"I wasn't aware they did it upside down."
He laughed again and then asked her what she was doing.
"You've already asked who was shafting me."
"No I mean what are you doing to put bread on the table or in your case to clothe your back and finance expensive cocktails, beauty treatment and holidaying in exotic locations with your girlfriends?"
"I returned from college just over a year ago and haven't managed to dredge up a suitable job yet."
"What is your degree?"
"An MA in Art History, 19th Century."
"And none of the private galleries of the city gallery want to hire you?"
"No."
"Because you have insufficient experience and that degree is of no particular interest to them?"
"You're partly right. The reason given for rejection was my lack of experience."
"How did they get experience?"
Mandy grinned. "I actually asked them all that and the replies were similar. When they hit the job market it was in boom times and people were employing, unlike now."
"So who is shafting you?"
"I have been under utilized."
"Oh too bad. You've filled out since we last met some years ago. I can't believe that no guy is regularly plowing your furrow."
Mandy wondered if she'd got it wrong, that Harris' father was not the Rev. Walsh.
"What is your father's occupation?"
"He's still a clergyman. Why?"
"You don't talk like a minister's son."
Harris laughed and said if she thought he was coarse in what he said, she ought to listen to his sisters, both of whom were married. "It's something to do with breaking out from the childhood regime that everything must be good otherwise you must read the bible for an hour or each misdemeanor and/or be birched."
"Truly? In early times artists brilliantly portrayed incidents of flaying and self-mutilation."
"Eh."
"Painting by notable artists of past centuries."
"Oh, I thought you were talking about some of those sickening websites."
"No I wasn't talking about self-gratification of sick-minded people; I was referring to attempted religious redemption through inflicted pain and suffering."
"Wow, I'd never thought about art depicting real life drama like that."
Mandy looked astonished. "Then what did you think those painters were doing whose work hangs in our galleries or is brilliantly reproduced in very expensive books?"
"Painting?"
"Oh god," Mandy sighed.
Grinning guiltily as if conceding he was either a moron or a Philistine, Harris said, "What is your answer to my invitation to a movie and to dinner and then you know what?"
"That seems a big program for one night."
