out from it and shit on his head.
‘It’s a Red Party. I meant it about painting the town. Our two lovely ladies are already wearing red.’
Liz, who assumed he was referring to her frock and not her sunburn, gave ‘The Look That Tells Him You Want Him!’ her best shot. Nicola blushed and fiddled her bra straps back under her frock. ‘Don’t cover it up,’ Johnny said. ‘Red bras are very sexy.’
Fox’s hand tightened around Nicola’s. She saw out of the corner of her eye that he’d clenched his jaw. He looked extremely fuckable. She stood on tiptoes and kissed him, in a display that, she would never have openly admitted, was as much for Johnny’s benefit as Fox’s. Then she took the handkerchief and knotted it around his neck. ‘That looks great, honey,’ she said.
Fox touched the scarf dubiously. ‘I feel like a poof,’ he grumbled.
Johnny smiled and beat a sharp tattoo on the door. A freakishly tall man, with vermilion hair and a crimson waistcoat and trousers, opened thedoor and ushered them to the lift, which was draped in swathes of maroon velvet. It opened onto what seemed at first to be a movie set. Nicola squeezed Fox’s hand.
The room they stepped into was a fantasy of a harem. Everything from the gauzy drapes to the tasselled silk cushions and satin-covered banquettes had been dressed in various shades of red. Even the candelabras held port-red candles scented with musk. A dark, doe-eyed girl wearing rose-coloured tulle and a dreamy expression reclined on a banquette, sucking on an elaborate brass hookah. A young man in a belted red shift massaged her bare feet with perfumed oils and another rubbed her shoulders.
When a blonde woman entered through the heavy red velvet curtains that separated the harem space from the party beyond, she let in the sounds of sax-and-bass-soaked jazz. This thirty-something woman wore a magenta corset, suspender belt and red fishnet stockings. Her big feet were stuffed into stiletto pumps. She shrieked at the sight of Johnny, sashayed up and kissed him intimately.
It occurred to Nicola, who watched with a sudden and irrational jealousy, that the expression ‘planted a kiss’ could be quite appropriate: first, the ground was prepared and irrigated, then the seeds were scattered and the harvest gathered. Next thing you know, she thought sourly as she watched Johnny’s mouth widen and their tongues engage, the tart’s going to be applying for agricultural subsidies.
Liz, grinding her teeth, stamped past them and pushed through the curtain, signalling for Nicola and Fox to follow.
The scene in the entryway proved to be just a teaser for the main event. Round red Chinese lanterns with gold tassels cast a roseate glow over the room, which smelled faintly of dope and strongly of sweat, of mingled perfumes and the rose petals that had been strewn around the floor. A DJ in a cartoon devil costume, with spiky horns and a big tail, spun discs on a small platform in front of which dancers writhed and twirled. There were roses in vases everywhere there was a surface for them.
Nicola watched hypnotised as, not far fromwhere they stood, one of the dancers, a lithe young man with pierced nipples and crimson hotpants, pulled a petal off one of the roses, placed it on his tongue and held it out for another young Adonis to lick onto his own tongue. From there, the petal was transferred to the tongue of a voluptuous older woman in a simple pink frock, and from her it went to a brown-skinned sylph, who passed it to a tall and graceful Chinese man who spotted Fox and started to move, tongue out, in his direction.
Before he could reach Fox, who was trapped betwixt his fight and flight responses, Liz stepped boldly forward, stuck out her tongue, procured the petal and disappeared into the pulsating, swirling red swarm.
Nicola looked at Fox, wide-eyed. The scene represented a form of bohemian glamour and sensuality that she’d only ever glimpsed in feature articles on extreme