No More Mr. Nice Guy: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

pavement, swallowing easily again, craning to see into the sun-filled windows of the bus, impatient to get a look at what the next three weeks held in store for them.
    The lawyer Wasim was the last to arrive on the scene. His booby-trapped voice rolled rudely into the road like the Indus flooding another insignificant village. ‘OK, so what’s worth fucking this time?’ he wanted to know.
    He wasn’t to be trusted around anything solemn.
    Has he made up his mind yet, after all this time, sitting shaking his head at the wheel of his Saab, whether it really is the Finn he’d like to see walking out of the Dewdrop again, or whether he’d prefer the Swede? Has he reached any adjudication as to the competing claims of the dick and the heart?
    Some question. He’s fifty years of age. When he talks of his heart today it’s to a doctor. His heart is the thing that will eventually kill him. What lies heavy on his heart right now is not beauty, but cheese. As for the dick, he doesn’t mind being the first to admit it – there are mornings when you’refifty when you cannot be certain you have a dick. ‘What’s that?’ Mel used to complain. Panic in her voice. ‘What’s that poking me in the back?’ It was her contention that he deliberately woke her up with it. That the tyrannical reign of the dick had begun before she was even conscious. Had she not made it sound so punitive he’d have agreed with her. He wasn’t awake himself yet. Having a dick was like having a dog that needed to be walked early. You got no peace with it. It wanted a walk, then it wanted a pat, then it wanted a game. Then. That was
then.
Now if he wants to get a look at his dick before breakfast he has to stand on a mirror.
    But Nature must intend something by this, must She not? If he is free at last of the importunings of his dick, he must be free for some purpose. It’s just a question of discovering what that purpose is.
    The language school is gone. The times are against it. Once you take the fucking out of teaching, a school like the one to which Frank was devoted loses its rationale. That students learn less as a consequence – learn less
of
consequence – he is convinced. That teachers too were once happier when fucking their students was an allowable perk – in most cases their
only
perk – he doesn’t doubt either. Show him a happy teacher today!
    He knows better than to raise this matter in the company of any of the little Heloises of yesteryear who have columns on his paper. The times are the times. He isn’t distressed by hypocrisy. It’s important to own to a code of beliefs, whether you live by it or not. He just wishes more people would stand up for fucking as a teaching tool.
    Where the language school was, there is now a guest house. Frank has no choice in the matter. This is where he will spend the night. Who knows, this may be where he will spend the rest of his life.
    Nothing remains of the old interior. The builders havebeen through. It was deceptively formal before, hinting at monasticism and scholarship; now it’s snug and homey. For couples. Love in a cottage. Ceilings lowered. Creaking boards installed. Panelling ripped out for flowery wallpaper. And nautical junk everywhere. Why is the theme of every guest house, no matter where it’s situated, the sea? Prints of wrecks. A polished diver’s helmet on a little table. An onyx lighthouse on the reception desk. The breakfast room is where the common room used to be. It was here, in the first years of the school, before the social committee grew ambitious, that they held the discos. They played only one record. Heavy breathing, somebody whispering Je t’aime, somebody coming in a French accent. Round and round it went. The school anthem. It suited everyone’s tastes. The Finn darted her sour tongue in and out of his mouth in time to it. Empurpled in the crossfire of the disco lights, the Swede dropped her beautiful cupbearer’s head on to his shoulder and wept to