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country,’ she said.
    ‘Got her!!’ thought CD, ‘torn jeans, they can’t resist it.’

18: MORE DINNER IN LOS ANGELES
    A s Sly took his seat his sense of satisfaction had not left him, how could it? Now he was really at the very centre of everything that mattered. He had been accepted, accepted as a colleague — a colleague in a great conspiracy. But what was the plan? Sly had no idea for what secret and shadowy purpose the group had come together. Certainly to make money; colossal, unimaginable, utterly meaningless sums of money, of that he was certain. They were there to make money.
    He was wrong.
    But he had to wait to find out. For these slavering corporate predators prided themselves on being civilized. Business must wait until after dinner.
    There were no menus at ‘California Dreaming’. You ordered what you wanted. Sly, in a mood of jolly bravado, ordered swan. It had always intrigued him that in England apparently only royalty are allowed to eat swan. On this very special night Sly felt like a king himself and reckoned he deserved a slab of Her Maj’s exclusive tucker.
    The maitre d’ — a svelte figure who gracefully exuded that peculiarly Californian air of superiority that made one embarrassed that one was not oneself a homosexual — accepted Sly’s order with a rather deflating matter-of-factness. His manner suggested that he rarely took orders for anything but swan. That tiny flick of his eyebrows seemed to say ‘if just one more person asks me for swan I shall go and work for Col. Saunders.’
    It’s a strange thing about waiters, because while Sly could happily have faced down a corporate takeover bid from Ghengis Khan, that one bloke’s offhand acceptance of his magnificent self-indulgence made Sly feel like a piece of shit.
    In the kitchen, the maitre d’ hastily consulted with the cook. They decided against pigeon because there was a good chance he’d recognize it. The same reason ruled out grouse. Eventually the chef had a brain-wave and slaughtered the cat. Poor Tiddles yielded a goodish portion of tough, light brown meat which the chef pan-fried in garlic butter and mushrooms. A lady guest in the public section of the restaurant had arrived in a beautiful coat layered with hundreds of ostrich feathers. A couple of these discreetly pruned, plus a duck’s beak, completed the picture and Sly was duly served his swan.
    ‘To tell you the truth it tastes worse than a dead cat,’ said Sly in reply to the polite enquiry from his neighbour.
    As it happened, the talk about the table was far too interesting for Sly to worry overmuch about what he was eating. Conversation normally bored Sly, he always felt like he knew what people were going to say. This made him very irritating to talk to as he never let anyone finish a sentence. He would normally say ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah’ at machine gun speed within five seconds of anybody saying anything. This, of course, meant that Sly never learnt anything. If somebody were to shout at Sly, ‘Sly, the building we are standing in is on fire’ Sly would probably say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ and burn to death.
    That evening, however, Sly did not feel his usual need to forcibly stamp his personality on the gathering. He did not do his normal thing of wriggling with discomfort until he was able to prise open an opportunity to say something wry, witty, pithy or tough, just to show everyone what an impressive bloke he was. For instance, he never felt happy at major political dinners until he had contradicted the Prime Minister. It didn’t matter what he said, just as long as he scored a point. His proudest moment to date had come at a dinner party in Canberra, when the Prime Minister, commenting on the primitive Australian economy, had said: ‘Us Aussies are still riding on the sheep’s back.’
    Quick as a flash Sly responded, ‘You stick it in what you like Bob, just leaves more birds for the rest of us.’ This had got a huge laugh and firmly