The Ted Dreams Read Online Free PDF

might as well be saying NSA.’
    ‘But that doesn’t make Robbie some kind of spy.’
    ‘I work for the NSA, and that doesn’t make me a spy either. But I’m an art dealer, and we can all do with a little government subsidy. Were you followed on your way here?’
    ‘I hardly think so,’ I said.
    ‘Did you check?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘I did, because Robbie texted me to meet you here if you asked. But I didn’t see anyone,’ Cynara said. ‘They’re very clever.’
    Paranoiac, too. Her teeth would be receiving messages next. She’d had them done in the US. They were very large and very white, like Robbie’s. I was conscious of the thin, translucent flimsiness of my own.
    ‘I don’t think anyone would find it worth their while following either of us,’ I observed.
    ‘Oh darling, you’ve no idea, have you,’ she said, ‘just how important you are to the future: that is to say, how much money they’re prepared to spend on you. Same thing. But I think we’re probably safe, as it happens. Not enough time to plant mikes. He only texted this morning.’
    It is very pleasant to be told you are important, but rather alarming to have someone suggest you are being spied upon. Our fish and chips came. I asked for extra mayonnaise; the tartare sauce does for the fish but what about the chips?
    ‘I do so adore you! Chips! Simply no-one eats chips.’
    I did not remind her that she was the one who ordered them. She ignored her chips and removed the batter carefully from the pure, white, flaky, non-fattening fish, though she was to get through all the tartare sauce in its little silver gravy boat, and manage at least a teaspoon of the accompanying pea purée. I had a feeling she was perpetually hungry, as so many really slim women are. I was glad Robbie preferred women with a little more flesh on them. I had traipsed all this way and all Cynara was prepared to tell me was drug-driven paranoiac nonsense. I might have known it. The batter went on to Cynara’s side plate and she gestured to the waiter to take it away. He did, and took her dish of chips away too without even asking. Evidently she was a regular customer, and he was used to her ways. She preferred to have the chips taken away on request, rather than just not come in the first place. It made her feel virtuous.
    ‘Do you want to know how I met Robbie?’ she asked. I said I was more interested in why I was important to the future but there was no stopping her. Robbie, she said, had come into the gallery about a Van Meegeren Vermeer they had in the window at £5,500 and tried to beat her down to £3,000. They had ended up in bed together. Robbie had been taking Doxies so she hadn’t stood a chance and the next morning she’d let him have the painting for £3,250. Ted had been furious.
    ‘Really?’ I was trying to be polite. It didn’t sound at all like the Robbie I knew.
    ‘What happens when you take Doxies?’
    ‘Sod all happens if the woman takes them, but when the man does he passes on extra SSRI in his cum, and she ends up so passive, pleased and loving she’ll do anything he asks. The lab keeps them under lock and key but Robbie nicked some. I told Ted he should be grateful I even earned us £250, but he wasn’t having any. He’d no idea about Doxies.’ Cynara at least lowered her rather piercing voice so the whole restaurant didn’t hear. ‘But then he didn’t need them. Dear sweet Ted, I so miss him. Well, I suppose you do too, white witch. Do you mind being called that?’
    ‘It’s minimally better than black witch,’ I said coolly. I wondered exactly what it was she missed about dear sweet Ted. ‘These Doxies seem to be really something.’
    ‘Viagra is so yesterday!’ She was attracting looks from all over the room. She was the poshest totty in the room, evidently. ‘Viagra makes them good in bed, Doxies make women fall in love with them.’
    D-OXY-S. I worked it out: Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin. Happiness hormones all,