White Queen Read Online Free PDF

an iron cot, a three legged wardrobe, and an antique beatbox, The Welcome Sight’s version of en suite entertainment. Room service was covered by the resident sticking his head out of the door and yelling; there was a public phone and message-pad at the desk. In his private bathroom, a tiny closet, he was able to practice an ancient alchemy of coated-paper and light that produced reasonable still photos. On the beatbox he was able to record his notes, on recycled metallic tape. He kept his library in a rigid leather suitcase, bloomed with age and damp. In another life he had been a spendthrift book-collector. A chosen few from the surviving collection came everywhere with him. They were like diamonds, he told himself, sewed into a money belt. But to sell one of these would be truly desperate. It would put him well on the way to partytime under the Gromyko.
    A ten centimeter skewbald cockroach crawled over his stomach, the rain rattled on murky plastic corrugations overhead. The back of the bathroom door was his photo gallery. It was a poor showing: mere glimpses of the mystery. Her eyes, a half-profile, her loose-limbed figure blurred and anonymous walking down the street. If that girl was what he thought she was, she might be Johnny’s ticket home. He should be excited. If another pro was interested, his fantasy might be real. In fact he didn’t know which depressed him most. Wilson’s presence in Fo, or her body.
    “Robert—” The cockroach halted, directing its head towards the sound in a way that looked curiously purposeful. Johnny sat up, gathered a small plastic box from under his pillow and shooed his pet inside. A scuffed label on the lid said dimly ESaZRT…. The batch number that followed, Robert’s ID, had faded away.
    “Problems. That ageing sex-kitten isn’t here for a detox.”
      
    It was probably too late, but he stopped looking for the girl, and kept away from L’Iceberg. A few evenings later Braemar Wilson turned up at Mama’s, still dressed like an expensive tart. She must be in her forties, he supposed. Which was nothing these days, though Johnny’s grandparents would have called her middle-aged. However, that was hardly the point. Johnny just detested the kind of female executive Wilson epitomized. The equation of whorishness and power, the way she oozed sex was an affront. To Izzy, to any decent woman trying to live with dignity in a man’s world. He pretended total indifference. She ended up heading off with David Mungea and his friends, and Johnny had to endure David’s congratulations next morning.
    “So, you’ve found yourself an African woman this time.”
    Johnny was bemused. “She’s British.”
    David laughed delightedly. “We’ve all been British, it’s an occupational hazard for my generation. Your friend was born in Kenya: Afrasian mother, she belongs to us. You lucky fellow. She spent the whole night asking questions about you.”
    Johnny took sour pleasure in imagining what Ms. Wetlips Wilson would look like now if she’d stayed in Africa. In fact she would look dead. Not many middle-aged East African whores about, these days.
    It had to happen.
    He crept, ratlike, into The Planter’s, devoured by curiosity after days of lurking in his room. “Oye!” cried the barman. “La jolie-laide! She was here, Johnny. She left you a message!”
    He drank his beer standing, with nervous speed: remembered too late that he couldn’t afford another and tried to hang on to the dregs. The barman whipped the glass away with slickly gloved hands and thrust it into the superheat cabinet. Johnny carried the scrap of printout to an island. The screen was running a new Korean animation feature about ’04. He stared at his treasure in dismay. He piled prawn crackers from the cocktail-tray into a fantasy condo, and read the message again.
    “I must see you. I’ll be at the Devereux fort at midnight, tonight and every night until you’re there. Please be there.”
    No address, no