I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story by Glen Duncan Page B

glory and under the glow
of which she poses, endlessly, in front of the full-length
mirror on the back of the bathroom door after narcissistic,
unguent-heavy baths on her many unemployed afternoons.
She can't make her mind up whether she's at her sexiest as
chin-upholding Boadicea or dimpled and cleavaged Nell
Gwyn - but either way she's baffled and chagrined that not
one BBC period drama casting director has so far had the
good sense to be instantly at the mercy of her hair's splendour.

    She waited, still with her weight on one leg.
    `I thought perhaps Italian,' I said, after a sudden twinge in
my salivary glands. (Me the bemused amnesiac, Gunn's preferences my forgotten family and friends, introducing
themselves, willy-nilly.) `What do you think?'
    She did something with her face then, a simultaneous
smile-snort that lasted a third of a second. Then she put her
head on one side like a perplexed kitten. `Let me just check
something with you,' she said. `Are you actually aware that
you're six hours late?'
    `Yes,' I said. `I'm dreadfully sorry.
    `Well perhaps, since you're six hours late, and are dreadfully sorry, you wouldn't mind fucking off?' she said.
    For a moment I held my tongue - which was difficult,
given that I'd only seconds ago discovered the fascinating
imprecisions entailed in letting it loose. (So quaint, too, that
humble servitude paid by the organs of speech to the organ
of cognition, all those cerebral constrictions eased by labials
and glides, palatals and stops, the concerted efforts of wet
little bits and pieces.) Then I very slowly and with excessive
expansiveness installed myself in her one battered red leather
armchair. `Chimera Films have commissioned me to adapt my novel, Bodies in Motion, Bodies at Rest, for the screen,' I
said, quietly. (To be fair to Gunn, he's thought of this himself, some bogus incentive to keep her boudoir friendly.
What he's never come up with, what's stopped him going
through with the yarn, is the explanation necessary for the
day of reckoning when Violet - money-shot, fisted, assbanged, lezzed-up, whatever carnal prices he would have
tagged on to the starring role - discovered that there u'as no
starring role, no supporting role, no bit part, no walk-on, no
fucking movie.)

    Violet stared. Then switched her weight from her left leg
to her right. Then said, `What?'
    `Martin Mailer at Chimera Films has optioned Bodies for
the screen and has asked me to write the screenplay.' I fished
out a Silk Cut and ignited it with a languidly struck Swan
Vesta. The scent of sulphur reminded me of ... ahhh.
    `You're ... Declan you're having me on. Tell me you're
having me on.'
    `Chimera Films is a UK unit owned by Nexus,' I said.
`They trawl novels here looking for stuff. You know, seventy
per cent of all films made are adapted from novels or short
stories. Nexus, as you know, isn't a UK unit.'
    `Nexus as in ... Nexus?' Violet asked.
    `As in Hollywood Nexus,' I said.
    `Oh my God, Declan. Oh my fucking God.'
    I didn't bother trying to conceal my grin. Violet thought
I was grinning with glee - and so I was - but only at my
own chutzpah. At the last, the very last moment, I'd resisted
christening my phantom optioner Julian Amis. `Martin
Mailer was the guy behind Top Lolly, Bottom Dollar.'
    `Oh my fucking God,' Violet said.
    `I'm having casting consultation written into the contract.'

    `You are not.'
    `I am.'
    `You are not.'
    `I am. Oh yes. I am.'
    Violet thinks of herself as stunning. She is stunning, too, in
her self-absorption verging on autism. She's got a retrousse
nose and expressive eyes and breasts like fresh little apples.
There are freckles she'd be better off without, an arse on the
low side, reddish heels and elbows, but on the whole you'd
definitely say she was attractive. Not that it doesn't come at
a price. To say she's high-maintenance would be to murder
her with understatement. She gets headaches, back aches, leg
aches, eye