Nine Ten Begin Again: A Grasshopper Lawns affair by EJ Lamprey

MacDonald, did you? Can you walk about twenty yards to the corner so we can get a taxi?’
    She nodded, got out and waited while he locked the car. A beautiful boy, which he would have been, who had toured with shows like the Rocky Horror Show and Grease , and was called Eugene. And Clarissa still insisted he wasn’t gay . . . he had sounded defensive. No need. She wouldn’t have made a teasing comment for the world, because she was being trusted with more of his life tonight than she had expected. Not, perhaps, so odd that he kept a name he had otherwise discarded for the most secret part of his life.
     
    ~~~
     
    Donald cast a slightly worried look around the foyer as he handed in his coat and they went through into the room beyond, but Edge didn’t notice. All her attention was directed at her surroundings and she was utterly thrilled. There was a subtle suggestion of decadence about the décor, with stressed gilt and crackle paint in abundance, thick crimson carpet underfoot and a dance-floor ahead, surrounded with cocktail standing tables and, beyond them, glimpses of shadowed plush booths. At the far end of the dance-floor a manorial stairway rose magnificently into darkness, behind a large video screen.
    Donald put a light hand on her elbow to steer her towards the heavily gilded bar, which was tended by a burly bald man wearing, well, not very much. She turned on her built-up heels to look around the room again, watching a slowly-revolving spotlight as it picked up tables and padded booths and gleams off leather-clad men and women who were sitting together but, like her, studying the room rather than each other. Three Doric columns were set around the perimeter of the dance-floor, each with a single seat at shoulder-height, padded to match the dusky red décor. The music was good, thudding stuff that quickened the heart to match; loud enough to be effective, not so loud as to drown conversation.
    ‘Oh God, do you want to dance?’ He saw her rapt face, her head nodding slightly with the music, but she laughed and shook her head. In these clumsy boots, to dance with her own local equivalent of John Travolta? No, thank you.
    Once she started studying individuals she was reassured to realize that they weren’t beautiful people. Huge hips gleamed in leather tighter than hers and bellies strained behind enormous buckled belts. Some people looked rumpled in loose-fitting clothing. One woman in a tiny skirt and boots as high as her own looked on the verge of toppling forward under the weight of gargantuan breasts, while others strutted despite knock knees and skinny chests. She had been told fairly recently that confidence was more important than appearance and it was certainly being borne out here. There were some excellent figures, but she’d learned from Angie tonight how that had been achieved and smiled to herself as she relaxed.
    She accepted her drink and leaned one elbow on the bar to carry on scanning the room. A woman near her, looking around with a combination of arrogance and world-weariness, stared at her boosted cleavage. Edge looked away indifferently, thrilling suddenly to her feeling of anonymity. She wasn’t Edge Cameron, respectable widow, expected to behave as she had always behaved, polite and conventional. She was Cleopatra, ageless and enigmatic, and the hard bold glances she was already attracting were strangely thrilling. On her own, she’d have been completely unnerved. With Donald at her elbow, her daggers on her arms and her identity a secret, she felt invincible. She hooked a heel on the bar rail and, with a creak of leather, managed to perch on the bar stool to get a better view.
    ‘Are those chairs, the ones on the columns, for umpires?’
    Donald, unfamiliar in his half-hood, followed the direction of her gaze and his mouth quirked at the high seats.
    ‘I’d heard about those. The idea is that if you want a really macho partner, you climb up on one of those chairs and wait for