The Carnival Master

8.

Oliver loved this time of night. The quiet isolation. Cologne glittering against his picture window. He listened to the slightly melancholic jazz that oozed expensively from his Bang amp; Olufsen system. He leaned back into the soft Italian leather of his chair and sipped at his Scotch and soda, ice tinkling against crystal. It was at this time of night that he could fully contemplate his life: a successful life; a life worth the envy of others; a life expressed through the designer furniture and original art, the twenty-year-old malt and the expensive architecture encasing him. Oliver felt good in his own skin: he had no problems with who he was or what he was.

His feet rested on the coffee table and the notebook computer on his lap. He rubbed his eyes hard with the heels of his hands. Enough was enough: he had spent three hours on the Anthropophagi site. Time in another world. There had been several answers to his personal advertisement and he had replied to them all. But he had committed to nothing. There was no doubt that there were risks in what he was doing: he had always before indulged his little foible through prostitutes. To have a volunteer to submit to it willingly and without reward was something he had only recently considered. But he had hesitated to make any firm arrangements or even to take things onto the next level. Out there in the real world he could cover his tracks. He had never used the same escort agency twice, never the same hotel twice, never anything under his own name. Here on the Internet he had remained without flesh, as insubstantial as a ghost. But placing the ad had changed things. Ironically, here in a universe of codes where flesh was formed from high-resolution pixels, he had become more detectable. He had to tread more carefully.

But visiting the site had served its purpose. An hors d’oeuvre. An electronic appetiser to sharpen his hunger for the main course. The real thing.

Tomorrow night. He had arranged everything for Friday evening. Maybe this was an agency he could deal with again. After all, the company’s name seemed like a positive omen. What could be more fitting than an escort agency called A la Carte?