The Grin of the Dark

TWENTY-FOUR - NETS

Why should it concern me that Rufus has renamed his job? Perhaps a simple editor sounded insufficiently impressive, I decide as I leave Charing Cross Road for Old Compton Street. Women stand in doorways, mutely inviting passers-by inside, unless I'm too preoccupied to hear their words. An unshaven juggler crowned with a scrawny Santa Claus hat and a wide fixed desperate grin is performing for a theatre queue, and trips after me past a row of dead black screens – the windows of sex shops. Are the balls he's juggling painted with faces? I have the impression that they're grinning askew or upside down. He's so close that I could fancy he would like to snatch my head and add it to the objects in the air. Rather than wait to be harassed for a contribution I put on speed all the way to the next block.

The name of the restaurant is etched on the window in elegant lower-case type. Seafood may well be in the net, but the phrase doesn't refer just to that. Every table bears a rotating pedestal mounted with a computer and keyboard and mouse. Some of the monitors display menus, but diners are also online or playing computer games. I open the inappropriately antique panelled door and almost collide with Rufus. He and his companion are standing with their backs to me beside a reception desk. The other man turns, and I see Colin Vernon, my editor at Cineassed.

His mischievous schoolboyish face is packed in more fat than the last time I saw him, and rusty with much sun or a substitute. Before I have time to grasp my reaction he swings around and seizes me by the biceps. 'Simon, you sneaky old bastard,' he shouts as if I'm at the far end of the long low spikily plastered room. 'How long have you been lurking there? Weren't you ever going to speak up?'

Rufus turns fast enough to wag his greying mane and produces a grin too wide to be hidden by his extensive beard. 'I said so, Simon, didn't I? Was I right?'

'Tell me again about what.'

'What do you call this?' He raises a thumb at Colin, and as I mull over my answer he declares 'A reunion.'

Colin relinquishes my arms and clasps my hand in both of his to shake. 'So how are you surviving?' I ask him.

'A lot more than that,' he says and winks at Rufus.

A waiter has arrived, animated by Colin's boisterousness. He leads us to a table deep in the restaurant, where Rufus swivels the computer towards me. 'Indulge yourselves, gentlemen. It's on Charles Stanley Tickell.'

All the items on the menu have domain names. I announce my choice of calamari.sp and trout.co.uk, only to learn that we have to use the mouse to communicate our orders to the kitchen. My fellow diners send theirs, and Rufus is selecting a bottle from the onscreen wine list when Colin frowns at me. 'Rufus was saying some little pipsqueak is nibbling at your reputation. What's his name again?' 'Who would know? Smilemime, he calls himself.'

Colin spins the computer to face him. He types and clicks the mouse so fast I'm put in mind of the rattling of dice. 'Wanker,' he comments loud enough for a businessman and woman at a nearby table to glance at him. I flash them an apologetic smile and murmur 'Colin...'

'Don't kid anyone you disagree,' he says, and no more until he finishes examining the summaries of Tubby's films. 'Well, this is total crap. What shall we do about him?'

'No point in questioning his versions now if I may be seeing some of the films in California.'

'Have you found the twat anywhere else?'

'All over the Google groups.'

Colin searches them and widens his eyes as if to encompass more of the information. 'Fucker,' he remarks almost affectionately. 'Have you seen this?'

I vowed yesterday that I wouldn't let Smilemime trouble me any further. I spent the day in rewriting my chapter about Fatty Arbuckle, which I emailed to Rufus, though I've yet to learn what he thinks of the new version. I nodded off only occasionally, and was awake to fetch a somewhat subdued Mark from school and to buy the three of us baltis in Brick Lane when Natalie eventually returned from work. I slept almost as soon as I was first in bed, and wasn't conscious of thinking about Smilemime. This morning I stayed offline while I worked on the chapter about Max Davidson, the comic who fell out of favour for being too parodically Jewish. Now Colin swings the screen for me to catch up on my correspondence.

So he's making out noboddy knows my name now, is he? That's funny coming from someboddy that can't even tell the truth about his own. Hands up anyboddy who hasn't noticed that he says he doesn't have a suedonym when he keeps answering to Mr Questionabble. Good of him to say people needn't be assocciated with him if they don't want to be. Shout annyone that does. Quiet arround here, isn't it? I don't blame anyboddy not wanting to get mixed up with his book, even if it's as fictittous as this Cinneaste magazine he can't even spell the name of.

A waiter has poured three generous glasses of Chablis, having waited for Rufus to take more than a sniff. As I swallow a mouthful, Colin reclaims the computer and sets about typing. In a minute or so he says 'That ought to fix the little prick.'

'Could I see – ' I start, but he clicks the mouse and turns the screen to show me his posting from colin@lup.co.uk.

Hello Mr Smellie or whatever your name should be. I'm Simon Lester's editor. Yes, he wrote for every brilliant fearless issue of Cineassed. I'm not surprised you've never heard of it when you're so busy contorting yourself to stuff your head all the way up your arse. And yes, he's got books in him that'll be even more stimulating than his magazine work. Unlike you he'll have watched the films, not made them up.

Rufus cranes over to read it and covers his face to stifle a laugh, but Colin is watching my reaction. 'Wrong on one point,' I feel bound to say. 'Telling him you're my editor. You were, of course.'

'He'd still like to be,' says Rufus. 'How would that fit with you?'

'I thought you and Rufus must have been discussing a book.'

'Several.'

'Yours for one,' Colin tells me.

I'm unpleasantly aware of the flickering of screens around me. 'Aren't you my editor?' I appeal to Rufus.

'I'm still at the top of the pole, but I could do with more support. Your old friend is buzzing with ideas, and I can't think of a better choice when you've already worked together.'

'How are you saying we should do that?'

'Maybe like this,' Colin says and reclaims the computer again.

A waiter arrives with the starters but won't accept an order for another bottle; Colin has to type it on behalf of our host. I'm chewing some of my obscurely spiced squid by the time he completes his original task and lets me see the screen. It's displaying the first page of the chapter I sent to Rufus.

My head begins to throb, and the screen and its neighbours appear to join in as if they're revealing a shared pulse. 'Where have you got that?'

'It isn't online,' Colin laughs. 'I've called it up from my desk.'

The text isn't quite mine. I didn't suggest that 'Since Arbuckle is silent, viewers couldn't know if he sounded like a eunuch', nor 'The sight of Fatty as an outsize child in drag is creepier than it's funny'. I wouldn't necessarily argue with either observation, but it feels as if my chapter has mutated while I was asleep – almost as if my subconscious or someone else's took charge of the computer. Colin is consuming his moules.fr, scooping out the mussels and sipping from the shells. 'Fatty may have decided his gracefulness was the wrong kind of gay' – I suppose that's possible, and even 'Perhaps his penis rose up against the image he was projecting onscreen'. Dozens of my sentences have acquired extra spice to compete with these, but I don't comment until I've read nearly to the end. 'Can we really say he screwed Virginia Rappe to death?'

'Why not?' says Rufus, brandishing a forkful of tuna.jp. 'It's what everyone thinks.'

'There's evidence on the net,' Colin assures me. 'Dashiell Hammett was on the case for Pinkertons, you know.'

'If the university can live with it I can.'

Colin swallows his last mussel and stands up with alacrity I mistake for relief until he says 'I'm off to powder my nose. Anybody else?'

His announcing his intentions loud enough to be heard by other diners helps me not to be tempted. When Rufus also shakes his head, Colin hurries through the door marked Incoming Male. 'You aren't offended, are you?' Rufus says.

'I wouldn't say that.'

'He thinks any changes he can make that you don't object to will make it, well, we don't want anyone saying it's a reprint of your thesis. He'll email all his tweaks to you, of course. I thought it would leave you more time to concentrate on your Thackeray project if it's expanding as much as you said.'

I might well prefer to explore that rather than rethink old material. 'He won't want his name on the cover, will he?'

'There'll just be yours in splendid solitude. I expect he'd appreciate an acknowledgment inside.'

Soon Colin reappears, rubbing his nostrils with a forefinger. 'It's settled,' Rufus lets him know at once. 'Simon, do you want Colin to have a go at the rest of your thesis?'

'Don't lose any sleep over it,' Colin urges, laughing at my face. 'You'll both have to approve anything I change.' When I settle my expression he says 'It's great to be working with you again. Shall I send this back where it came from?'

'Better keep it to ourselves for now,' Rufus presumably agrees.

Colin shuts the file and returns to the newsgroup with a sprint of his fingers on the keyboard. 'The cunt isn't there yet,' he announces. 'I'll keep an eye out for him.'

I'm about to suggest that he should leave Smilemime to me when the businessman at the nearby table says 'Do you mind?'

Colin's glittering eyes brighten as they turn to him. 'Does your wife?'

The man's face is already suffused, but its redness intensifies. 'I'm asking you to keep your language to yourself.'

'I'll bet you are. Don't like the question, do you?'

The young woman tries to silence her companion by resting a hand on his arm, but he snatches it away. 'What question?' he blusters.

'Does your wife mind you shagging your secretary?'

As Rufus muffles a startled laugh, the businessman's face seems actually to swell around his pursed lips. 'Don't try to kid us that was just a business lunch,' says Colin. 'You could at least leave your wedding ring at home.'

I'm by no means pleasantly reminded of the head that burst during Lane's stage performance. I would suggest that Colin might relent, but the young woman is quicker. 'Let's go or we'll be late,' she murmurs.

Her companion is scarcely able to manipulate the mouse to send their bill to the printer behind the reception desk. He avoids looking at us while he stalks past our table as if his empurpled face is a burden he's barely able to support, but the young woman pauses to inform us 'I'm not a secretary.'

'Seems like we've all been promoted,' Colin remarks.

I watch the couple leave the restaurant and try to outdistance a figure in a lolling red conical hat. It's the juggler. His prey hurry out of sight, and the globular faces caper in the air before they and the performer vanish in pursuit. Rufus recaptures my attention by elevating his glass. 'Here's to rediscovery,' he proposes, 'and shaking the world up a bit.'

I have to hope that Rufus and the university will keep Colin under control if it's called for. I lift my glass and clink it against theirs. 'Not too much. Just enough,' I say. Perhaps I'm discovering a deadpan talent, since both of them laugh.