Neverwhere(37)

“When you’re ready, gentlemen,” said the marquis.

Ruislip stamped his bare feet on the floor, sumo-like, one-two, one-two, and commenced to stare hard at Varney. A small cut opened on Varney’s forehead, and blood began to drip from it into one eye. Varney ignored it; and instead appeared to be concentrating on his right arm. He pulled his arm up slowly, like a man fighting a great deal of pressure. Then he slammed his fist into Ruislip’s nose, which began to spurt blood. Ruislip drew one long, horrible breath, and hit the ground with the sound of half a ton of wet liver being dropped into a bathtub. Varney giggled.

Ruislip slowly pulled himself back to his feet blood from his nose soaking his mouth and chest, dripping onto the sawdust. Varney wiped the blood from his forehead and bared his ruined mouth at the world in an appalling grin. “Come on,” he said. “Fat bastard. Hit me again.”

“That one’s promising,” muttered the marquis.

Door raised an eyebrow. “He doesn’t look very nice.”

“Nice in a bodyguard,” lectured the marquis, “is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters. He looks dangerous.” There was a murmur of appreciation, then, as Varney did something rather fast and painful to Ruislip, something that involved the sudden connection of Varney’s leather-bound foot and Ruislip’s testicles. The murmur was the kind of restrained and deeply unenthusiastic applause one normally only hears in England on sleepy sunny Sunday afternoons, at village cricket matches. The marquis clapped politely with the rest of them. “Very good, sir,” he said.

Varney looked at Door, and he winked at her, almost proprietarily, before he returned his attention to Ruislip. Door shivered.



Richard heard the clapping and walked toward it.

Five almost identically dressed, pale young women walked past him. They wore long dresses made of velvet, each dress as dark as night, one each of dark green, dark chocolate, royal blue, dark blood, and pure black. Each woman had black hair and wore silver jewelry; each was perfectly coifed, perfectly made up. They moved silently: Richard was aware only of a swish of heavy velvet as they went past, a swish that sounded almost like a sigh. The last of the women, the one dressed in utter black, the palest and the most beautiful, smiled at Richard. He smiled back at her, warily. Then he walked on toward the audition.

It was being held in the Fish and Meat Hall, on the open area of floor beneath Harrods’ fish sculpture. The audience had their back to him, were standing two or three people deep. Richard wondered if he would easily be able to find Door and the marquis: and then the crowd parted, and he saw them both, sitting on the glass top of the smoked-salmon counter. He opened his mouth to shout out Door’s name; and as he did so, he realized why the crowd had parted, as an enormous dreadlocked man, naked but for a green, yellow, and red cloth wrapped like a diaper around his middle, came catapulting through the crowd, as if tossed by a giant, landing squarely on top of him.



“Richard?” she said.

He opened his eyes. The face swam in and out of focus. Fire opal-colored eyes, peering into his, from a pale, elfin face.

“Door?” he said.

She looked furious; she looked beyond fury. “Temple and Arch, Richard. I don’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” said Richard, weakly. He sat up and wondered if he was suffering from a concussion. He wondered how he’d know if he was, and he wondered why he had ever thought that Door would have been pleased to see him. She stared intently at her nails, nostrils flaring, as if she did not trust herself to say anything else.

The big man with the very bad teeth, the man who had knocked Richard over on the bridge, was fighting with a dwarf. They were fighting with crowbars, and the fight was not as unequal as one might have imagined. The dwarf was preternaturally fast: he rolled, he struck, he bounced, he dove; his every movement made Varney appear lumbering and awkward by comparison.

Richard turned to the marquis, who was watching the fight intently. “What is happening?” he asked.

The marquis spared him a glance, and then returned his gaze to the action in front of them. “You,” he said, “are out of your league, in deep shit, and, I would imagine, a few hours away from an untimely and undoubtedly messy end. We, on the other hand, are auditioning bodyguards.” Varney connected his crowbar with the dwarf, who instantly stopped bouncing and darting, and instantly began lying insensible. “I think we’ve seen enough,” said the marquis, loudly. “Thank you all. Mister Varney, if you could wait behind?”