The Planner(66)

‘Now that,’ said Carl, with an emphatic jerk of the thumb in their direction, ‘is a very bad sign. As a rule, we don’t want to be enjoying the same things as those bastards.’

James looked at them carefully. He had to admit, they were disgusting. Overweight with awful glasses and grey suits bought at tax-free airport franchises, they looked like they worked in town planning for Shanghai City Government, although more likely they were electronics millionaires. They weren’t even watching or drinking anything. Instead, conforming entirely to their ethnic stereotype, they were fidgeting with handheld devices and trying to take pictures of each other. There could be no clearer sign that they were in the wrong place.

After a long period of inactivity and gradually increasing disquiet, some upbeat music started jerkily, and a girl came onstage. It was a disheartening start. She was Eastern European, but not in a good way. It looked like she was from Serbia or Bosnia – strikingly tall, with square shoulders, a clump of muscles around her abdomen, and a tattoo of a tiger on her thigh. She seemed to be full of hurt and hostility, which was almost certainly justified, and she commanded the stage like an actor in a Shakespearean history play as she pulled off her blouse and bra. Her breasts were too large for her chest, and her teeth were too big for her mouth.

‘That wasn’t exactly encouraging,’ said Carl. ‘She was formidable, I’ll give her that. But really – a woman like that needs to be serving in the navy rather than taking her clothes off onstage.’

The Chinese businessmen applauded, but the cultural divide was too great for James to tell if they were being polite, appreciative or ironic. There was a pause. The music stopped, then started, then stopped again.

‘At least we saw something this time,’ said James, who still wasn’t sure how he should benchmark his expectations.

‘I fear,’ said Felix, ‘that this place may be under new management since I was last here.’

‘Soho is going down the tubes,’ said Carl. ‘This used to be a world-class cluster for the sex economy. But it’s all been fucked. We’re losing our competitive advantage. You can bet those Chinese fuckers will be doing business in Paris next year.’

James took a gulp of his sweet white wine. He was probably right – just like manufacturing and finance and everything else, it wouldn’t be long before the Chinese became experts on pornography, and selected different suppliers. An unwelcome light came on. Nothing much seemed to happen for a while. Felix and Carl started to discuss oil prices. Some more Chinese men arrived. James got his mobile phone out, but couldn’t get a reception. Carl went to the toilets and reported back that they were almost certainly the worst in central London. And then, suddenly, the lights went off again, the music came on again, and a girl padded on to the stage.

This time the disaster was unequivocal. She looked British, possibly even Welsh. She had big feet and the kind of sturdy legs and arms particularly ill suited for this sub-sector of the entertainment industry. There were other issues too, the freckles and moles on her shoulders, the broken capillaries on her shins, but the main problem, the insurmountable difficulty, was her age. Protected by her make-up, distorted by the stage lighting, it was impossible to be precise, but it was all too easy to be accurate: she wasn’t young.

Felix and Carl were twitching in indignation, but James felt something else, something far more deadly: he felt sorry for her. It was so unfair that she had to do this. How could it have happened? A particularly unfortunate labour market failure, a breakdown in demand and supply had led to a sub-standard product being presented to a group of discerning consumers who had just paid a great deal of money on the expectation of something of considerably higher quality. And now here they all were, feeling uncomfortable and unhappy and cheated.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Carl. ‘I can’t bear this.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Felix. ‘I can see that this place is problematic. I’ve got somewhere else for us. I was holding it back until later, but if need be we can go there now.’

‘What about the wine?’ said James.

‘Fuck the wine,’ said Carl. ‘I’ll put it on expenses or something. But I’m not staying here to drink it.’

‘Come on,’ said Felix. ‘I’m afraid Carl’s right. We have to go immediately.’

‘Hold on,’ said James. ‘We can’t just get up and go while she’s still onstage.’

‘We’re fucking going,’ said Carl.

‘A market only functions efficiently if it has enough information,’ said Felix. ‘And if we don’t leave now and express our dissatisfaction, then we’re withholding information from the market. It’s how markets work. It’s how the world gets better.’