The logic was unassailable. What was James going to do? Felix and Carl were already walking out, and James could hardly sit on his own, staying to watch her take off her bra on the grounds of social democracy. It was such a shame. The woman was still dancing, she had no choice, but by now she must have been aware of the unhappiness she was causing. The Chinese were talking loudly and watching a film on an iPad as James walked across the room, his head down.
Outside, back in the alley, an emergency conference had been called.
‘Okay,’ said Carl. ‘That was an expensive fiasco. I’m thinking of going home.’
‘No, don’t worry,’ said Felix. ‘It’s all in hand. I wanted us to do Soho for the sake of James’s education, but I always thought we would end up somewhere else.’
‘Really? Where are you thinking? I’m starting to lose faith with the project.’
‘Well, I’m up for it,’ said James. ‘I’m up for anything.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Felix. ‘We all are. And as long as we stay that way, I promise that the evening will be successful.’
‘Christ, okay then. Let’s do this. But the next place better be fucking good.’
Carl channelled his disgruntlement into negotiating a stunningly good price with a Pakistani minicab driver, and they clambered into a small saloon car that smelt rich and beautiful – of dark chocolate, fresh mint and strong cannabis. This time they were going much further: they were going east. James should have known – it was inevitable that this would happen at some point in the evening. The West End of London had become tamed and over-regulated. It was the fault of people like James, the planners, who had only succeeded in filling the town centre with coffee bars and sandwich shops and driving all the good stuff elsewhere. But the East was different, it was the future. Everyone knew that: Felix, the venture capitalists, the technology start-ups, the advertising agencies and the strip-club owners. The driver took them out of Soho, through Clerkenwell and into the City fringes, and then Felix took over, for specialist knowledge was required. They travelled through obsolete high streets and long-standing regeneration priorities, past failing churches and flourishing mosques, across Dalston Junction and onwards, deep into the heart of Hackney.
And then, unexpectedly, at a forlorn street corner somewhere near London Fields, Felix instructed him to stop, and they disembarked outside a shoe shop. A few weeks ago, James would have been confused – after all, this was obviously a premises with A1 rather than D3 usage. But he knew better now. He trusted Felix, and he trusted London. He was a regulator and he spent much of his life devising rules that people ingeniously evaded or simply ignored, and as a result London blundered on. It was high-functioning anarchy. People slept in commercial office space and ran businesses from their homes, they dealt drugs in their front rooms, opened all-night bars in warehouses and they established sex clubs in the basements of shoe shops.
‘Are we entirely sure about this?’ said Carl. ‘Because I don’t know how on earth we get back from here.’
But the cab had already gone, and they were on an empty street peering into a window display: a row of black and brown leather shoes, arranged without imagination, and all of which seemed to be on special offer.
‘Well, let’s just hope the sex bar is cross-subsidising the shop, rather than the other way round,’ said Felix.
There was no signage or low-frequency lights, and no one guarding the entrance. In fact, displaying a confidence that James considered to be reckless, there wasn’t even a door. There was simply a gap at the top of a flight of dimly lit stairs, which seemed to offer little prospect of going anywhere but to a storeroom, but Felix strode down, undaunted by the darkness or danger. At the bottom of the stairs they opened a door, walked past a young man who was reading a graphic novel, and found themselves in what was actually a storeroom. Or, at least, it clearly had been until very recently, for there were still empty shelves running around the walls, a small pile of shoeboxes neatly stacked in the far corner and wooden crates that had been repurposed as seats and chairs.
‘Ah good,’ said Felix. ‘It looks like things have already got started here. I think we’re going to be okay now.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Carl. ‘Let’s get some drinks, sit down and see what they’ve got to show us.’
And now, thirty minutes later, James could feel confident that he was enjoying himself. Onstage, things were being done properly and girls were continually getting undressed in front of him. They weren’t necessarily as good-looking as in the first place, but that was okay because they were all immensely attractive, they had far less clothes on and James had had a lot more to drink. It also helped that none of them were actually on the stage for very long. They bounded on good-naturedly in high heels, danced a bit, unclipped their bras, wriggled out of their knickers, pouted provocatively while clutching their breasts and skipped off merrily. It wasn’t exactly dancing, more a kind of rudimentary, highly energetic jiggling about, and it didn’t look as if it required much in the way of training, but it was compelling. It was, in fact, and at long last, pornographic. And it took no longer than four minutes, like a perfect pop song. There wasn’t enough time to inspect the quality of their skin or the whiteness of their teeth in any detail, or to wonder if they were paying any tax or receiving income support benefit while doing this.