“I’m sure she does.”
Mental images of Fiona’s warty face quickly made me remember why I was really there on the North Island: Thong Kong and the promise of unlimited pussy. I felt conflicted because I had genuine feelings for Sarah, yet I also still wanted a full-on highly lubricated orgy. I sighed. Life does throw us these cruel existential puzzles.
Sarah had to leave. “Bye, fellas. I’m off to tame the beast!”
I was unsure what she meant, but whoever the beast was, I would love to be him, being tamed by Sarah.
41
“Sarah’s a nice girl, Ray. You sweet on her?”
“Neal, I came here for Thong Kong, and I want it now! I want acres of throbbing, needy cocktail-bunny quim. I want—wait—I think I am sweet on Sarah.”
“Well, she’s a keeper, she is. Just like that LACEY of yours.”
“LACEY is not mine, Neal. Why on earth does everyone think we’re life partners?”
“You’re the one who had the epic fuckfest with her.”
“Neal, there’s just something not right in the head with LACEY. The only thing you can do to fix a girl like her is go back in time to the age of fourteen, or whenever it was, and unmolest her or whatever it was that happened to her—but you can’t really do that, so instead we end up with a world of LACEYs, wasting valuable food and oxygen and causing massive problems within the service industry.”
“I hear there’s a sacrificial rock nearby. Want to go see it? I need to exercise a bit to help the sprain. Could be fun—a small hike, nature, coconuts …”
“Neal, you’re trying to change the subject. I want a pussy blizzard and instead you offer me a field trip to see a rock?”
“Touch of culture never hurt anyone.”
“And how did they ever get a rock onto this island anyway? The whole place is made of coral.”
“See, Ray—makes you want to investigate, doesn’t it?”
I sighed. “I suppose so. Get out your cane and we’ll go see this magical stone.”
Neal quickly donned another of Arnaud du Puis’s linen outfits. “Some people say the rock was delivered here by space aliens, Ray.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
We headed out the door into the perpetually hot, wet terry towel of a day. The idea of a sacred rock made me think of Stonehenge and alien theories about it. “Stonehenge being designed by aliens is crap, Neal. Think about it: aliens establish contact with earthlings and instead of giving us something useful, like mathematics, wheels or the power of flight, they decide instead to give us large rocks?”
“Never thought of it that way, Ray.”
We rounded a corner. Neal’s face lit up. “We’re here!”
I looked at the rock. It was a rock. I hated it. “You lead me to believe we’re off to see Stonehenge, and instead all I see is this?”
“Ray, I think you oversold it to yourself. I only said it was a rock. Even still, it’s sort of awe-inspiring. Reminds us that we’re all made of stars.”
“It’s a fucking rock!” I kicked it, which was a stupid idea. I hopped about for a bit on one foot, shrieking.
“The gods are punishing you for mocking their sacred rock.”
I literally screamed at Neal, “I don’t fucking care about some fucking rock!”
“Temper, temper. Come back to the house and I’ll find you some painkillers.”
I felt a rare pang of remorse for screaming at Neal. “Some painkillers might be rather nice.”
Back at the house, Elspeth and Tabs greeted us at the front door, dressed in Playboy Bunny costumes. At last, the gods were smiling on me.
Then I remembered: didn’t Neal owe me that piece of red plastic? That fucker.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in the English county of Wiltshire. It is composed of two rings of standing stones set within the earth. The site is surrounded by hundreds of burial mounds, known as barrows.
The smaller, inner circle was built between 2400 and 2200 BC. Some of its original stones have been removed, some have fallen over and other missing stones have been cut up and used for other construction purposes by subsequent generations. The stones weigh up to 4 tons each and were quarried around 230 miles away in the Preseli Hills of southern Wales.
The larger, outer circle is estimated to be about five hundred years younger than the inner ring. Its stones weigh up to 50 tons each. They are sandstone erratics, which can be found scattered all over the English chalk downs. They are likely to have been transported to the site from the neighbouring Marlborough Downs, 25 miles to the north.
Stonehenge was completed around 1500 BC. It had fallen into a state of obscurity and disrepair, and in 1982 was slated to be torn down to make way for a housing subdivision until the stone grouping was repopularized by the beloved 1984 cult film This Is Spinal Tap.