“Neal,” I interjected, “I thought I was supposed to be moving into the house.”
“No, you’re staying behind the house in the hut, Ray. Your mother can stay in the business centre, on a beautiful sofa bed, with an ensuite bathroom and a big-screen colour telly.”
I was suddenly invisible to my own mother, as she suction-cupped her right tentacle onto Neal’s left buttock. I was livid. It was time to find Fiona and figure out just what sort of master plan she had in mind for me.
To get her attention, I shouted, “Mother, would you be so good as to tell me where the delightful Fiona is … perhaps honing her talons on a massive medieval granite knife-sharpening wheel?”
“She’s in the big red tent, I believe, Ray. But don’t go barging in. She’s getting a massage from one of those ladies who likes ladies, if you know what I mean.”
“Charming.”
“The masseuse has skin like the back seat of Granddad’s old Vauxhall. And she’s probably got a clit like a golf ball.”
“Yes, Mother. Delightful.”
A Siberian wind blew through my heart at the thought of Fiona being pounded like so much bread dough by some careerist bull moose. But I needed to find out the scope of Fi’s treachery. What else could she have in store for me?
43
Indeed, I found Fiona in the red tent getting pounded by what looked like a lorry driver with tits. When I opened the tent flap, the masseuse looked up at me like I was the devil. Beneath her mitts lay Fiona, like so much bread dough. I said, “Oh, hello, darling.”
“Oh, it’s you.” Fiona craned her neck around to make eye contact with her lorry driver. “He’s harmless. Raymond, this is Chaz.”
“Lovely to meet you, Chaz.”
Fiona screamed at me, “Stop staring at Chaz’s tits—she’s a dyke, you simpleton! And I don’t even want to know how you ended up in your ridiculous outfit.”
Chaz grunted and reached for a towel to wipe lotion from her hands. “Want me to call security?”
“No, thank you, Chaz, dear. This is my ex-husband.”
Chaz froze in mid-motion. “Seriously?”
“Don’t act so shocked, Chaz. He didn’t always resemble a pemmican scarecrow. In fact, there were a few moments—not many, mind you—where he was passably okay-looking.”
The stupid bitch was trying to butter me up, but I was having none of it. “Darling, I’m here on a fact hunt.”
“A big fact hunt?”
“Yes, an enormous fact hunt.”
“A heaving, pulsating, throbbing fact hunt?”
“No, more of an oozing, quivering, tender fact hunt.”
“Is this fact hunt needy and desperate and looking for someone to teach it the ways of the world?”
“Indeed. Naughty fact hunt. Bad little fact hunt.”
There it was—the old magic between me and Fi, happening again.
Chaz threw down her towel and stormed out. “You people are sick.”
“If you say so.”
I threw Fiona a shirt. “Did you really have to drag Mother into whatever your game is?”
“Your mother deserves a holiday, Raymond. She’s had a long hard life.”
“She’s had no such thing. She’s been a benefits scrounger as long as I can remember. What she doesn’t scrounge, she wheedles or steals, as you very well know.”
Fi sat up and attempted to take on her domineering stance. “A bit of compassion for the woman, Raymond. Come with me to the production trailers. You may as well see where you’re working.”
We left the tent and followed a path towards a trio of rusted-out trailers like the ones you see in American horror movies in which a family of four is brutally bludgeoned to death, their carcasses picked clean by wild animals and insects, only to be found years later by hillbilly meth makers who use the bones as doorstops while converting the remains of the trailer into an incestuous copulation den filled with smashed beer bottles, fag ends, misspelled graffiti and bullet holes.
“You still haven’t answered my question, Fi. Why did you bring Mother down here?”
“Oh, very well, Raymond. I did it to torture you. Satisfied?”
“Really? You brought her down here just to annoy me?”
“Yes, Raymond. Yes, I did.”
My heart melted. “That is, in a weird way, kind of sweet, Fi.”
“I’m not a total monster, you know.”
I could see some of the show’s staffers milling about outside the trailers, like the dodgy-looking people you find on Google once you remove “safe search”—not that I’ve ever done that. Many of them were carrying empty plastic cola bottles filled with something resembling dirt. I stopped one particularly slaggy-looking production assistant to ask what was in the bottles.