Fascination by William Boyd Read Free Book Online Page A

an afternoon’s housework, as clean as it could be. I bought a large block of drawing paper, some pens, brushes and coloured inks and went to work. I knew I had to produce something instantly striking: my new plans were so dramatically different from the old that Demarco would have to fall in love with them at first sight – no amount of earnest persuasion would be likely to bring him round. I had one shot – so the drawings had to be as finished as I could make them, the audacity of the concept unmistakeably there, at once, immediate.
    I had a phone but I decided to give no one my number. I arranged with the hotel to keep my messages and checked in with them a couple of times a day. I did not tell John-Jo or Stella I had moved. When I called it was as if I was still at the hotel – it was an easy subterfuge to maintain. Later it was to rebound devastatingly upon me.
    ‘May 15th. Tuesday, I think. Good work the last two days, intense and concentrated. I could sell these drawings to a gallery. One curious event. My beard was growing; I hadn’t shaved for the four days since my arrival and I was beginning to scratch and itch. I went to shave and found I could shave my jaw but not my upperlip. I placed the razor beneath my nose but I could not make my hand move. I tried my left hand but with similar lack of success – it was as if my muscles froze. Would not obey the command from my brain. Elsewhere on my jaw and chin I scraped away problem-free. I washed the soap off my face and saw there the beginnings of a fine, wide moustache, a moustache whose ends did not stop at the edge of my lips but whose bristles continued down and up on to the cheek in a vague handlebar swoop. Funnily enough, I liked what I saw. I reminded myself of old photographs of certain famous cowboys: Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp – very nineteenth-century and, I thought to myself, due for a revival.’
    Why was I so unperturbed? I had never grown a moustache in my life, so why now? I rationalized it as an unconscious desire to blend in in Venice, to become a denizen of this bizarre suburb on the sea, tucked in between respectable Santa Monica and the industrial wastelands around the airport.
    I spent most of the day at home, working, made trips to the laundromat or the supermarket for provisions, slept soundly on my narrow bed and each morning when the sun rose went for a run on the beach. My moustache grew. I remember catching a glimpse of myself in a shop window as I wandered home clutching a brown bag of groceries – I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, my greying hair was wild and uncombed – and for a brief second I did not recognize myself. A moustache can alter a familiar visage profoundly. I stopped, turned and stared: I liked what I saw. No one would know it was me, I remember smiling to myself as I wandered homeward. I called Demarco and fixed up an appointment for the next day – the drawings were ready to show.
    That night I went to a bar, called ‘Moon’. It was dark and pretentiously decorated with a pronounced lunar theme – multicoloured moons were everywhere. The music was loud and harsh but, this being Venice, its clientèle was remarkably varied – all ages, all looks, the beautiful and the grotesque – so I felt quite at home. Isat myself at the bar and ordered a cocktail called, ‘the Sea of Tranquility’, blue in colour, strangely sour-sweet in taste – I was indifferent to its contents. I sipped my drink, my attention held absolutely by the girl behind the bar.
    ‘May 19th. This girl was not pretty, she had a hardpinched face with soft uneven teeth and a pointed stud set in her bottom lip. Her right shoulder was darkly tattooed with some swirling kabbalistic sign. She wore a faded singlet, spandex cycling shorts and heavy mountaineering boots. After my third Sea of Tranquility and my third two-dollar tip she finally smiled at me and asked if I was celebrating. ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Put the champagne on ice.’ She had