Thrill City by Leigh Redhead Read Free Book Online Page A

actually surprised that you slept around on me.’ He slouched sideways to face Isabella. ‘But I can’t believe you’d let Mr Axis of Evil here stick his shrivelled, right-wing dick inside you.’
    ‘That’s it.’ Rod stood up, but Isabella and Cummings lunged and grabbed a wrist each to keep him in place. A woman down the front madly scribbled in a notepad, while a guy with a big camera snapped off shots. A grey-haired lady was so appalled that she actually stood up and shouted, ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’
    Nick nodded in mock wide-eyed innocence, slurring slightly. ‘You’re right, madam, she should be. Izzy looks pure as the driven slush but don’t let that fool you. Got a real mouth on her—one time she called me a cockless cunt. Wasn’t so much the insult bothered me but the fact a so-called professional writer would use such an obvious tautology.’
    Cummings could bear it no longer and tried to wrest back a modicum of control. ‘Mr Austin! There are schoolchildren in the audience.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He turned to them. ‘Tautology: the redundant repetition of meaning in a sentence. I mean, a vagina, by its very definition—’ ‘Would you like to take this outside?’ Rod was red-faced and sweating.
    ‘Not particularly.’ Nick shrugged.
    I looked at Isabella, sure she’d be mortified by the turn of events. I was; it was so cringe-worthy I was wincing and digging my fingernails into my palms. Chloe seemed to be enjoying herself, though. She’d been watching back and forth like she was at the tennis. But Isabella didn’t even look embarrassed. She had a glint in her eyes and a small smile on her lips and looked almost . . . triumphant.
    Cummings checked his watch. ‘I know it’s a little early but we might have to wrap it up here. My apologies to the audience, but if guests turn up intoxicated and then refuse to act in a civilised manner—’
    ‘No, Phillip,’ Isabella said. ‘I’d still like to do my reading. That is, if Nick can control himself for five minutes and refrain from interrupting.’
    Nick held up his hands, palms out.
    Cummings said, ‘If you’re sure . . .’
    She nodded. Cummings held up Isabella’s book and read from the blurb at the back: ‘Atmospheric, evocative, elusive and erudite, this literary crime novel transcends the genre—’
    ‘Transcends the plot,’ Nick snorted. ‘This I gotta hear.’
    Isabella gave him a look. ‘I did send you a signed copy, Nick.’
    ‘Must have chucked it in the trash.’
    ‘Well, you’ll have to buy a new one with your own money.’
    It suddenly occurred to me that they were flirting with each other. The eye contact, the insults; it was nasty and brutal, but it was flirting nonetheless. Rod finally caught on too, because he stared at them, a deep crevice indenting the skin between his bushy ginger eyebrows.
    Isabella started reading, talking soft and low into the microphone, her velvety voice lulling the crowd.
    ‘It is a house of mirrors, you know that now. Sleek-surfaced, burnished and brittle as the man’s crystalline consciousness. A leather lounge reflects light, the slippery cushions where he pushed you down . . .’
    Nick went pale and stared at Isabella with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Was he angry? Scared? Had she plagiarised something he’d written? His fingers clenched around his glass.
    ‘You glimpse yourself, for a moment, in the television’s vast, dead screen: dress torn, breasts exposed; clutching the statue high above your head. Fingers twined in chrome veins, you sweep it towards his ruined skull and as it hooks the scalp you look, finally, and laugh at the banality of the object which—’
    Bang! The audience jumped as Nick’s glass shattered in his fist. He sat there and stared as blood poured out of his palm. Cummings jumped up, brandishing his handkerchief and trying to help, but Nick just stumbled down the steps and lurched out of the tent.

chapter six
    A s the crowd