Further Under the Duvet (35 page)

The latest thing, I hear, is something called ‘dogging’. Have you heard of it? I thought it meant doing it ‘doggy style’, which of course I have heard of, because I am a woman of the world, even if I have never tried it. Then I thought it must mean having ‘sex’ with dogs, which is an unholy thought. But it transpires to be something entirely different. What it is, is lots of people going to a park or forest in the dark of night and ‘having sex’ with strangers. Some people ‘have sex’ in their car, leaving their lights on and other people stand around watching and ‘pleasuring’ themselves, although I cannot see the connection to ‘dogs’ in all this. I first found out about it when my daughter Helen told me she was going out for an evening’s ‘dogging’ and although it was a quarter past twelve, I thought she meant she was going to the greyhound track to try to win some money, as she was ‘skint’. But she soon put me right on what ‘dogging’ means and at first I thought she was making it up, because that’s the sort of thing she does. Having a little laugh at her gullible mother. But then she showed me an article about ‘dogging’ in Mr Walsh’s
Marie Claire
and there it was in black and white and not even Helen could pull that much of a ‘hoax’ on me. It beggars belief. Wouldn’t you get cold standing around in the raw
night air, ‘pleasuring’ yourself? Or what if you bumped into your dentist? Or someone from bridge?

However, as I said, I have no interest whatsoever in discussing ‘kinky’ sex. Also your boyfriend sounds very stingy – how much did the second-hand nurse’s uniform from Oxfam cost, as opposed to a lovely new nylon one from Ann Summers? That’s what you’d want to be considering, young lady. No one likes a man who won’t put his hand in his pocket. (Unless he’s the kind of man who puts his hand in his pocket to ‘interfere’ with himself.)

Please do not contact me again.

PS Unless you find out the origin of the word ‘dogging’. I am keen to know.

Los Angeles International Airport: teeming with passengers, filmstars, illegal immigrants, a dazed English girl called Ros and, of course, the odd alien or two freshly landed from another planet. Well, only one alien, actually. A small, yellow, transparent creature who liked to be called Bib. His name was really Ozymandmandyprandialsink, but Bib was just much more
him
, he felt. Bib was in Los Angeles by accident – he’d stolen a craft and gone on a little joyride, planning to go only as far as planet Zephir. Or planet Kyton, at the most. But they’d been repairing the super-galaxy freeway and diverting everyone and somehow he’d lost his way and ended up in this place.

Ros Little hadn’t landed from another planet, she just felt like she had. The twelve-hour flight from Heathrow, the eight-hour time difference and the terrible row she’d had the night before she’d left all conspired to make her feel like she was having a psychotic episode. Her body was telling her it should be the middle of the night, her heart was telling her her life was over, but the brazen mid-afternoon Californian sun dazzled and scorched regardless.

As Ros dragged her suitcase through the crowds and the drenching humidity towards the taxi rank, she was stopped in her tracks by a woman’s shriek.

‘It’s an alien!’ the helmet-haired, leisure-suited matron yelled, jabbing a finger at something only she could see. ‘Oh my Lord, look, just right there, it’s a little yellow alien.’

How very Californian, Ros thought wearily. He first mad person and she wasn’t even out of the airport yet. In other circumstances she’d have been thrilled.

Hastily Bib assumed invisibility. That was close! But he had to get out of here because he knew bits and pieces about planet Earth – he’d been forced to study it in Primitive Cultures class. On the rare occasions he’d bothered to go to school. Apparently, Los Angeles was alien-spotting central and the place would be overrun with X-filers in a matter of minutes.

Looking around anxiously, he saw a small girl-type creature clambering into a taxi. Excellent. His getaway car. Just before Ros slammed the door he managed to slip in beside her unnoticed, and the taxi pulled away from the crowd of people gathered around the hysterical matron.

‘But, Myrna, aliens ain’t yellow, they’re green, everyone knows that,’ was the last thing that Ros heard, as they skidded away from the kerb.

With heartfelt relief, Ros collapsed onto the air-conditioned seat – then froze. She’d just got a proper look at her cabbie. She’d been too distracted by Myrna and her antics to notice that he was a six-foot-six, three-hundred-pound, shaven-headed man with an eight-inch scar down the back of his scalp.

It got worse. He spoke.

‘I’m Tyrone,’ he volunteered.

You’re scary
, Ros thought, then nervously told him her name.

‘This your first visit to LA?’ Tyrone asked.

‘Yes,’ Ros and Bib answered simultaneously, and Tyrone looked nervously over his shoulder. He could have sworn he’d heard a second voice, an unearthly cracked rasp. Clenching his hands on the wheel, he hoped to hell that he wasn’t having an acid flashback. It had been so long since he’d had one, he thought he’d finally grown out of them.

When the cab finally negotiated its way out of LAX, Los Angeles looked so like, well,
itself
that Ros could hardly believe it was real – blue skies, palm trees, buildings undulating in the ninety-degree haze, blonde women with un-feasibly large breasts. But as they passed by gun shops, twenty-four-hour hardware stores, adobe-style motels offering waterbeds and adult movies, and enough orthodontists to service the whole of England, Ros just couldn’t get excited. ‘It’s raining in London,’ she tried to cheer herself up, but nothing doing.

To show willing she pressed her nose against the glass. Bib didn’t, but only because he didn’t have a nose. He was enjoying himself immensely and thoroughly liked the look of this place. Especially those girl-type creatures with the yellow hair and the excess of frontage. Hubba
hubba
.

Tyrone whistled when he drew up outside Ros’s hotel. ‘Class act,’ he said in admiration. ‘You loaded, right?’

‘Wrong,’ Ros corrected, hastily. She’d been warned that Americans expected lots of tips. If Tyrone thought she was flush she’d have to tip accordingly. ‘My job’s paying for this. If it was me, I’d probably be staying in one of those dreadful motels with the waterbeds.’

‘So, you cheap, huh?’

‘Not cheap,’ Ros said huffily. ‘But I’m saving up. Or at least I was, until last night…’

For a moment terrible sadness hung in the air and both Bib and Tyrone looked at Ros with compassionate interest laced with a hungry curiosity. But she wasn’t telling. She just bit her lip and hid her small pale face behind her curly brown hair.

Cute
, Bib and Tyrone both realized in a flash of synchronicity. She’s cute. Not enough happy vibes from her, though, Tyrone felt. And she’s not quite yellow-looking enough for my liking, Bib added. But she’s
cute
, they nodded in unconscious but undeniable male bonding.

So cute, in fact, that Tyrone hefted her suitcase as far as the front desk and – unheard of, this – waved away a tip.

‘Maaan,’ Tyrone muttered to himself, as he lumbered back to the car. ‘What is
wrong
with you?’

After the glaring mid-afternoon heat, it took a moment in the cool shade of the lobby for Bib’s vision to adjust enough to see that the hotel clerk who was checking Ros in was that Brad Pitt actor person. What had gone wrong? Surely Brad Pitt had a very successful career in the earth movies. Why had he downgraded himself to working in a hotel, nice as it seemed? And why wasn’t Ros collapsed in a heap on the floor? Bib knew for a fact that Brad Pitt had that effect on girl-types. But just then Brad shoved his hair back off his face and Bib realized that the man wasn’t quite Brad Pitt. He was
almost
Brad Pitt, but something was slightly wrong. Maybe his eyes were too close together or his cheekbones weren’t quite high enough, but other than his skin having the correct degree of orangeness, something was off.

Before Bib had time to adjust to this, he saw another earth movie star march up and disappear with Ros’s suitcase. Tom Cruise, that was his name. And he really
was
Tom Cruise, Bib was certain of it. Short enough to be, Bib chortled to himself smugly. (Bib prided himself on his height, he went down very well with the females on his own planet, all two foot eight of him.)

The would-be Brad Pitt handed over keys to Ros and said, ‘We’ve toadally given you an ocean-front room, it’s rilly, like, awesome.’ Invisible, but earnest, Bib smiled and nodded at Ros hopefully. This was bound to cheer her up. An ocean-front room that was rilly, like, awesome? What could be nicer?

But Ros could only nod miserably. And just as she turned away from the desk Bib watched her dig her nails into her palms and add casually, ‘Um, were there any messages for me?’ While Brad Pitt scanned the computer screen, Bib realized that if he had breath he would have been holding it. Brad eventually looked up and with a blinding smile said, ‘No,
ma’am
!’

Bib wasn’t too hot on reading people’s minds – he’d been ‘borrowing’ spacecraft and taking them out for a bit of exercise during Psychic lessons – but the emotion coming off Ros was so acute that even he was able to tune in to it. The lack of phone call was bad, he realized. It was very bad.

Deeply subdued, Bib trotted after Ros to the lift, where someone who looked like Ben Affleck’s older, uglier brother pressed the lift button for them.

Bib was very keen to get a look at their room and he was half impressed, half disappointed. It was very…
tasteful
, he
supposed the word was. He’d have quite liked a waterbed and adult movies himself, but he had to say he was impressed with the enormous blond and white room. And the bathroom was good – blue and white and chrome. With interest he watched Ros do a furtive over-her-shoulder glance and quickly gather up the free shower cap, body lotion, shampoo, sewing kit, emery board, cotton buds and soap and shove them in her handbag. Somehow he got the impression that she wasn’t what you might call a seasoned traveller.

A gentle knock on the door had her zipping her bag in a panic. ‘Come in,’ she called and Tom Cruise, all smiles and cutesy charm was there with her case. He was so courteous and took such a long time to leave that Bib began to bristle possessively.
Back off, she’s not interested
, he wanted to tell Tom. Who’d turned out not to be Tom at all. He only looked like Tom when he was doing the smile, which faded the longer he fussed and fiddled in the room. At the exact moment that Bib realized why Tom was lingering, so did Ros. A frantic rummage in her bag and she found a dollar (and spilt the sewing kit onto the floor in the process). Tom looked at the note in his hand, then looked back at Ros. Funny, he didn’t seem pleased and Bib cursed his own perpetual skint-ness. ‘Two?’ Ros said nervously to Tom. ‘Three?’ They eventually settled on five and instantly Tom’s cheesy, mile-wide smile was back on track.

No sooner had Tom sloped off to extort money from someone else than the silence in the room was shattered. The phone! It was ringing! Ros closed her eyes and Bib knew she was thanking that thing they called God. As for himself he found he was levitating with relief. Ros flung herself forward
and surfed the bed until she reached the phone. ‘Hello,’ she croaked, and Bib watched with a benign smile. He almost felt tearful. But anxiety manifested itself as he watched Ros’s face. She didn’t look pleased. In fact she looked bitterly disappointed.

‘Oh Lenny,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’

‘Don’t sound so happy!’ Bib heard Lenny complain. ‘I set my clock for two in the morning to make sure my favourite employee has arrived safely on her first trip in her new position, and what do I get? “Oh Lenny, it’s you”!’

‘Sorry, Lenny,’ Ros said abjectly. ‘I was kind of hoping it might be Michael.’

‘Had another row, did you?’ Lenny didn’t sound very sympathetic. ‘Take my advice, Ros, and lose him. You’re on the fast track to success here and he’s holding you back and sapping your confidence. This is your first opportunity to really prove yourself, it could be the start of something great!’

‘Could be the
end
of something great, you mean,’ Ros said, quietly.

‘He’s not the only bloke in the world,’ Lenny said cheerfully.

‘He is to me.’

‘Please yourself, but remember, you’re a professional now,’ Lenny warned. ‘You’ve three days in LA so put a smile on your face and knock ’em dead, kiddo.’

Ros hung up and remained slumped on the bed. Bib watched in alarm as all the life – and there hadn’t been much to begin with – drained out of her. For a full half an hour she lay unmoving, while Bib hopped from pad to pad – all six of them – as he tried to think of something that would
make her happy. Eventually she moved. He watched her pawing the bed with her hand, then she did a few half-hearted, lying-down bounces. With great effort of will, Bib summoned his mind-reading skills.
Jumping on the bed
. Apparently she liked jumping on beds when she went to new places. She and Michael always did it. Well, in the absence of Michael, she’d just have to make do with a good-looking – even if he did say so himself – two-foot-eight, six-legged, custard-yellow life-form from planet Duch.
Come on
, he willed.
Up we get
. And he took her hands, though she couldn’t feel them. To Ros’s astonishment, she found herself clambering to her feet. Then doing a few gentle knee-bends, then bouncing up and down a little, then flicking her feet behind her, then propelling herself ceiling-wards. All the while Bib nodded unseen encouragement.
Attagirl
, he thought, when she laughed.
Cute
laugh. Giggly, but not daft-sounding. Ros wondered what she was doing. Her life was over, yet she was jumping on a bed. She was even enjoying herself, how weird was that?

Now you must eat something
, Bib planted in her head.
I know how you humans need your regular fuel. Strikes me as a very inefficient way of surviving, but I don’t make the rules
.

‘I couldn’t,’ Ros sighed.