but he thought something to do with her running out of time to be happy.
'Drinking in the last-chance saloon,' Kimberley said, showing she understood the nuances of Georgian England.
'Yes, yes, something like that. It's the idea of her faded beauty I love. Fading as you read.'
'You love faded beauty!'
'No, God no, not as a rule. I don't mean in life.'
'I should hope not.'
'God no.'
'I'm relieved to hear that.'
'It's the fairy-story quality,' he said, pausing to graze purposefully on her breast. 'Jane Austen waves her wand and conjures a happy ending at the eleventh hour, but in life it would have been a tragedy.'
She nodded, not listening. 'And now time for you to wave your wand,' she said, looking at her watch. She had given him exactly twenty minutes. She no more did approximations than she did tragedy.
'Wow!' she said again five minutes later.
It was the jolliest night of sex Treslove had ever had. A surprise to him because he didn't do jolly. When he left her in the morning she handed him her card - in case he was ever in LA, but be careful to give her warning, her husband wouldn't be that enthusiastic about finding Billy Crystal on the doorstep in his Regency breeches. She slapped his behind as he left.
Treslove felt like a prostitute.
So what about that prematurity? Treslove, in his street clothes, stopped for coffee in Piccadilly to think it through. Bounce had never done the business for Treslove. Bounce, if anything, had always been detrimental to business. So what, on this occasion, had? The dress undoubtedly had had something to do with it - Anne Elliot straddling him and shaking her head from side to side like a Swedish porn star. But the dress alone could not explain the alacrity of his appreciation, nor his repeating it at twenty-minute intervals, not for the entire night but for more of it than was gentlemanly to brag about. Which left only the mugging. He would not have sworn to this in a court of law but he had a feeling he'd been half thinking about the woman who had attacked him while Kimberley rose and swelled and wowed! above him. They were a similar build, he fancied. So was he thinking about her or seeing her? He couldn't have sworn which of those either.
But there was a problem with this. The attack had certainly not stimulated him sexually at the time. Why would it have? He was not that kind of a man. A fractured nose was bloody painful, end of , as his sons said. Nor had it remotely stimulated him in the days following. And it wasn't doing anything for him sitting thinking of it now. But something was. Recollection of the night before, naturally. It had been a night to be pleased with and proud of. It hadn't only broken a long drought, it had been a one-night stand to rival the best of them and Treslove was not by nature a one-night-stand man. Yet still some further consciousness of excitation or erotic disturbance nagged away at him.
Then he got it. Billy Crystal. Kimberley had taken him for Brad Pitt initially, but when she'd looked more closely into his face she had seen someone else. Dustin Hoffman . . . Adam Sandler . . . Billy Crystal. He had stopped her there, but had she continued the list would in all likelihood, given where it was heading, have included David Schwimmer, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Springer, Ben Stiller, David Duchovny, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Allen, Groucho Fucking Marx . . . did he have to go on?
Finklers.
Fucking Finklers every one.
He had read somewhere that every actor in Hollywood was a Finkler by birth, whether or not they kept their Finkler names. And Kimberley - Kimberley for God's sake; what was her name originally: Esther? - Kimberley had mistaken him for all of them.
By mistaken he didn't mean - he couldn't have meant; she couldn't have meant - mistaken in appearance . Even to Kimberley's blurred vision he could not have physically resembled Jerry Seinfeld or Jeff Goldblum. He was the wrong size. He was the wrong temperature. He was the
'Drinking in the last-chance saloon,' Kimberley said, showing she understood the nuances of Georgian England.
'Yes, yes, something like that. It's the idea of her faded beauty I love. Fading as you read.'
'You love faded beauty!'
'No, God no, not as a rule. I don't mean in life.'
'I should hope not.'
'God no.'
'I'm relieved to hear that.'
'It's the fairy-story quality,' he said, pausing to graze purposefully on her breast. 'Jane Austen waves her wand and conjures a happy ending at the eleventh hour, but in life it would have been a tragedy.'
She nodded, not listening. 'And now time for you to wave your wand,' she said, looking at her watch. She had given him exactly twenty minutes. She no more did approximations than she did tragedy.
'Wow!' she said again five minutes later.
It was the jolliest night of sex Treslove had ever had. A surprise to him because he didn't do jolly. When he left her in the morning she handed him her card - in case he was ever in LA, but be careful to give her warning, her husband wouldn't be that enthusiastic about finding Billy Crystal on the doorstep in his Regency breeches. She slapped his behind as he left.
Treslove felt like a prostitute.
So what about that prematurity? Treslove, in his street clothes, stopped for coffee in Piccadilly to think it through. Bounce had never done the business for Treslove. Bounce, if anything, had always been detrimental to business. So what, on this occasion, had? The dress undoubtedly had had something to do with it - Anne Elliot straddling him and shaking her head from side to side like a Swedish porn star. But the dress alone could not explain the alacrity of his appreciation, nor his repeating it at twenty-minute intervals, not for the entire night but for more of it than was gentlemanly to brag about. Which left only the mugging. He would not have sworn to this in a court of law but he had a feeling he'd been half thinking about the woman who had attacked him while Kimberley rose and swelled and wowed! above him. They were a similar build, he fancied. So was he thinking about her or seeing her? He couldn't have sworn which of those either.
But there was a problem with this. The attack had certainly not stimulated him sexually at the time. Why would it have? He was not that kind of a man. A fractured nose was bloody painful, end of , as his sons said. Nor had it remotely stimulated him in the days following. And it wasn't doing anything for him sitting thinking of it now. But something was. Recollection of the night before, naturally. It had been a night to be pleased with and proud of. It hadn't only broken a long drought, it had been a one-night stand to rival the best of them and Treslove was not by nature a one-night-stand man. Yet still some further consciousness of excitation or erotic disturbance nagged away at him.
Then he got it. Billy Crystal. Kimberley had taken him for Brad Pitt initially, but when she'd looked more closely into his face she had seen someone else. Dustin Hoffman . . . Adam Sandler . . . Billy Crystal. He had stopped her there, but had she continued the list would in all likelihood, given where it was heading, have included David Schwimmer, Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Springer, Ben Stiller, David Duchovny, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Allen, Groucho Fucking Marx . . . did he have to go on?
Finklers.
Fucking Finklers every one.
He had read somewhere that every actor in Hollywood was a Finkler by birth, whether or not they kept their Finkler names. And Kimberley - Kimberley for God's sake; what was her name originally: Esther? - Kimberley had mistaken him for all of them.
By mistaken he didn't mean - he couldn't have meant; she couldn't have meant - mistaken in appearance . Even to Kimberley's blurred vision he could not have physically resembled Jerry Seinfeld or Jeff Goldblum. He was the wrong size. He was the wrong temperature. He was the
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