The Millionaires' Death Club by Mike Hockney

Author:Mike Hockney
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781458034892
Publisher: Mike Hockney

22

Narcissus

‘So, where’s my NexS?’ Mencken said as he strolled into the Sargasso’s subterranean art gallery, constructed beneath the hotel’s car park.

I’d been waiting for him for over ten minutes, using the time to look at some of the exhibits and wishing I could have stayed in bed longer. The previous night, things had fizzled out after Zara’s stunt with the champagne. When I took Sam back to the Sargasso, he didn’t speak other than to say he was ‘going to get her’. I wasn’t sure whether he meant get revenge, or shag her.

‘I thought you would have it by now.’ Mencken was dressed in cream trousers and a white polo shirt that showed off his Californian tan to perfection.

‘I haven’t found a single trace,’ I confessed. ‘No one in the Top Table – well, no-one living – has ever mentioned it.’

‘What did you expect?’

Mencken walked over to a piece of modern art – a bust of Narcissus – exhibited on a polished silver pedestal in the centre of the room.

It was a striking work. The artist had used a circular mirror to represent the water. Narcissus’s head was made from white clay, with pieces of mirror set in the mixture before it hardened. The bust’s eyes, lips and nose were all mirrored, and its hair was made from mirrored strips. A circle of gleaming mirrored roses surrounded the water, with Narcissus’s head reflected back from every petal. I think the idea was to show that beautiful people live in a mirrored world, always gazing into mirrors, or the lenses of cameras or human eyes. Maybe they ceased to be real and just became reflections.

It could easily have been a sculpture of Mencken or any other Hollywood big shot. He crouched down and read out an inscription beneath the sculpture: If my eyes were mirrors, what would I see when I looked in the mirror?

‘NexS means everything to me,’ Mencken said. ‘I must have it.’ He sounded weary. ‘When you’re young, with everything ahead of you, you’re sure pleasure will always be waiting for you. You grab it in handfuls as you go along. You don’t understand that one day it turns to sand and runs through your fingers. Time kills pleasure. Every dream fades in the end.’

He stared into space for a few moments. His usual self-confidence seemed to be temporarily deserting him. He resembled a past-his-sell-by-date playboy searching for the kicks he realised were now beyond him. I actually felt a little sorry for him.

‘You can’t go through life without messing things up,’ he went on. Then, quietly, as if to himself, he started to recite poetry:

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