The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

Author:Alan Hollinghurst [Hollinghurst, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780330472623
Publisher: Not Specified
Published: 2004-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

He closed the door, locked the door, and reached out for Wani, who patted him and kissed him on the nose as he turned away.

"Where's the stuff?" said Wani.

Nick went over to the desk, unhappy but caught up too in the business of the coke, which if he was patient enough might make them both happy again. He got out the tin from the bottom drawer. Wani said, "A tin is such an obvious place to hide it."

"Darling, no one even knows I've got anything to hide." He passed Wani the packet and smiled reproachfully. "It's just like our wonderful secret love affair."

Wani pulled out the chair and sat down at the desk, little clouds and gleams of possible rejoinders passing across his features. He peered at the stack of library books and selected Henry James and the Question of Romance by Mildred R. Pullman, which had a sleek Mylar sleeve protecting its dark jacket. "This should do," he said. He had never been in Nick's room before, and it was clear that it held no magic for him of the kind Nick had felt in Wani's room at Lowndes Square. Well, he wasn't one who noticed such things. He didn't thank Nick for meeting Ronnie or show any intuition of the scary drama it had been for him. Nick said, to remind him,

"I had such a sweet little chat with Ronnie. It seems he's hoping to move to this area." Wani said nothing, tipping out a bit of the rough powder onto the book. "He is very nice, isn't he?" Nick went on. "It was quite a business—ringing him and waiting and ringing again . . . And of course he was late . . . !"

Wani said, "You only like him because he's a wog. You probably fancy him."

"Not particularly," said Nick, whose wave of sexual feeling for him had been just a part of the criminal excitement, tension and relief at the same time, the feeling that Ronnie accepted not only his money but him; and then, to get it done, "I wish you wouldn't use that word. I keep trying to believe you're not as irredeemable as your father."

Wani weighed this up for a moment. "So what was Papa talking to you about?" he said.

Nick sighed and paced across the room—where they both were again, in the subtly glamorized light and depth of the wardrobe mirror. He had imagined Wani's being here so often, for secret sleepovers and also, in some other dispensation, freely and openly, as his lover and partner. He said, "Oh, he wants to move to this area too, apparently." He gave a snuffly laugh. "I ought to put him in touch with Jasper."

"That Jasper's a sexy little slut," said Wani, and it wasn't quite his usual tone.

"Yeah . . . ? All white boys look the same to me," said Nick.

"Ha ha." Wani studied his work. "So—what else did he say?"

"Your old man? Oh, he was just pumping me again about you, and about the film.

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