‘The grisly formalities,’ he said, winking.

Larry scanned the contract. ‘Who are “Southern Enterprises”?’

‘I,’ said T. Bone, ‘am Southern Enterprises.’

‘I thought it mighta be the Mafia.’

‘You wag,’ said T. Bone.

‘And I get the first five on signature?’

‘In a lovely fat envelope that only we will ever know about.’

‘What about Cindy X and Selina D’Amour and the others. Do I meet them before we shoot? It would be nice, you know, to talk to them. First.’

‘My dear Larry,’ said T. Bone, helping himself to another triangle of foil-wrapped cheese that seemed, like much of the meal, to have come from some museum of food, ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. The important thing is to keep yourself in tip-top condition. We want you looking sleek as a young seal. Our productions should exude a sense of optimism. No bags under the eyes, please. Ranch knows all the tricks.’

So Larry had signed, and after coffee he and Ranch had been excused like children to go back and play in the annexe. The ‘fat’ envelope was produced, and Larry made his goodbyes, kissing Betty’s hand and treating her to the doctor’s penetrating pre-diagnosis stare. She blushed, deeply.

‘Oh, Larry,’ she sighed.

‘Adieu, Betty.’

He knew that one of them was mad.

Close to, Jo-babe’s seventeen-year-old belly was a thing of wonder, the taut surface finely atremble with the jelly and clockwork of her guts. Larry leaned down and sniffed a line through one of his new hundred-dollar bills; then, with the very tip of his tongue, he licked the stray grains of powder from her skin and nuzzled the head of a tattoo lizard that peeped from the waistband of her jeans. He wondered whether he would have sex with her, whether indeed he was supposed to, so that Ranch, presently watching a hand-held TV with a screen the size of a playing card, could examine his technique, offer advice on angle, thrust control, that special grunty kind of porn fucking.

The King was doing a South Seas steel-guitar version of ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’. Larry got up to dance with Rosinne, who looked sulky and puffy-eyed, aware perhaps that this wasn’t the life Santa had promised her as a little girl. She leaned her head against his chest and they shuffled round together, his hands pressed against her back, her breath moistening a patch of blue cotton above his heart.