Playing it out for the camera

Precise slice of Belgian chocolate cake wearing sculpted frosting, on top is a gold frosted almond holding a gentle quiver like a nipple. Svetlana; she loves it, she’s a Russian Diopside Princess and she knows it.
-We don’t need to spend too much money.
Too late hen. The gift bags are full of Gucci. A waft of vodka made musky through perfume permeates the room. Hair black-blue, skin porcelain-white, frame stick-thin; she is always eagerly poised. She has a spine that could run a small country. She doesn’t eat the cake, it doesn’t leave her plate. But it has been inspected and quality is noted.
-You know how people keep their money? They don’t spend it.
The language barrier makes her words rich with humour.
-Rich people don’t spend money.
It reads like a playground joke and a theme develops.

Her nails are so sharp they cut cubes in the white crisp late Winter air. On the pavement her heels are so tight men whimper as they walk behind her. Loosely insane, she looks cracking in customised Karen Millen like a walking mannequin. It’s all you can do not to buy her a drink because she can hold it like a tank. I follow the vodka and paper chase trail as oil prices soar and we prepare to Easyjet to Brussels. I tell her budget travel has a cult following. She winces and does not comprehend the total lack of club class.
-But there is no curtain to separate the front from the back?
Brussels is big baby! And they got mussels.
-The Jordaen Suite at the dix-septieme?
Her words are so angular sometimes it is like a nail driving into your forehead…
-or the Amigo? The Amigo!
…and it’s just a matter of time before it hits soft tissue.

She i-pods her way through the departure gate. Inside that lead-encrusted skull she is more intelligent than she seems and I sense a chequer board of plotting is in progress and has been for some time. I am a pawn. We make the best of it and I wish for the return of Summer so I can burst out of this situation and head back to the crooked deals of the Costa’s that made me what I am today. My anus spasms at the fact that there are punters still buying timeshares the world over and the thought turns my feet sub-zero. But this is the start of that world being over.

Camera, fuzzy microphone overhead near the departure information board. Two gay boys in pink ties abound.
-Oil prices are busting fit to burst and there is window of opportunity for aspiring lower classes who wish to upgrade holiday destinations from Bognor to Benidorm!
-You think?
-Or Brighton?
-Say Brighton that will embrace the gay community then.

-What is the gay community?
Sveta is away with her own unchallenged prejudices that result from enlightenment travelling real slow when ironically you do not leave your own community for 20 something years.
-Truly how old are you Sveta?
-I am going to a gay community?
-No! That man is a TV news reporter, he just says they may come to us because…Ay pal what point are you making there?
-It’s the oil we’re running out of oil

-On this flight? Are you crazy?
Hysteria outbreak at the boarding gate is the fastest way to summon a flight attendant.
-Is there a PROBLEM sir?
-Not enough oxygen masks did you say that?
-Well what other problem could there be?
Mayhem ensues.

We have not taken off yet so you can imagine how it’s going to be. We didn’t check any luggage in, well you don’t when you see the clips from Heathrow, bags being sent to Milan to be sorted and shipped back to some old pensioner in Hounslow who took a once in a life time trip to see the Pyramids and may not be around much longer anyway. It does not inspire faith. I can’t imagine that Italians care too much about crates of our battered old suitcases anyway. They probably play five a side and laugh a lot.

So those are the thoughts that hit me as I’m walking back through Duty Free where the overpriced handbags that have gone out of fashion are displayed behind glass and spot lit. And I don’t know what I am doing until…
-You don’t let me take lip balm? You want only ugly women arriving in your country?
…rich Afghanistan vocal tones clear the airwaves.
-OK I try your free face cleaner sample. Give me some. But it is foaming in my mouth now! Sweetie! Sweetie?
Amidst the departure hubbub I can hear it. The piercing shriek of big bucks in trouble is as sharp as needlepoint at a Swiss finishing school. And it’s another rich bitch in a fine mess with immigrations having everything she needs to leave the country except the one thing that will guarantee she can return. A beau, a fiancée, a plan. Sveta’s probably on her way now and I sink a cold one in an anonymous chain airport bar and bide my time before offering the young lady some assistance, knowing the cheque has probably cleared by now. It’s like the most amazing honeymoon ever.

Happy Honeymoon for sure. But you can get these marriage things reversed quite easily now can’t you? I mean, you sign the book for sure but it’s not legally binding is it? Is it? OK Marriage is a legal document like the credit forms you sign for mobile telephones but nobody takes them seriously. They wear out in a few years anyway and permanent addresses are vulnerable to change. I make my move. Bally loafers slide forward over sparkling linoleum.
-Can I be of assistance?
Round two. Ring a ding ding.