01

Dear Reader …

Like you, I consider myself a reasonable enough citizen. You know: live life in moderation, enjoy the occasional YouTube clip of frolicking otters and kittens, perhaps overtip a waitress who makes the effort to tart herself up a bit, or maybe just make the effort to try to be nice to the poor—yay, poor people!

I suppose, in general, I enjoy travelling through life with a certain Jason Bourne–like dashingness. Oh no! An assassin is rappelling down the side of the building, armed with a dozen Stanley knives! What are we going to do? It’s Raymond Gunt! We’re saved!

That’s my name, Raymond Gunt, and welcome to my world. I don’t know about you, but I believe that helping others is a way of helping yourself; what goes around comes around—karma and all that guff. So, seeing that I’m such a good soul and all, I really don’t know how to explain the most recent month of my life. There I was, at home in West London, just trying to live as best I could—karma, karma, karma, sunshine and lightness!—when, out of nowhere, the universe delivered unto me a searing hot kebab of vasectomy leftovers drizzled in donkey jizz.

Whuzzat?! Hello, universe? It’s me, Raymond! What the fuck!

I am left, dear reader, with no other option than to believe that when my world turned to shit last month, it was not, in fact, me who had done anything wrong. Rather, it was the universe, for I, Raymond Gunt, am a decent chap who always does the right thing.

And as I look back to try to figure out when the universe and I veered away from each other, I think it definitely had to be that ill-starred morning when I made the mistake of visiting my leathery cumdump of an ex-wife, Fiona.

Fi.

It was a blighted Wednesday off Charing Cross Road. After about fifty ignored emails, Fi deigned to allow me to come to her office, in a gleaming steel-and-limestone executive tombstone that straddles one of those tiny streets near Covent Garden. The building’s lobby was redeemed by being filled with heaps of that 1990s art about death and fucking—pickled goats, fried eggs and tampons—and there was a faint hissing sound as I passed through it and into the elevator, the sound of my soul being sucked out of me, ever so nicely, thank you.

Behind her desk sat Fiona, elfin, her pixie hair dyed a cruel black. She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Jesus, Raymond, I’ve seen rhesus monkeys that look hotter than you.” She was busy piling caviar atop a Ritz cracker.

“Lovely to see you, too, dear.”

Her office was well-oiled leather and chiselled steel, a fine enough reflection of her method of handling daily life. What was painfully evident was that Fi was minting money with her casting agency. The joke was on me for having suggested that she give the casting gig a try. She’s an expert at meeting people and figuring out instantly what their personal style of lying is and how to make it work for them. What else is acting, if not that?

But you do need to know that Fi is a dreadful, dreadful, dreadful person. She is monstrous. She is the Anti-shag. She is an atomic bomb of pain. If you puncture her skin, a million baby spiders will explode from her body and devour you alive, pupating your remains, all the while making little squeaking noises that will taunt you while you die in excruciating agony.

And yet …

… and yet there is something about Fi’s, um, musk. I can loathe her at a distance, but up close that scent overrides every other emotion I harbour for the woman: murderous rage, bilious hatred and not a small degree of fear. Fi is the only woman who’s ever had this effect on me. All the crap I’ve put up with just for a whiff of her: all the times she’s fucked me over, looted my bank account, stolen my pills and trash-talked me all the way from Heathrow to Stansted. My inability to overcome this most primal of attractions has been the downfall of my life. There is no other way to explain one of nature’s most catastrophic and implausible pairings, but I guess that’s what any chap says about his wife.

As I entered her office, Proustian recollections of our time together swam in my head. I felt poetic and wistful.

“One moment, Raymond.” Fi removed a black onyx stash box of coke from a desk drawer, sprinkled some of it on top of the caviar, and began to demolish her snack, conveniently forgetting to invite me to join in. The noises from her mouth were like randomly typed keys: “Vbv bdlkfnsld jz slvbds lbfbakl.”

“Looks delicious, dear.”

Suddenly she leaned back in her chair and began coughing out mouthloads of crackers and caviar. “Vbn. Sfhejwbe cfbiqq fflekh!!!”

Heimlich: yes or no? “Dear?”

She waved me away and finally shot a cluster of sturgeon eggs out her nostril. “Fucking hell.” She used a nearby letter to fan her face. The crisis seemed to have passed. “Ooh. There. Finally it’s gone,” she said.

“What is?”

“The food trapped in my esophagus. It’s in my stomach now.”

“Fucking hell, that’s disgusting, Fi.”

“How is that disgusting, Ray?”

“It’s like you’ve just taken a massive shit inside yourself.”

Fi burst into a cackle. “Sometimes I miss your childlike take on the world, Raymond.” She smiled at me.

“Fi, look, just give me a fucking shooting assignment. I’m three months behind on my rent.”

“Stop throwing your money away on dildos and Asian preteen porn, darling. Then you won’t always be broke.”

“I don’t go to Thailand, dear. Nor am I into goats and gerbils.”

“So what did you really spend all your money on?”

“Fi, need you be such a raging twat?”

“Coke bill overdue?”

“Coke’s a bit out of my league these days.” I glanced over at her door to see a pink silk ascot tied around the knob. “Hmmm. What about you—into autoerotic asphyxiation these days?”

“Oh, don’t mention autoerotic asphyxiation to me! Fucking entertainers! All these actors and musicians ever want to do is strangle themselves while they’re getting off. I can’t believe more of them haven’t died.”

“How does that whole strangling thing work, anyway? I mean, do actors recite a bit of Hamlet, sing a song or two and then suddenly, Oi! I’m famous and I think I’d better go strangle myself while I come!?”

“Pretty much. And you’d think they’d hire someone to babysit them while they do it.”

“Yes, but that would wreck the fun, wouldn’t it? ‘Ooh! I can’t breathe! Help me! Help me!’ Not very sexy at all. Chances are your babysitter would be so repulsed by your lack of commitment she’d let you hang anyway.”

“I keep the ascot there to give my clients proper hanging lessons. The DIY sites on the Internet are hopeless, and a dead client is a client who’s no longer making me money.”

I looked at Fiona’s beloved onyx coke box with sad beagle eyes.

“Blow!” said Fi. “Excellent idea.” She dived in.

God only knows how badly I was salivating at this impudent display of purchasing clout. She vacuumed two rails, wiped her nostrils and said, “I like to see you grovel and be deprived of drugs. Life is good.”

“You ball-curdling witch. What is your problem?”

“My problem is you, Raymond darling. I don’t like having you in the same city as me.”

“Can’t say I like it much, either.”

“Yes, but the thing is that you, darling, are a failure. When people bump into you, they justifiably equate me with you, and you have to imagine how that makes me feel.” She put the coke box back into her drawer. “I really can’t have that, at least not until a few more years have gone by and all memory of you and your rapidly accelerating downward failure spiral has faded away like a pensioner’s capacity for long division.”

“I see.” I leaned back in my chair. “I seem to remember a much younger version of you making bedroom eyes at me from the floor of the 1992 Daytime BAFTA Awards when (if I may pat myself on the back here) I accepted my trophy for Best Hand-held Camera Work in a cooking or DIY home-improvement show.”

“You have to stop living in the past, Raymond.” She made her oh-why-not face. “How would you like a camera gig in the sun-kissed Pacific, ogling young beauties all day, just you and your shoulder cam?”

I kept silent, awaiting the catch.

“There’s no catch, darling.”

“What’s the catch?”

Fiona sighed. “Paranoia has never looked good on you, Raymond. Here I am offering to rescue you from your prison cell of a life and you make me sound cruel and vindictive.”

“What’s the catch?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it a catch, per se …”

“What’s the catch?”

“Darling, you would have to work for Americans.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Sorry, darling, but take it or leave it. A friend, Sarah, handles the people for a U.S. network and she owes me a favour.”

“Who’s this Sarah, then?”

“She’s—well, I’m hoping one day she’ll become my … special friend.”

Doubtless some filthy labia-chewing swamp raccoon. “For God’s sake, you’re not still tinkering with lesbianism, are you?”

“If trying to grow as a person is a crime, I stand accused.” Fi clasped her hands together on her desk like a schoolgirl. “Sarah, like me, is only trying to expand her world, and I like to think of myself as a nurturing, mentoring woman.”

I snickered.

“Take it or leave it, Raymond. At the count of three I rescind the offer. One, two—”

“I’ll take it.”

“Go talk to Billy.”

Her face became all business. It was as if I were no longer in the room as she stared down at her iPad and began browsing through toddlersroastingonaspit.com. She said, “Go on. Billy will arrange your flights and your visa for Kiribati. Lovely place. Whores growing on trees, from what I hear. Coke bushes around every corner.”

After a moment she looked up me. “Really, Ray—be a love and fuck off. And as you leave, Billy will offer you a complimentary bottle of water and some sanitizing hand wipes. Cold and flu season.”

“It’s a wonder Billy hasn’t been strangled with a shoelace by one of those man-sluts he arse-rapes nightly out on Hampstead Heath.”

From behind me I heard, “Those days are over, Raymond. I have found love and am a reformed man.” Billy appeared, as polished and moisturized as a daffodil salesman at Harrods, but incongruously dressed like a Canadian lumberjack out for a day of chopping down a forest of larches.

“Oh. Hello, Billy.”

“Hello, Raymond.”

I had no mirth in my heart for Billy, and I remain convinced Billy was part of the chorus saying “Dump the bastard” back during the divorce.

“Going to Kiribati, I hear. Lovely place.”

“Let’s just do the paperwork.”

“Manners, please.”

“Or else what?”

“Be rude to me one more time and I’ll go online and start a wicked, wicked rumour about you.”

“Like what?”

“Like …” Billy paused a second. “I know: I’ll go into an online chat room posing as you.”

My interest was piqued: “What kind of chat room?”

“A shit-eating chat room. I’m sure there must be hundreds of them. And once there, I start the rumour that you, Raymond Gunt, are a … a log hog.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I? Or maybe I’d invent some other scarier category … I know: you’re into funnel cakes.”

Fi cackled with glee and then her phone rang, a zithering that made my spinal hairs rise. “Both of you—out,” she ordered. “That’s my Bollywood line. Without the rise of the Indian middle classes and their zest for quality English-language entertainment, I’d still be rolling in the muck like you. Now fuck off, Ray. Really. And enjoy the South Pacific or wherever this Kiribati shithole is.”

Not putting a trapdoor opening into a cobra pit past her, I fucked off. Billy followed me into the hall. He said, “FYI, you get to have an assistant with you on this gig.”

“An assistant?”

“Yes. All they need is a valid passport and the ability to tolerate you day and night.”

I didn’t absorb what Billy said next. My brain stopped at the word “assistant”—the joy! On a fly speck of coral dust in the middle of the ocean with no labour laws, no police and most likely no witnesses to whatever punishments I might dole out to my assistant—or rather, my slave. A lifelong dream of human ownership was coming true.

“… and so I’ll email you shortly. Goodbye, Raymond.”

“Right. Yes. Goodbye, Billy.”

Down on the street I looked at my BlackBerry: it was a Wednesday, fuck it, always my bad luck day. I then sort of spaced out looking at the phone’s screen. Wednesday … Wednesday … Wednesday … what the fuck is a “Wednes”? I mean, for Christ’s sake, think about it.

---

Wednesday comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English Wõdnesdæg, meaning the day of the English Woden (Wodan), a god revered in Anglo-Saxon England until about the eighth century. Wõden, or Woden in Modern English, is the head god in English heathenism.

---

So wait a second … this guy, Woden, gets a whole fucking day named after him? Do we have no say in this matter? Let’s rename Wednesday something better, like, say, James Bond. And we can call Thursday Hitler and Saturday Tits and … You get the idea.

I looked up and saw that I was once again inside that wretched, unwieldy dump people call the real world. I rode home on a series of buses, and what is a bus but failure crystallized into the form of two storeys of metal, painted red, hurled out into the world to hoover up losers from the streets of London.

Kiribati?

Could be kind of nice. Pretty, even. Who knew … maybe my luck had turned.

---

The Republic of Kiribati is an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean. It is comprised of thirty-two atolls and one raised coral island, and is spread over 1.4 million square miles. It straddles the equator and borders the International Date Line on the east. Its former colonial name was the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The capital and largest city is South Tarawa.

Population: 105,000

GDP: $206 million

Internet top-level domain (TLD): .ki

International calling code: +686

---

02

When I arrived in East Acton, I looked about: nice enough day—but then on Henchman Street some verminous panhandling dole-rat squatting on the sidewalk stuck out a soiled Caffè Nero coffee cup and begged for a few pence, instantly blotting out my good mood. I kicked him on the shin. I mean, for fuck’s sake, here he is, the same age as me, but I’m out in the world, work, work, work, making the world a better place for everybody, and this guy? All he does is sit around all day, expecting the world to throw him cash.

“What was that for, mate?”

“Get a fucking job, you lazy shit.”

“Job? You want me to get a job, do you?”

He stood up then. He was sunburned, somewhat larger than me, dressed in oily rags arranged in a manner that would have been considered Duran Duran stylish in 1982, but, thirty years later, flecked with feces, discount fag cinders and the spattered remains of meals-in-a-can, constituted a rather terrifying mite-breeding facility. “Say that to my face, mate,” he growled. He was wearing a name tag: NEAL—like anyone gave a shit what this street-fuck’s name was. His left eye was a milky cataract white.

Seeing as I’d kicked a hornet’s nest, I decided the best course of action was to flee.

“Come on mate, don’t be a coward!”

Just fucking speedwalk out of here, Ray, don’t let him smell your fear. Why, look up there—its Wolfstan Street, where you can turn right and never see this unoccupied dickwad ever again.

Whump!

Tackled from behind … fuck. Two hundred pounds of man stink crunching my face onto a sidewalk papered with lung oysters and chip wrappers gone transparent from oil.

You’d think I’d find a shred of mercy or concern or even interest from the citizens of glamorous West London, but no, they were all so fucking busy with their drug-taking, their lotto-ticket-buying and dole-robbing—assuming they were even fucking English—that seeing a visibly sane man like me being attacked by an obviously violent nutter like Neal elicited not a whiff of protest.

A colon–scented mouth and the one working eye asserted itself in front of my face. “We like ourselves, don’t we?”

I shut my eyes.

He twisted my right arm behind my back, “We like ourselves, don’t we? So, what’s your name, then?”

I twisted around; there was no escape to be had. My eyes opened. Fucker.

He smiled at me. “And our name would be …?”

The smell of street grit reminded me of childhood. I’m not telling this low-life fuck my name. “I’m not telling a low-life fuck like you my name—Neal.”

“Right then.” Neal did something I still don’t quite understand to this day, but it resulted in a jolt of pain in the shoulder that was a gourmet blend of stubbed-toe-meets-hot-boiling-chip-fat.

“Raymond!” I moaned.

“Whazzat?”

“Raymond! My fucking name is Raymond!”

“That so?” Neal rubbed his dreadful, dreadful hair in my face. “My name is Neal, and my hair is called Neal, too. I can give my hair a name because I’m nuts and live on the street and I haven’t washed it since Princess Di died. It’s my way of letting my love for her live on and on.”

“You sick, contaminated fuck, what is wrong with you? Get off before I get fucking superaids from your fucking beard.”

“Can’t do that, mate. I have a lifestyle, and part of me being me is me keeping my style alive.”

He is off his fucking rocker. “Are you off your fucking rocker? No one dresses like Duran Duran anymore. The eighties revival came and went. People barely dressed like that back in the fucking day and all of those wankers can’t change their own fucking diapers anymore. If you have to dress like some haircut band, at least make it Echo and the fucking Bunnymen instead of Duran fucking Duran.”

Another profound jolt of pain racked my shoulder. I shrieked.

Grannies with vinyl tartan grocery carts passed by as if Neal and I were tweens sharing a chaste kiss.

“Right,” barked Neal. “Echo & the Bunnymen thought they were so cool, but it was just Ian McCulloch acting all fucked up with asymmetrical hairdos so that birds would form a line outside the bus and chain-bang him one by one.”

“Well, that’s why anyone becomes a musician, Neal. Why the fuck else would you do it?”

The pressure on my shoulder was eased.

“You have a point.”

“Neal, I would like you to stop crushing my skull into the pavement. You may like life on the street, but I, myself, am not used to smelling evaporating lapdog piss close-up.”

Neal began to croon: “I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar!”

Oh Jesus, the daft fucker was singing eighties pop tunes in the key of hepatitis C.

“I said: I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar!”

Neal shook my neck; a fleck of pigeon shit went up my right nostril. “Raymond,” he said, “you have one last chance before this escalates to the theoretical next stage. I repeat: I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar!”

I whimpered my required line: “That much is true.”

---

“Don’t You Want Me” is a single by British synthpop group The Human League, released on their third album, Dare, on November 27, 1981. It is the band’s best-known and most commercially successful recording, and hit number one in the UK’s Christmas pop chart, selling over 1,400,000 copies, making it the twenty-fifth most successful single in UK Singles Chart history. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. on July 3, 1982, and stayed in the top for three weeks.

The title is frequently misprinted as “Don’t You Want Me Baby,” which is the first line of the chorus.

Basically, everyone on earth loves this song.

---

“And? And what comes next, Raymond!?”

Jesus fucking Christ. “But even then I knew I’d find a much better place, either fucking with or without you.”

“Louder!”

“But even then I knew I’d find a much better place, either with or without you.”

“Raymond! You are a man redeemed. Next line!”

“But now I think it’s time I live my life on my own, I guess it’s just what I must do.”

“Louder! All together now … One, two three …”

In stereo: “But now I think it’s time I live my life on my own, I guess it’s just what I must do!”

“Very good, mate.” Neal let me go to sprawl beside him.

We lay there on the street, drunk with song. I looked over my left shoulder to see a pair of pigeons bobbing towards us. I was feeling oddly philosophical. “Neal,” I said, “what the fuck is it with pigeons, anyway?”

“What do you mean, Ray?”

“I mean, how many fucking crumbs can there be on this street—or any other given street in the world?”

“Go on, Ray. I’m listening.”

“I mean, it’s not like there’s a mobile croissant-shredding machine that trundles about the city strewing fresh, delicious crumbs all over the place just to feed pigeons.” A pigeon ventured close to my face, cooing dementedly. I blew at it and it skittered away. “And yet look at the little monsters everywhere: very plump, likely juicy, too.”

“Very roastable indeed.”

“Not only are these pigeons plump, Neal, they shit like leaf blowers, and they do all of this on a diet of, essentially, nothing.”

“Makes you think, Ray.”

“It does, doesn’t it, Neal?”

The mood down on the sidewalk was relaxed now. I caught a whiff of piss. “Christ, just smell the piss here. What is wrong with this city? Someone couldn’t wait seventeen extra seconds to find a shrub or a loo?”

“You should give urine a chance, Ray. You’re reflexively negative about it. Think of all those people in India chugging down bottles of urine every day. Piss is practically a food group over there, it is.”

“Neal, there’s a reason it’s called piss—it’s because your body doesn’t want it inside you anymore. If we were meant to drink piss, it’d come out of tits. Think about it.”

“Good point, Ray.”

“Thank you. Just one question, Neal …”

“Yes, Ray?”

“A minute ago, when you were talking about giving your hair a name and all that—were you serious?”

“Good God, no. People expect crazy people to ham it up, so I give what I think the audience wants. But I can see you understand me, Ray. I’d never try a stunt like that on you again.”

“Thank you for your refreshing candour.”

Neal stood up, looming over me on the diseased concrete. “Okay now, Ray, stop being a cunt to the world, and the world will stop being a cunt to you.”

And with that, Neal was gone.

Kind of liked him, actually.

03

I got home to my cramped top-floor flat in my building, a forgettable heap with about as much visual magnificence as Margaret Thatcher’s morning coffee dump. Unwashed dishes in the sink had gone bacterial and were on the brink of growing fur. Six light bulbs in the room needed replacing. I suppose, were I to wax poetic, the absence of pets or loved ones amplified my sense of aloneness in the universe.

The phone rang: “Hi, Ray. It’s Tabitha from Fi’s office. She wanted me to prep you for Kiribati.”

Tabitha! Tabs! Fi’s gofer, a sweet delicate fawn. But the question in my mind about Tabs is: Has, or has not, Fiona tongue-nabbed Tabs in the ladies’ room in between her PowerPoint casting suggestions for a Ford Fiesta commercial or the Afghanistan war or God-only-knows what other appalling clients? “Hi, Tabs. What do I need to know?”

“Do you have a valid passport?”

“I do. I never know when an overseas gig might come up.” Implicit in this? Raymond Gunt is a man of the world.

“Okay, good. Umm. Like, ummm. Well …” Typical useless young person, language-wise. “Fi has asked me to drop papers off at your place tonight. Our server’s down and you’re not far from where I live. Will you be home at seven o’clock?”

Will I? “Yes. Please do drop by.”

“See you then.”

Fucking hell: my place looked like cat shit in a litter box. The last thing I ever have on my mind is visitors. I began to cull through the worst of it, but I realized a few minutes in that the worst of it was actually a fucking lot of it.

I needed to convert my bachelor’s dump into a fuck hut, and quick. Who among us hasn’t been in this situation?

How to mask the odour of furniture covered in years of rogue jizz blemishes, countless sour-smelling empty wine bottles, a sea of dead remote control batteries and Zantac packaging, a rack of never-used barbells, a Katrina-like swath of take-away food packaging, plus whatever civilization of insects was brave or stupid enough to try to forge a new world within the haphazardly created ecosystem that was my flat?

I lost some of my cleanup speed in the face of all this, but then refocused on why I was doing it: Tabs, the milky-skinned naive little doe who would look at a worldly, not-unstudly fellow like me and say, “Please, sir, I need someone to coach me on how to properly perform, as I have almost no experience and would prefer to learn from someone who can obviously teach me thoroughly and with great attention to detail.”

In the end it was simply easiest to huck it all out the back window onto the landlady’s herb garden. Fucking herbs are indestructible—it’s how they got to be herbs in the first place—nature loves nothing more than throwing a species a challenge. Technically, by nature’s standards, smothering Mrs. Radley’s herb garden was doing it a favour by speeding up evolution. In any event, that bloated pension-sucking hag was away in Penzance at a family funeral. Recent contact with death would likely make her appreciate herbal trauma all the more.

Ding-dong.

Fucking hell, seven already? Christ.

I buzzed the street door, shouting into the speaker, “Tabs, luv, come in.”

As I held the door open, I cast a glance behind me at the main room, which was actually looking okay without most of my defenestrated crap. Those monks might be on to something with minimalism and all that meditating and shit, but fuck monks, I was after pussy. “Fancy a drink, Tabs?” I said as soon as she was in the door.

“Do you have a white wine spritzer, maybe?”

White wine? Does she think I’m some bender who rises every morning in pursuit of winking boy cherry? “I’m out of white wine. Fancy a lager?”

“Lager? Oh, um … sure. I really just need to drop these off and explain one or two things.” She was looking at me funny—she was intrigued by me. I could tell. Hot dang! This might be the night!

Through the mercy of God I was able to find two actual Pilsner glasses that were clean—this could only add to my Jason Bourne–like air of urban cool. “Here you go, Tabs. Skol!” (Toasting: manly.)

“Oh, um … skol!”

Again, she was eyeing me in a way that meant more than her counting my blackheads. We clinked glasses. Soon we shall be one.

“Raymond—”

“Ray.”

“Ray … a bit of info for you. You’ll be flying through Los Angeles and passing through immigration, but that should be no problem. From there, you hop to Honolulu and then some other island in order to get to Kiribati. It’s a long slog—thirty-seven hours, all told.”

“Lovely sunsets there, I bet.”

“Huh? Oh, yes, I suppose so. In any event, I checked and you won’t require any vaccinations or a visa. The other camerapersons who’ve worked there suggested that you bring as many topical antifungals with you as possible.”

“Tabs, hang on a sec, luv. Exactly what show is it I’m working on?”

She gawped at me. “You don’t even know what show you’re working on?”

“It’s American, so it’s bound to be shit. It didn’t occur to me to ask.”

“It’s one of those reality shows where people stuck on a remote island shag each other over the course of a few weeks and then, I don’t know, turn into cannibals at the end when they get desperate for food.” She sipped her lager. “And then the last person standing gets a big bag of money. Here’s some information about the show, as well as your contracts. We’ll need to sign them right now.” Her forearms were twitching … her forearms connected to her shoulders connected to her magnificent rack. She spread out some papers, and I edged closer to her on the sofa to sign them. She smelled so clean, and her perfume was heaven: Fuck Factor Five or whatever overpriced gonk it is they’re pushing at office tarts this season.

She smiled at me—the Look! The Look! She was giving me the Look! “And you’ll be getting American union rates, which, after two months—”

Good God. “What? Two fucking months in the middle of nowhere?”

“But it’ll be so beautiful, and if it works out, it could be a long-running gig. Fiona worked very hard to get you this slot.”

“She did, did she?” Not a good sign.

“It’s not my place to discuss this, Raymond, but I think she might still be sweet on you.”

Dear God. Discussing an ex with a potential conquest? I was seeing my potential shag putting on little wings and flying out the window—no, more like putting on a little noose and attaching it to the rafters.

“Ray?” She was gathering up her things.

Now or never. I edged closer to her on the sofa. “Tabs, stay a bit longer. Finish your lager.”

“Umm. Well. Okay.”

“I know Fi can be a handful, Tabs.”

Her body language was neutral. “Fi’s a pretty good boss. She knows what she wants.”

That plus-sized Toby mug I once called my wife? “I’m sure she does.” I edged in one breath closer.

“Raymond …”

“Yes, Tabs?”

“We need to discuss your personal assistant. Billy told you that you get one, right?”

Ah, yes, my slave assistant. At this point, I, Raymond Gunt, mentally vacated the room, transported into the air by those magic words—my own personal assistant out in the middle of nowhere, free of any meaningful legal jurisdictions. I formed my own mental montage: clanking manacles, cracking whips and the sound of a key without mercy locking a cage.

“Ray? Ray? You there?”

“Sorry, luv. I was lost in thought. How do I choose my assistant?”

“It’s your call. You have …” she checked her cellphone, “… twenty-three hours to find one. The flight is at six o’clock tomorrow. All they need is a valid passport, and as Kiribati has no union restrictions, it’s easy-peasy. If you can’t find someone, one will be appointed to you.”

“Well, I don’t want that.” I scanned my mental Rolodex for potential assistants. A friend? None. Drinking buddies? Manifold but untrustworthy. Female anyone? Not fucking likely. Family members? Don’t ask. Passing acquaintances? Few.

“Ray, you’ll be flying business class to Honolulu via Los Angeles, and from there you’ll be on a corporate jet.”

“Would my personal assistant have to be in business class, too?”

“I suppose if you asked for it.”

Not fucking likely. Any assistant of mine would have to be the rearmost seat, right beside the lav and the puking Australians.

My mind was caught in a rare but wonderful joy loop. Fucking brilliant! Someone to legally beat with a stick! And then, in a burst of dazzling white light, I realized I had just the candidate.

Suddenly Tabs stood up and headed for the door.

“Tabs, wait!”

“I have spin class, Raymond. I have to go. Enjoy your trip.”

“Tabs …”

She stopped in her tracks and turned back to me, expectantly.

“I—I can’t help but think there’s maybe something special between us …”

“You noticed?” Tabs breathed.

“Well, yes—a man can’t avoid being aware of the needs of a beautiful young girl like yourself.” I came closer.

“Raymond, it’s … It’s …”

“Yes?” Zooming in for the kill.

“Well … you look so much like my father.”

“Oh?” Okay, not a total setback. Some birds have major father issues.

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”

“Really, luv? How long?”

“Eleven years now.”

“I’m sorry. How did he … pass^fn1?”

“Oh. He didn’t die. He’s in prison.”

That was a plot twist. “I’m sorry to hear that. What … what was his, um, situation?”

“He was a serial molester. The Tinsdale Fondler. Made the cover of the Daily Mail.”

“Right.”

“I’d best be going now, Raymond.”

“Yes, Tabs. Thank you for everything. Good night.”

Fucking hell.

Deprived of coitus, I daydreamed of slave ownership and got as shitfaced as I possibly could on a bottle of single malt I’d stolen from the bar at a Stella McCartney fragrance launch.

---

Survival is a popular reality TV game show produced in many countries throughout the world. On the show, contestants are isolated in the wilderness and compete for cash and other prizes. The format uses a progressive elimination, allowing the contestants to vote one another off one at a time, until only one final contestant remains and wins the title of “The Survivalist.”

You’re either into this show or you’re not. It’s binary.

---

fn1. A dreadful, hideous modern euphemism for dying.

04

Tracking down Neal the next morning wasn’t hard. I walked into the off-license, held up a banknote and said, “Twenty quid to whoever can help me find my long-lost brother. He’s got one good eye, dresses like Duran Duran and stinks of the worst kind of dog shit.”

“Oh, that’d be Neal,” squeaked a trainer-clad gran buying a stack of (what else) lotto tickets. “Lovely boy and a great singing voice. This week I think he’s in a box behind the stationer’s on Old Oak Common Lane.”

“Thank you very much.”

“What about my twenty quid?”

“Only once I find my prey, Sea Hag,” I said over my shoulder as I headed out into the brisk fall air. I could practically hear that mummified old soak composing an indignant letter to the Daily Mail, beginning I’m a pensioner and …, at which point a lifelong diet of greasy fish, scotch mints and whimsically flavoured crisps catches up to her and she falls dead at her kitchen table, not to be discovered for weeks.

Neal was indeed inside a Samsung cardboard box, eating a Subway sandwich, when I found him. He squinted up at me. “Right, it’s Cunty, it is.”

“It’s Gunt to you, Neal. These your digs, then?”

“I’ll not have you knocking this box. Samsung has emerged as one of the strongest competitors in the Darwinian world of home electronics.”

“For fuck’s sake, Neal, it’s a cardboard box.” I kicked the side for emphasis. It emitted a deep bass thump and didn’t rupture, which gave me pause. “I have to admit, if you’re going to live in a fucking box, this isn’t a bad one.”

“My point exactly.”

“In any event, no boxes for you anymore, mate, I’ve found you a job.”

“For Christ’s sake, Ray, why would I want a job? I’m living the life, aren’t I?”

“Look, you ungrateful prick, I’m not talking about picking up litter along some wretched motorway or latrine duty at Rikers. I’m talking about a South Pacific lagoon populated with gorgeous, needy sluts, fuelled by an endless supply of rum drinks.”

Neal’s lone good eye stared into mine. “If you’re one of those people who collects hobos so you can take them home and eat their brains or something like that, good on you, but I’d rather keep my brains.”

“It’s not that at all.”

“Sex with you and the missus, then? Afterwards smother me with a dry cleaning bag and toss me into some brambles off the M5?”

“Why are you being so fucking paranoid, you ungrateful walking toilet? I’m on the level.”

“Really? So tell me more.”

One thought crossed my mind—fuck: “Do you have a passport, Neal?”

“Passport? Fucking right, mate. Have a look.” From within his maggoty jacket he produced a valid British passport. “What’s the matter? You look surprised.”

He handed it to me and I opened it to the photo page, and there he was, milky-eyed, hair all dagged up with shit and mucus, wearing a shirt like he was an extra from Oliver! His expression was crazed.

“I always thought one day I’d like to go and see Dollywood, USA. You know, the singer and that. It’s a world-class resort destination. An uddersome songbird she is.”

Fuck me ragged with a concrete dildo—this was going to work. “Neal, here is what we’re going to do. You are going to gather your few wretched shreds of possessions and we are going to throw them into a trash bin and you will never see them again. After that we are going to walk to my flat, where I will give you a Stanley knife and you will cut as much of your hair off as possible …”

“Hold on. I told you, no sexy shit.”