The Folded Man Read Online Free

pinched. Watches girls slapped and spat on. Backsides spread and hairy hands spreading.
    A small bell rings – a corner shop’s door chime. Six girls walk out, begin to parade and twirl – a pageant inverted. In a line, they wiggle hips and push their breasts together. They push out their tongues and lick their bright white teeth.
    Pink bikinis, spotted knickers, undersized bra cups. Long fingernails over gussets. They are numbered with lipstick on their bellies. One, two, three, four, five, six.
    The tattooed man stands up and storms from The Cat Flap. Another fucking place filled with sand-niggers, he sneers, to Mel, to Brian, to the girls.
    Numb, nobody really bats an eyelid.
    Oi, goes Mel. Cassie’s waiting.
    Brian browses. Brian window-shops. Brian umms and ahhs.
    Brian decides he likes the girl with the tattoo – a set of paw-prints that run from hip to navel. He wonders how many fingers have walked that path across her stomach, and whether that was the point. She is number four. She’s just this side of five-foot-five. Tall enough for anyone by any standard.
    A perfect height for Brian.
    Number four has dark hair. Downy cheeks. Fuzz on her belly –
    This one, he points, the vomit crawling to his mouth, his eyes starting to water. Number four.
    She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t pout, doesn’t anything.
    He imagines trying to work out where he ends and she begins.
    Cassie! shouts Mel, their manager. His host for the evening.
    Cassie comes to the door, hair up. She has creamy skin and bruised shoulders.
    You and Celeste, Mel says. She nods to number four and then to Brian. And this gentleman.
    Brian knows they don’t even pretend here. No Jacuzzis, saunas or steam rooms. No lockers for work trousers; nice massages for hard workers.
    Cassie recognises him. She kind of pauses, then winks. She says to Celeste, you’ll do a good scene with me, won’t you love? Ninety for starters is it? Oh, he’ll pay more. She grins at the room. At her girls. Girls one to six.
    I think this one likes to watch. Don’t you love?
    And all the girls are looking at Brian. All the girls are giggling and ganging up.
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    In the room, on the bed, Celeste and Cassie kiss awkwardly. Brian watches, a metre away, at the foot of the bed. They’ve wheeled him in and wobbled their hips. They took his hat and ignored his hair.
    The girls kiss some more. The girls undo each other’s bras. The girls remove each other’s stockings. The girls kiss each other’s nipples. The girls writhe and stroke and slap. The girls push fingers into each other. The girls pretend to come.
    The girls stop.
    The girls talk in their mothers’ language. In Urdu. The girls giggle and look sidelong at Brian.
    Celeste pushes her round brown breasts in Brian’s face. The fuzz against his chest. Cassie pulls at his blanket, exposes his hand, pulls at his joggers and his underpants. All that polyester and precome.
    Together, holding his arms back, they pull his hard penis loose. They spit on it. Cassie runs behind and pushes the chair to the bed, holding Brian’s hands tight behind his head.
    Celeste kneels forward onto all fours, her backside dangling from the edge of the bed, her hands pulling herself open. Cassie pushes Brian closer in his chair, howling with laughter. She bends and spits on him again. Bends and puts him in her mouth. A condom now, as if from nowhere, tight at the base, trapping hairs. But Brian’s gone limp.
    Brian goes weak.
    The girls giggle some more. The girls, they pull Brian’s joggers off.
    The girls scream to high bloody heaven, covering themselves.
    This is sex. Between grubby walls and dirty sheets. Between the bookies and the bus home.
    This is sex. That bad, bad rumour.
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    The taxi driver’s called Tariq. He finds Brian sprawled on the road, wheelchair tipped on its side, blanket torn. He finds Brian half-conscious and muttering, sick down his face, his