Chapter Six - Drink to get drunk

"Make yourself at home," said Robbie, gesturing around him with the whiskey bottle. "But don't sit in the furry chair. Only I sit in the furry chair. And for goodness sake, don't touch anything." He rummaged briefly in a cupboard. "I don't seem to have any clean glasses. Looks like we're drinking out of the bottle." He raised it in her direction. "Here's to you, Barbie girl. You finally achieved what I never managed to in ten years of trying. You got Sportacus banished from Lazytown for ever." He took a drink, and held the bottle out to her.

"I - what do you mean - it was your fault, Robbie, not mine - "

"Oh, yes, of course it was!" laughed Robbie. "Now I remember. I spent years flirting and dangling after him, until he finally stopped seeing me as one of those little kids whose shoelaces he used to help tie and noticed I was all grown up at last, and took me into his bed - no doubt after an endless amount of agonised hesitation over whether he was taking advantage of you." He smiled nastily as he saw her wince. "Then my aunt had a huge conniption about the big, bad, sexy, well-muscled, much older man fooling around with her little girl, and then my uncle banished him! You're right, I apologise. My bad. Have a drink."

Completely stunned, Stephanie took a large, incautious drink.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asked, when she had finished choking and got her breath back.

"Better? What kind of person do you think I am? No, of course it doesn't make you feel better. It makes you feel drunk, Barbie girl. It numbs the pain of loss, you'll find; temporarily, of course, but then you can always buy more." He took the bottle back from her.

"Now wait just a minute!" she shouted, remembering the pure rage that had driven her here. "If you hadn't sent them my uncle those photographs - "

"Ah, yes, the photographs. My God, you should have seen the look on your face, although he took it annoyingly in his stride…well, I admit they probably didn't exactly improve matters, but then really, you'd both already made things so disastrously bad for yourselves that I don't think I did much more than pop the cherry on the top." He smiled mirthlessly. "No pun intended, although come to think of it, it is rather a good one." He looked at her over the top of the whiskey bottle. "So, tell me, darling, because I'm dying to hear - just how were you and that good-hearted dimwit going to explain it to them?"

She could feel the whiskey spreading warmth and weakness through her limbs, and sat down on the podium beside Robbie. All the fight was going out of her.

"We were going to tell them the truth," she said sadly. "We were going to tell them we loved each other. We did tell them, but - "

"But she wouldn't listen, and he fell meekly into line behind the force of her maternal wrath," Robbie finished for her, and passed her the bottle. "Love, hmm? How completely saccharine and dull of you both. Did he actually tell you that, little girl, or did you just innocently presume that no-one would ever think of peeling those little white cotton panties off you just for the sheer fun of it?"

She took another swig from the bottle. This time she was prepared for the burn.

"He told me," she said softly.

"Bet he wouldn't let you say it back, though, would he?" said Robbie with completely unexpected acuteness. "My, my, my, Sportacus, how well I know you and your tiresome, self-sacrificing - "

"What? No, he wouldn't, but how - how did you know - "

"I know, my dear," said Robbie, "because I am infinitely older, wiser and better-travelled than you are - to say nothing of better-dressed - and I don't spend every minute of my day hitting balls with sticks or teaching talentless children to dance badly. He was protecting you, my sweet, although personally I can't imagine why he bothered. It's a terrible thing, to go back on your sworn word to one of the Haldufolk. As the mayor is no doubt beginning to discover. Drink up. And pass it on when you've done."

She stared at him.

"You were in love with him, too," she said suddenly. "I saw the way you looked at him…that's why you wanted him out of town, isn't it? You were jealous because he wanted me and not you, so you ruined it for us…"

"What a starry-eyed, naive little brat you are," he said irritably. "No, I wasn't in love with him. I found him completely irritating, if you want to know. Although I will admit if he'd ever turned up on my doorstep, all lost and lonely and begging to be taken in, I wouldn't have turned him out into the cold night - just as long as he kept his mouth shut while I had my wicked way with him. Sadly, it never worked out…"

"Then how do you know so much about him?"

He looked thoughtfully down at her for a long time.

"I'll make a deal with you," he said finally. "If you can drink three fingers out of that bottle without being sick, I'll show you something that will absolutely blow your mind, and finally convince you that we're actually on the same side after all."

She hesitated. "Your fingers or my fingers?"

"Ahh, now you're beginning to get the idea how the game is played. Okay, let's say…your fingers, since you're clearly such an amateur at this whole dancing-with-the-devil thing."

She forced it down.

"Right," she said breathlessly, "show me."

Robbie uncoiled himself from the podium and sauntered slowly over to a cupboard.

"Have you seen a newspaper recently, by the way?" he asked over his shoulder. "Or have you spent every minute since the mayor suddenly found his cojones and got rid of your One True Love in crying and tearing your hair out? That ridiculous monorail project is already starting to come apart at the seams, I notice. One man nearly crushed to death underneath the arm of a crane that slipped for no reason, one man trapped by a rock-fall and having to be dug out…I imagine the mayor is feeling the heat right about now. Do you think he's regretting his hasty decision yet? Or has the penny not yet dropped?"

Hazily, she remembered Sportacus desperately trying to tell her uncle something. Every action has consequences.

"But he wouldn't," she said rather incoherently. "He just wouldn't!"

"No, he wouldn't," agreed Robbie, weaving his way back with something in his hand. "Not on purpose. Not even to get revenge on the people who took him away from the love of his life. Hell, I doubt if he has it in him to swat a mosquito. But unfortunately for your uncle, it doesn't work like that. It's just one of those rather annoying natural laws, you see. You drop a plate of cake, it falls to the ground - or more probably onto your foot. You drink three fingers of whiskey, you begin to lose your inhibitions and become much more amusing to talk to. You break a promise to the Haldufolk, and the most monumental bad luck will pursue you relentlessly for the rest of your life. And since he took the decision on behalf of the town - well, there it is." He sat down beside Stephanie and looked speculatively at her delicate profile. "That really is rather a good haircut, by the way. Makes you look like Peter Pan. Although no doubt you only did it because you couldn't bear the memory of him running his fingers through it…" He smiled as he saw her eyes darken with pain. "People in love are so predictable. Have another drink."

"And what would you know about people in love, Robbie?" she asked, with spirit.

"You know," he said meditatively, "it's rather good fun drinking with someone else for a change. We should do it more often….what do I know about love? I know that it's at the root of most of the problems of this world, my dear little protégé. I suppose you know that if he had let you pour out your girlish little heart to him, you'd have been free to go with him? He probably just couldn't believe that you would ever choose him over everything else...Love again, you see. If he'd been looking at you straight he'd just have seen a rather ordinary girl with an embarrassingly large crush on him, and known you'd follow him to the ends of the earth if he crooked his little finger in your direction."

"Why are you telling me this?" she wailed.

He laughed. "Barbie, bad people generally have very simple motives. Think hard. I'm sure the answer will occur to you. Now, I believe I was on the point of rearranging your world view for ever. Don't spill anything on it, or I'll be forced to get angry, which is bad for my blood pressure..." He held something out to her.

She looked down at a black leather-bound album with faded gold embossing on the cover: Lazytown High School Year Book. Curiously, she opened it. It fell open at a page towards the back.

The High School had barely changed since the photograph was taken. She recognised the back steps leading down to the sports field where she and the gang had loved to hang out in the warm summer sunshine. Leaning elegantly against the railings was a boy of around eighteen. He was long, lean, louche, joli-laid, his coal-black hair slicked back from his face, a cigarette in a long holder balanced elegantly between slim fingers.

Caught in the act of jumping exuberantly down from the top step was a lovely, laughing girl with blue eyes and bright yellow curls bouncing around her face. She was small, curvy and looked ready to burst out of her skin, mouth-watering and luscious, like a perfectly ripe peach. Her cheerleader's skirt flipped and swirled around her thighs as she leapt into space.

Standing on the very top step, arms folded, was an athletic-looking man dressed in green tracksuit bottoms and a white t-shirt, a green waistcoat fastened over his chest with a crystal, emblazoned with a "9". He was smiling indulgently at the two of them. The caption under the photograph read: "The two Lazytowners most likely to make Broadway, spending some quality time with the Town Hero."

"That's you, isn't it," she said, pointing at the boy. "And who's the girl?"

"Can't you see it? Well, she has put on a bit of weight since then, of course. And then the hair…I always said her kind of looks would never last. But in her day, she was quite the toast of the town..."

"Why, it's Auntie Bessie," said Stephanie, staring.

"And at last she sees it! Yes, that pretty little scrap of fluff there grew up to be your dear old dragon of an aunt. Amazing, isn't it, how time takes its toll? But at the time, we were actually rather good friends."

"You and Auntie Bessie?"

"We shared a common dream, my dear. The stage! And of course, I'm sure even you can see the advantages, to one of my persuasion, of having a very visible crush on the school's most popular girl - to save those awkward little conversations with one's parents, for example. Robbie, when are you going to meet a nice girl and bring her home so we can meet her? So much easier to claim I was saving myself for the delectable Miss Busybody...Please, do take that disapproving look off your face and stop thinking I should have just been true to myself. If you even think about saying the words out loud I may have to hit you over the head with this bottle. Are you gay? Is it twenty years ago? Do you know what it was like? I thought not."

Stephanie lowered her eyes.

"And who's that standing behind you?"

He sighed theatrically. "I know most dancers don't have too much need for the exciting world of numbers bigger than eight, but surely you can work it out…Number Nine. Comes just before "ten", I believe you'll find. The Hero who preceded your beloved Sportacus. Not bad-looking, I'm sure you'll agree, although of course they never are. And considerably more fun than that lily-white Sir Galahad they eventually sent to replace him. Pass the whiskey."

They drank in silence for a while. Stephanie could feel her ears singing with dizziness. Robbie was right about one thing, she thought hazily; it did definitely make you feel numb. She looked at the picture again.

"So which one of you did he - ?" asked Stephanie suddenly.

Robbie laughed.

"You're really much brighter now the whiskey's loosened you up a bit. Now you're starting to think along the right lines…it was both of us, my dear, one way and another. He was fucking me for all of one summer, and then Bessie decided she was going to try him on for size too, so we kind of overlapped for a short while…oh, don't give me that look, Barbie. If you can do it, I can certainly talk about it."

"It's a completely disgusting way to talk about it."

"But that's how it was, my dear. He wasn't making love to me; it was just fucking. Simple, uncomplicated, sweaty and completely fabulous. Whenever and wherever we could find the opportunity. Every single way we could think of."

"And then he fell in love with Auntie Bessie?"

"Oh, please…he didn't love her either. She just went after him like a heat-seeking missile. He hadn't got a chance of turning her down…she had all the boys wrapped around her little finger. All the straight ones, anyway. I can't say I could really see the appeal myself, but then it would be such a dull world if we all wanted the same thing…"

"But you did both want the same thing," said Stephanie, trying not to slur her words. "Didn't you mind sharing him? Weren't you jealous?"

"It was what there was," said Robbie rather shortly, and drank.

"That's very sad," said Stephanie after a while. He turned and glared at her.

"You just can't get past what happened to you, can you? Just get used to it, Barbie; I'm not you. I didn't love him. He didn't love me. We were just having fun; the kind of fun you've been so foolishly missing out on all these years. Let me tell you how it was…"

Leaning against the wall of the high school, alone and bored out of his mind, smoking the millionth cigarette of the day, fingering the transparent wrap of white powder that he had scored on his trip into Smallville. Wondering if the buzz would be worth the indecent amounts of money it had cost. Then someone put a fatherly hand on his shoulder and said, "You know, you really shouldn't smoke, Robbie…it's very bad for your heart."

"Not as bad as this is going to be," Robbie replied, letting the wrap dangle between his fingers, trying to shock.

"Now that really is a bad idea," he replied gently, taking it away and examining it. "Whatever the problem is, I don't think you're going to find the answer in there. What is it? Cocaine?"

"Ha! No. Just a dab of speed."

"Well, I still don't think it's going to help you feel better. Why don't you tell me what the trouble is?"

"I think you know what the trouble is," said Robbie savagely.

He sighed. "Why do you fight your own nature like this, Robbie? Why do you insist on trying to destroy yourself? There's nothing to be ashamed of in who you are."

"Easy for you to say."

He hesitated a moment, then smiled. "Then why don't you let me show you instead…" He laid his mouth over Robbie's.

Robbie looked at him in amazement. "You too? And all this time you never said?"

He laughed. "Let's just say that I'm...open to persuasion. In either direction."

They kissed again, then he laid a warning finger across Robbie's mouth.

"Now, before we go any further, I need you to understand something…this is just for fun, okay? Just to prove to you that you don't need to hate your body so much you feel compelled to fill it with drugs and nicotine. When you're ready to leave Lazytown and follow your dreams, that will be absolutely fine with me. Are you happy with that, Robbie?"

Robbie smiled.

"Love is for idiots," he said lightly. "Let's have some fun."

"And he would have been quite happy to have a bit of hot, sticky, uncomplicated fun with Bessie, too," Robbie continued, "since that was what she seemed to want from him. It would have been fine if she'd had the plain common sense to realise that. But no, instead she had to go and convince herself that it all meant something, just because she'd got it into her head that he felt the same way she did…"

"But that wasn't fair," said Stephanie. "He should have realised how she felt, he should have known…"

Robbie shrugged. "Maybe he should, but the fact is that he didn't. How was he supposed to guess? Suddenly she was all over him, making it perfectly clear it was all there on a plate for him…" He drank moodily from the bottle. "I'll give him some credit; he was genuinely quite startled when he found out she was a virgin. I remember him telling me all about it afterwards…"

"Oh, that's horrible!" exclaimed Stephanie, revolted.

"Really? So you didn't exchange any confidences with Sportacus, then? No little intimate secrets shared? No, don't tell me, I don't think I could stand to hear about it. Ugh. Actually, he told me about it because he was worried. He wasn't really a bad person, you know. He just liked us both, and he never really knew how to say no. Anyway, that was the night it all fell apart…"

Robbie welcomed him with a warm embrace, but he pushed him gently away. So instead he lit a cigarette and lay on the bed, watching his lover through the coils of smoke.

"I think I've done something awful," he said, pacing the floor.

Robbie raised a languid eyebrow.

"Really? I find that rather hard to believe. Do tell me…you were in such a hurry to get here you forgot to get someone's ball down from the roof?"

"Robbie, I'm serious. Your friend, Bessie…she was waiting for me, just outside my airship, she kissed me and whispered that she'd always wanted to see inside. She caught me by surprise, I couldn't say no…"

(Robbie had to look away.)

"And then, afterwards, she looked up at me with these huge, innocent blue eyes and told me it was her first time, and the look in her eyes…! I swear, Robbie, I wouldn't have dreamed of laying a finger on her if I'd known…"

"So what did you say to her?" he asked, trying to hide his jealousy.

"I told her that I was flattered she chose me to practice on, but she really needed to be with someone more suitable, and left. I think I really hurt her feelings." He continued to pace the room. "What can I say to her to make it right?"

Robbie uncoiled himself from the bed, and put his arms around his lover.

"Come here," he drawled, stubbing the cigarette out on the head of his bed. "I'll take that panicked look off your face. She'll be fine in the morning. I don't know why you bothered with her when you could have been here with me…"

"Robbie," he said gently, stroking his face, "we both know there's nothing serious going on here. But when I'm with you, I'm with you. You know that."

"Be with me, then," murmured Robbie, and after that neither of them said anything for a long time, and it was hot and rough and hard and exciting, just as it always was. Wrapped around each other on the bed, they suddenly heard a scream from the door, and they turned around to see that Bessie was standing in the doorway, her face white and shocked.

"Bessie, sweetheart…" he sat up and looked at her imploringly.

"How could you?" she whispered. "What kind of man are you?"

"Bessie, come on. Is this really so wrong? Who's getting hurt? I thought you just wanted some fun, if you thought it meant more then I am so, so sorry, I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, but - "

"And Robbie…how could you? What are you doing with him, it's -" her face hardened. "You make me feel sick, both of you. Do you hear me? Absolutely sick. It's disgusting and wrong and dirty and I am going to finish you both!" She turned and ran from the room.

"So that was the end of that," concluded Robbie. She went to see the Mayor the next day and told him she'd caught us in the act, and my dear, the fuss!" He took another swig from the bottle, and Stephanie saw that his hand was shaking. "None of them ever found out about him and Bessie, of course, and they hushed up the fact that he'd been caught buggering one of the high-schoolers…good God, the look on your face! You really are a snow-white little innocent, aren't you?" His eyes wandered again to the pure, tender line of her neck. "Hmmm. I don't suppose you've loosened up enough to consider…" he stroked the back of her neck with his long, lazy fingers. Stephanie shivered.

"What's the matter…are you afraid you might find you like it? I promise he'll never find out. Sex without love, my dear, is definitely one of the wickedest pleasures life has to offer…you should try it. I guarantee I can show you things Sportacus has never even dreamed of…" He bent down and nipped gently at her skin with his teeth. "How about it, Barbie girl? Just two old friends cheering each other up on a dull night…"

"I thought you were gay," said Stephanie, wriggling out of reach.

"Well, yes, usually…but for you with that hair-cut, I'll make an exception. People are rarely one hundred per cent anything, Barbie. Sure I can't tempt you? Pity." He took his hand away from her thigh, and sighed.

"So, anyway, that was the end of Lazytown. Hero banished, no-one to keep the kiddies safe any more, so that was the end to all the good-clean-fun, fresh-air-and-jollity rubbish that Lazytown was so famous for. After all, let's face it, as locations go it's hardly a winner, is it? Without Number Nine keeping everyone safe and honest, it was just another small town in the middle of nowhere. And then of course the accidents began, and everyone started moving out, and the few who didn't have the gumption to leave just stayed in their houses…oh, it was magnificent, Barbie, exactly what they all deserved for the way they behaved. Bessie went to Broadway to try and make it on the stage, got a few little bit parts, slept around a bit, discovered the demon drink, came home discouraged, drank a whole lot more…oh, don't tell me you didn't know that! Have you actually been living here with the rest of us all these years, or did I just imagine it?"

"Auntie Bessie does not drink," said Stephanie firmly. "…Oh." She thought about Bessie's long afternoons in the garden, precariously juggling glasses of iced tea while Milford pretended to cut the hedge and watched anxiously over her. "Well, all right. Maybe she does."

"Did," said Robbie scrupulously, holding up an elegant hand. "The Mayor finally managed to dry her out. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have absolute power. He looks like an idiot, your uncle, but he managed to achieve quite a lot in his bumbling way, especially considering he was only appointed because the previous incumbent skipped town with his pretty wife when it all started to fall apart…it took him ten years, but he managed to charm the Haldufolk into sending another Hero. Then you came bouncing into town, all perky and breathless, and it all started to come back to life again. And then the previous Mayor died and the curse finally faded away, and suddenly the whole place was buzzing…I was about ready to kill you both, but fortunately you managed to do the one thing Bessie couldn't stand to watch…now…let's talk about something much more interesting. Let's talk about how you're going to get your revenge."

Stephanie looked at him blankly. She had come down filled with a consuming rage, wanting to hurt everyone around her who had hurt her so badly. To her total shock, she found that it had vanished into the air.

"Come on, Barbie…don't pussy out on me. Bessie ruined my life, and her own, and now she's managed to ruin yours too. With the help of your uncle, of course. That man you were so besotted with, he's thousands of miles away now, you'll never see him again. You've already made such a fabulous start - "

"What?"

"Sulking in your room for days on end, refusing to see or speak to anyone, missing the start of college, then tearing over here to consort with the town Bad Man, and drinking yourself practically into a coma…oh, I imagine they're about at the end of their tether already. Feels good to spread the pain around a bit, doesn't it?"

"But - they didn't mean any harm," said Stephanie, dazed with whiskey and understanding. "Auntie Bessie really was trying to save me. She loves me, she didn't want me to get hurt the way she way was hurt…"

"Oh, she means well," said Robbie sarcastically, "but why would that matter? Will her meaning well keep you warm at night? Don't be so pathetic…This town is going to fall apart without Sportacus to keep it together, and you can make Milford and Bessie's life an absolute misery."

"I don't want to make them miserable," she said with sudden conviction. "I want to be the woman he fell in love with. Even if I can never see him again."

Robbie pretended to stick his fingers down his throat.

"In a minute you'll be announcing cheerfully that There's always a way," he groaned. "God preserve me from optimistic idiots…if you had the courage to do it, you'd already be gone. But no-one ever gets past the waterfall."

Stephanie stared at him.

"What do you mean?" she asked at last.

Robbie looked at her bemused face, then began to laugh, louder and harder than she had ever seen anyone laugh in her life.

"What do I mean?" he repeated, laughing and laughing. "What do I mean? Stephanie Anne Milford, don't you even know who you are?"

She shook her head in bewilderment.

"Get out of here," he said, still laughing. "You're a complete disappointment as a budding supervillain, Stephanie, but I'll forgive you because you amused me so much. You need to look into your family history, little girl, then you'll know why. Go on, take your bag and leave."

Trying not to stagger too visibly, Stephanie took her bag from his outstretched hand. For a moment, their eyes met.

"Robbie," whispered Stephanie. "Why did you tell me all of this? What has this whole evening been about? You're - you're not actually trying to help me, are you?"

"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer," he drawled, flapping a hand at her. "Go away. I'm tired. Leave me in peace and stop asking tiresome questions."

"You know," she said thoughtfully, "you look just like Noel Coward in that dressing-gown." And she climbed up the stairs, stumbling a little as she went.

Later, Trixie held Stephanie's head tenderly as Stephanie threw up and up and up in her bathroom, trying to do it quietly so as not to disturb Trixie's parents.

"What's this, Pinkie?" she asked curiously, picking up a photograph that had fallen out of Stephanie's bag. "Oh…."

Stephanie wiped her clammy face with a towel and looked over Trixie's shoulder.

The couple were pressed tightly together in a too-small bed, his face against the nape of her neck, his arm protectively curled around her slim, delicate body. Her long, long, impossibly pink hair streamed over both of them; their faces were serene in the sunlight, like angels.

"That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life," said Trixie softly.

Stephanie looked in silence for a while.

"Yes," she said finally, almost to herself. "That's how it was."

She looked at it a moment longer, then tucked it carefully away in her bag. "I think I know what I need to do…I need to go to Boston tomorrow, Trixie; I'm going to need some help from Pixel. Will you come with me?"