Plague: A gripping suspense thriller about an incurable outbreak in Miami

him, poker-faced.
‘Please?’ said Manny.
Ivor nodded. ‘Okay. Tomorrow, it’s all sweetness and light. Do you want me to wear the wings, and the halo?’
Manny shook his head. ‘A smile should be quite enough.’
‘Okay.’
Without another word, Manny turned on his heel and made off towards the elevator. Ivor thoughtfully shut the door, and walked back into the sitting-room to fix himself another Scotch, and a brandy-soda for Esmeralda. He sat down with a heavy sigh, and wondered if all men of fifty-two felt as old and used-up as he did.
Esmeralda came back in, dressed in a long turquoise silk negligee. It had a wide, floppy collar, pleated sleeves, and yards and yards of floating train. She was a tall, pale girl, with an exquisitely beautiful face; the kind of haunting eyes that fin-de-siècle artists gave to their decadent dryads. Her hair was long and curly and very black, and she wore a thin turquoise headband. As she walked past the windows that made up two walls of the high, rectangular room, the pearly afternoon light shone through the silk of her negligee and gave her stepfather a shadowy outline of high pointed breasts and fiat stomach.
‘Bad day at Black Rock?’ she asked, picking up her drink, and sipping it.
He shrugged. ‘Courts were made for lawyers, not people. This is the fifth day, and so far we haven’t got any place at all.’
She sat down, in a cloud of turquoise, in the opposite chair.
‘Never mind. It will soon be over. You’ll see.’
He swallowed Scotch. ‘That’s why I love you. You’re such an optimist.’
There was a short silence. Esmeralda looked at him over the rim of her glass.
‘My optimism?’ she said. ‘Or my body?’
Ivor grunted in amusement. ‘I guess it’s both. Seems like, these days, I’ve had more of the former than the latter.’
‘Are you saying that man cannot live by optimism alone?’
‘I don’t want to force you. I don’t want to make you feel obliged.’
She gave him a calm, almost supercilious smile. ‘No man ever could. You know that.’
‘I hope so,’ he said, crossing his legs. ‘I mean, the gallery, and this place – you mustn’t feel you have to pay me back.’
She didn’t look up. She was twisting a gold and cornelian ring around her finger. ‘I feel grateful,’ she said. ‘You can never stop me feeling that. You know, I looked around the gallery today, and it’s so perfect, and it’s all because of you. You’re a very beautiful man, pa. I mean that.’
He pulled a face. ‘Your mother didn’t think so.’
‘My mother didn’t know shit from sauerkraut.’
He laughed, despite himself. ‘Don’t say that. That’s my former wife you’re talking about.’
Esmeralda stood up, and walked around the apartment with her bluey-green train floating around her. She wore gold rings on her toes, which Ivor always thought was incredibly erotic.
‘Do you think this place is too sombre?’ she asked.
He looked around. The sitting-room was decorated in creams and grape colors, with muted abstract paintings on the two inner walls. The furniture was all mirrors and maple.
‘It has to be sombre,’ he said. ‘When you pay $185,000 for seven rooms, and $1,100 a month carrying charges – that’s sombre.’
She came over and looked at him. Then she knelt down beside his chair, holding her brandy in one hand, and stroked the back of his wrist with one finger. He looked back at her, expressionless, seeking some kind of emotional flicker. She smiled.
‘I’d like to say thank you,’ she said softly.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘But I would.’
She took his hand, and stood up.
‘Come on,’ she said, tugging him.
He thought for a moment. Then, without a word, he laid down his drink, and followed her. They walked across the soft, silent carpet to the main bedroom.
On the wide, tapestry-covered bed, she sat him down and undressed him. First his shoes, then his short black silk socks. He started to loosen his own necktie, but she wouldn’t let him, and picked at the knot herself with her long dark-red fingernails.
Soon he was naked. His body was white and plump. There was gray wiry hair around his nipples, and his legs were thin and stick-like. He lay there, bald and old and unprepossessing, with his eyes closed. He knew what he looked like, but he also knew that when his eyes were shut, and the reality of age and unfitness were blocked out, there was a warm world of fantasy waiting that was more than nourished by Esmeralda’s arousing treats.
Like a great blue-green moth, she mounted him. Her hand sought his hardened penis, and guided it up between her wide-parted thighs. She eased herself back on him, and she sighed a distant, muted sigh, as strange as the cry of some satisfied bird. Ivor kept his eyes tight shut, and said nothing.
Time passed. The apartment was quiet, except for the smooth rustle of Esmeralda’s negligee, and their tense and excited breathing. Then Esmeralda started to tremble and shake. She sat in her stepfather’s lap with her hands clenched tight against her breasts, feeling the deep, dark ripples of her own orgasm.
They lay side by side in silence for nearly half-an-hour. Ivor felt himself drifting into a curious sleep, and awoke after five minutes with a headache, and a metallic taste in his mouth. He sat up, and reached for his black silk bathrobe.
Esmeralda, her negligee spread romantically around her, opened her dark eyes and grinned.
‘We’re a strange pair, you and I,’ she said, as Ivor walked across to the mirror.
He raised his head and examined her for a few moments in the glass. Somehow, she seemed less beautiful when her face was transposed by a mirror. But that didn’t make him love her any the less. He loved her more than any possession he had ever had. Almost as much as his work, and far more than her mother. To fuck a daughter after fucking her mother is like buying your first new car, after you’ve had second-hand models all your life.
He brushed his few curls flat, splashed