fact, fortified by copious amounts of gin, doubles consumed in double time, he was able to really take in his surroundings for the first time.
The plane was a converted '747 - Joseph Brown's airborne nerve centre and playground. The commercial seats had all been removed. The first class compartment had been turned into an intimate dining area, replete with the ubiquitous wet bar. The rear section was sound proofed. Terminals had been installed, so that even in flight, Joseph Brown had immediate and full access to every aspect of his worldwide business empire.
The whole of the middle section of the plane was one vast gaming room laid out for poker, craps, and baccarat. Video games had been installed along the walls, presumably as a mindless diversion for the high stakes players whom Joseph Brown was accustomed to entertaining.
The "piece de resistance" though was the upper lounge. To get there in style, Brown had ordered that the winding staircase be removed, to be replaced with a computer-directed elevator which responded to voice commands and which gave out all kinds of trivial data regarding flight path, weather conditions and the state of the body politic etc. The illusion of moving up and down hundreds of storeys instead of just one storey was created through a clever combination of sound, lights and moving external images. Brown dubbed his toy "The Star Trek Elevator."
"Come, take the grand tour. I'll show you the sexiest boudoir you've ever seen." Brown figured he could cajole Bourque out of his terror-induced funk. At this point, Bourque was too blottoed to resist or to even care. "What the fuck," he shouted silently to himself. "A man who can't walk out the door and glide at 40,000 feet is not fit to fly"
The elevator doors opened on Brown's command. "Take us to the bridal suite." He laughed raucously. The doors closed. After an indeterminate time, it seemed a long time, the doors opened onto the "Bridal Suite."
Bourque took a quick look and exclaimed in somewhat slurred tones, "What's this - a Fornicatorium?"
Brown laughed again, heartily. "I already told you, it's the bridal suite." It was all there; brass bed, king size, hot tub, various apparatus for carnal games, videos too, of course, and mirrors everywhere. "Wonderful," Bourque slurred, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some serious drinking to catch up on."
Having returned to his place by the wet bar, Bourque slumped down in an easy chair and commenced to sip rather than guzzle his gin, having already achieved a sufficiently advanced state of mellowness, to carry on drinking with somewhat greater decorum. From out of his severely clouded consciousness, a passage of "Holy Writ" sprung into his gin besotted mind uninvited. "Chose today whom thou will serve - God or Mammon."
"Well, well my oversized patron, you have made your choice," he chuckled to himself. "Yours is the Triune God - The Holy Trinity - not Father, Son and Holy Spirit; but Power, Games and Fornication, and here we are, participants in and or at least observers of this perverse religious experience, trapped in an airborne sarcophagus 40,000 feet above "Terra Firma." He laughed aloud this time; he laughed at the absurdity of his being there, of being drunk and of being still terrified.
Brown had seduced him intellectually. Why should not have bothered him? In fact, Jonathon Bourque should have felt elated. The tedium and triviality of his daily existence were to be replaced by high scholarly adventure.
Yet he was disturbed. Sure, he was terrified of flying, but that ordeal would last for five or six hours at the most. fortified by copious supplies of booze, he could get through it. Something else was worrying him. He was unable to put a name to it.
Following his encounter with Brown at the University, and the astounding revelation resident in the final pictogram, Bourque returned to his off-campus flat to hastily pack for the flight to Mexico City the next morning. Brown had made all the travel arrangements in advance, providing Bourque with the requisite travel documents including a Mexican work permit.
There wasn't much more for Bourque to do. He didn't have an extensive wardrobe from which to choose. So he tossed into his beaten up garment bag underwear, a couple of shirts, four pairs of socks (mismatched), an extra pair of slacks and sundries.
Bourque occupied a flat on the second floor of a three storey townhouse, circa 1850.
Charitably, the place might well be described as seedy.
Unlike the trendy, sand-blasted yuppie havens on neighbouring streets with their skylights, polished marble foyers and step up Roman tubs with glass block shower stalls, the grouping of town homes in which Bourque's rooms were situated had scarcely seen any renovations since their construction over one hundred years before. The exterior bricks were pitted and blackened from the cumulative effects of wind, rain and soot.
It would appear that the only thing holding the ancient window frames in place were layer upon layer of thickish paint, spattered on over the years by the direction of the landlords. The object was to spruce up the appearance of the units without incurring any great expense. Under the paint, much of the original wood had rotted through. At least Bourque had his own private toilet and shower. The pipes leaked only occasionally, and the roof was kept in good repair.
The current landlord was the Oxford Common Council. Bourque had been given the opportunity to purchase his flat recently, at a fair market value as a part of the new Conservative Government's grand scheme to create tiny, acquisitive capitalists from among the tenant masses of England. However, Bourque had neither the down payment nor the inclination to take on such a responsibility. Bourque's own rooms were monkishly austere - plain box spring mattress, a dresser of particle board with pine veneer which was chipped all over from having been too often moved.
An oversized, well worn persian rug covered the bulk of the living room and assisted somewhat in muffling the incessant squeak in the groaning floor boards. The rug had been inherited from the previous tenant, a certain Sebastian Stride, a visiting fellow from Cambridge and Leeds and who had lectured at the Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies.
Bourque's only luxury was his personal library. Hundreds of scholarly tomes; many of them rare; almost all of them extrapolating upon arcane and abstruse subject matter. A small inheritance from his parents had allowed him to begin his collection. Whatever he could scrape together from his teaching salary went toward augmenting his library. While the books and treatises were strewn all over the apartment in an haphazard manner, Bourque knew precisely where each one was.
He was going to miss his little cell and his library of academic obscurities. But that was not why he was so uneasy.
It would be only natural to be apprehensive when being uprooted from familiar surroundings or when setting out on a new endeavour.
Psychologists tell us that changing one's residence or taking up new employment rank just behind bereavement and divorce in their stressful effect on the human psyche.
Bourque thought about that. It couldn't explain his present state of unease. His life at Oxford was one of drudgery and ennui. Whatever stress might be caused by flying off to Mexico with Joseph Brown had to be more than offset by his relief at getting out from under his tedious burden.
Another thought occurred to him. His precipitate departure for Mexico City would require that he forego the singular honour of having been asked to sing the two baritone solo vignettes from Maurice Durufle's requiem. The work, one of the masterpieces of modern liturgical musical literature, was to be performed in Salisbury cathedral by the combined choirs and orchestras of Balliol and Magdalene Colleges. The guest conductor was to be the distinguished Septuagenarian Sir Geoffrey Greymantle, Director of the Academy of Ancient Music.
The choice of Bourque as soloist was in no way a testimony to his voice per se, but rather that his impeccable musicianship, and the reedy white tonality of his voice made both his sound and his interpretation ideal for the Medieval Gregorian motifs upon which the work was based.
Yet, the loss of an anticipatory musical triumph could hardly explain the intensity of his present unease.
250 If not the fear of flying, the trauma of being uprooted, the strain of the assignment itself, or the fear of failure, perhaps - then what was churning his bowels?
Maybe it was the overweening presence of Joseph Brown himself