My mouth felt like I’d eaten a stick of paste, and tasted about as compelling. My head throbbed. My stomach churned. I was clammy and cold, which I quickly realized was because I was naked other than a sheet covering my ankles. And some guy’s leg was thrown over mine.His breathing was slow, heavy, rhythmic; whoever he was, he was asleep. I pried open my eyes and saw a very posh hotel room that a cyclone of hedonism had torn to bits. The carcasses of the minibar blanketed the floor alongside heavy glass ashtrays full of cigarette stubs and ashes. Clothes dangled from anything they could; a deck of cards lay scattered as if someone had hurled it up into the air. A trail of powder led to the suite’s second room, where I could see a slumbering couple I didn’t recognize. Carefully, so as not to stir him, I lifted my head and looked my mystery companion in the face.It was Clive.* * *New Year’s Eve on Wayne Hanson’s island reawakened a sleeping beast in me that would have given my selective biographer Aurelia Maupassant a stroke.
