Neverwhere

«La,» he said, then stretched his rouged lips wide, in a ghastly parody of a smile.
The Fop gestured. Ruislip staggered, and clutched his stomach.
The Fop With No Name smirked outrageously, waggled his fingers, and blew kisses to several spectators. Ruislip stared angrily at the Fop, redoubling his mental assault. Blood began to drip from the Fop’s lips. His left eye started to swell. He staggered. The audience muttered appreciatively.
«It’s not as impressive as it looks,» whispered the marquis to Door.
The Fop With No Name stumbled, suddenly, going onto his knees, as if someone were forcing him down, and fell, awkwardly, to the floor. Then he jerked, as if someone had just kicked him, hard, in the stomach. Ruislip looked triumphant. The spectators clapped, politely. The Fop writhed and spat blood onto the sawdust on the floor of Harrods’ Fish and Meat Hall. He was dragged off into the corner by some friends, and was violently sick.
«Next,» said the marquis.
The next would-be bodyguard was again thinner than Ruislip (being about the size of two and a half fops, carrying but a single suitcase filled with lard between them). He was covered in tattoos and dressed in clothes that looked like they had been stitched together from old car seats and rubber mats. He was shaven-headed, and he sneered at the world through rotten teeth. «I’m Varney,» he said, and he hawked, and spat green on the sawdust. He walked into the ring.
«When you’re ready, gentlemen,» said the marquis.
Ruislip stamped his bare feet on the floor, sumo-like, one-two, one-two, and commenced to stare hard at Varney. A small cut opened on Varney’s forehead, and blood began to drip from it into one eye. Varney ignored it; and instead appeared to be concentrating on his right arm. He pulled his arm up slowly, like a man fighting a great deal of pressure. Then he slammed his fist into Ruislip’s nose, which began to spurt blood. Ruislip drew one long, horrible breath, and hit the ground with the sound of half a ton of wet liver being dropped into a bathtub. Varney giggled.
Ruislip slowly pulled himself back to his feet blood from his nose soaking his mouth and chest, dripping onto the sawdust. Varney wiped the blood from his forehead and bared his ruined mouth at the world in an appalling grin. «Come on,» he said. «Fat bastard. Hit me again.»
«That one’s promising,» muttered the marquis.
Door raised an eyebrow. «He doesn’t look very nice.»
«Nice in a bodyguard,» lectured the marquis, «is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters. He looks dangerous .» There was a murmur of appreciation, then, as Varney did something rather fast and painful to Ruislip, something that involved the sudden connection of Varney’s leather-bound foot and Ruislip’s testicles. The murmur was the kind of restrained and deeply unenthusiastic applause one normally only hears in England on sleepy sunny Sunday afternoons, at village cricket matches. The marquis clapped politely with the rest of them. «Very good, sir,» he said.
Varney looked at Door, and he winked at her, almost proprietarily, before he returned his attention to Ruislip. Door shivered.
Richard heard the clapping and walked toward it.
Five almost identically dressed, pale young women walked past him. They wore long dresses made of velvet, each dress as dark as night, one each of dark green, dark chocolate, royal blue, dark blood, and pure black. Each woman had black hair and wore silver jewelry; each was perfectly coifed, perfectly made up. They moved silently: Richard was aware only of a swish of heavy velvet as they went past, a swish that sounded almost like a sigh. The last of the women, the one dressed in utter black, the palest and the most beautiful, smiled at Richard. He smiled back at her, warily. Then he walked on toward the audition.
It was being held in the Fish and Meat Hall, on the open area of floor beneath Harrods’ fish sculpture. The audience had their back to him, were standing two or three people deep. Richard wondered if he would easily be able to find Door and the marquis: and then the crowd parted, and he saw them both, sitting on the glass top of the smoked-salmon counter. He opened his mouth to shout out Door’s name; and as he did so, he realized why the crowd had parted, as an enormous dreadlocked man, naked but for a green, yellow, and red cloth wrapped like a diaper around his middle, came catapulting through the crowd, as if tossed by a giant, landing squarely on top of him.
«Richard?» she said.
He opened his eyes. The face swam in and out of focus. Fire opal-colored eyes, peering into his, from a pale, elfin face.
«Door?» he said.
She looked furious; she looked beyond