Money: A Suicide Note (7 page)

I rang Fielding at the Carraway.

'Lorne wants reassuring,' he told me.

'Yeah, well you reassure him for a while. I'm going home.'

'Slick, so soon!'

'I'll be back. I got to sort some things out.'

'What's the problem? Women or money?'

'Both.'

'It's the same problem. When's your flight?'

Ten.'

'So you leave for the airport at 8.45.'

'No. I arrive at the airport at 8.45. I'm flying Airtrack.'

'Airtrack? What do they give you on Airtrack, Slick? A spliff, a salad and a light-show?'

'Well, that's what I'm doing.'

'Listen ... I want you to meet Butch Beausoleil before you wing out. Can you get to my club around seven? The Berkeley,West Forty-Fourth. Leave your bags at the door and just walk on through.'

Yes and I rang Martina too. She accepted my apologies. They always do, at first. Actually she was very sympathetic. We're meeting for a quick one at the Gustave on Fifth Avenue, six o'clock. I levelled with the girl, and told her how ill and lonely and fucked up I'd really been.

——————

Now this was turning into a busy day. Noon saw me queueing at the stall on Sixth Avenue, queueing with the studes and lumberjacks for a cheap thin seat on the wide-bodied, crash-prone aircraft. This is the people's airline: we are this airline's people. They brought the prices down across the board and now only the abject fly Airtrack. A uniformed girl with tomato-red hair and an incredible gobbler's mouth disappeared for an ominous few minutes to check out my US Approach card, then bustled back, her moist teeth refreshed by my sound credit rating. I asked, 'What's the movie?'

She tapped out the query with her red nails. 'They got Pookie Hits the Trail,' she said.

'Really? Who's in it?'

The tolerant computer knew this too. 'Cash Jones and Lorne Guyland.'

'Come on. Who do you like best?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'They both suck.'

I looked in on a crepuscular but definitely non-gogo bar on Fiftieth Street. For a while I read my ticket. On the next stool a trembling executive sank three dark cocktails quickly and hurried off with a dreadful sigh... White wine, me: trying to stay in shape here. It's my first piece of alcohol for — what? — nearly two days. After all that tearful confusion, after feeling like a one-year-old out on the street last night, I couldn't get anything down me. I tried. It tasted of poison, of hemlock. So I just sacked out with a fistful of Serafim. I don't know what J would have done without the old guy in his boiler suit. I really think I might have died, without that human touch . .. Thoughtfully chewing on a pretzel, I suddenly skewered my dodgy back tooth. Knowledge is painful, and I knew then beyond all question that Selina had some other prong on her books. Come on, of course she has. She's smart. She's practical. She'll have some property developer or spaced-out rich kid, some moneyman. She might not even be banging him yet, just keeping him quiet with the odd spangled glimpse of her underwear, the odd audience at the bathtub — yeah, and the odd handjob too, no doubt. After all, this was how she processed me to begin with, when she still had her sugar-daddy ad-exec, plus a twenty-year-old location researcher on the side. Selina knows how to fend them off fondly, she knows how to keep them stacked above her tarmac — she is an old hand at air-traffic control. Then, one day, you get the lot... Where is she now? It is six o'clock over there, when the dark conies down. She is dressing herself for the evening, and she is worried. She is worried. The night is young over there, but Selina Street is not so young, not any longer. You know something? I've got to marry her, marry Selina Street. If I don't, probably no one else will, and I'll have ruined another life.

I finished my wine and settled the tab — surprisingly high. But then it seemed I had had six glasses, or vases, of the friendly Californian cordial. I walked back to the hotel through the crowds (here they come again) of Manhattan groundlings, extras and understudies, walk-ons and bit-part players, these unknown Earthlings. Hugely the cast swelled into the street. Incensed cabs cussed and sulked. Then I saw banners—BRITS OUT OF BELFAST and I LOVE THE IRA and WHO KILLED BOBBY SANDS? Bobby Sands, the dead hunger-striker. Hunger-striking must look particularly dire to these guys, each of whom has a neck like a birthday cake. 'You talking to me?' I shouted at one of them. 'Stay out of it. Yeah, what do you know.' Then I remembered that the Prince of Wales was in town too. It was probably him they had in mind. Some of the banners actually said as much, I now saw. Well, hang on to it, Prince, I thought. Don't listen to these bums. You're all right, I reckon — yeah, you'll do.

Back at the hotel I firmed up a deal with the man behind the desk. In exchange for ten bucks and as many minutes' chat about Lorne Guyland and Caduta Massi, he gave me my room until six without charging an extra day's whack. A lifelong Caduta fan, he also had a lot of time for old Lorne. 'He's been at the top for thirty-five years,' he explained. 'That's what he's got my respect for.' The unloved room looked on in quiet martyrdom as I packed my stuff. Mindful of my meeting with Martina, and determined to keep up the good work of the last two days, I had lugged back a quart of Chablis to keep me lightly fuelled throughout the afternoon. But the room was full of scotch and gin and brandy, and I deplore waste. Why, an African family could stay drunk for a month on the gear I'd be leaving behind. I didn't try Selina. I wanted to give her a nice surprise.

Orderly at first, my packing became brutal and chaotic. Under the couch I found an unopened pint of rum — hidden there by Felix, probably — and started tackling that too. I jumped up and down on the suitcase after I had seriously gouged my thumb in its catch. At some stage I flopped on to the bed and must have dozed off for a few minutes. The telephone woke me. Suavely I took a slug of rum and lit a cigarette in my own good time.

'Oh Christ. You again.'

'You fuck-up,' said the voice. 'Running back home. Wreck some more lives there. What happened? You skip a day? I saw you bawling out on the street. You're finished. It's all over.'

Now this was a break. He'd really caught me in the mood. With a case like this you have to reach down for the language. It's never far away from me. Drink brings it nearer. I took the phone by the throat, leaned forward, and said, 'Okay, blowjob, your turn to listen. Get some help, all right? Go down to your neighbourhood whacko project or sicko facility or scumbag programme and turn yourself in. You're one sick fuck. It's not your fault. It's your chemicals' fault. It's money's fault. They'll give you some nice free pills and you'll feel all right for a little while.'

'More,'he said. 'I like your style. Big man.. .We'll meet one day.'

'Oh I hope so. And when I get through with you, sunshine, there'll be nothing left but a hank of hair and teeth.'

'We'll meet —'

'We'll meet one day. And when that day comes I'll fucking kill you.'

I cracked the receiver down and sat there panting on the bed. I needed to spit. Uch, I hate making these threatening telephone calls. I looked at my watch ... Jesus. I must have gone to sleep for an hour or more — though sleep might be pitching it a bit high. Sleep is rather an exalted term for what I get up to nowadays. These are blackouts, bub. I upended the rum bottle over my mouth, finished my packing in the sourly twanging light, marshalled my travel documents and buzzed down for the boy.

——————

In the end I had ample time for my farewell to New York. First off, I gave Felix a fifty. He seemed strangely agitated or concerned and for some reason kept trying to make me lie down on the bed. But he was pleased, I hope, by the dough. I love giving money away. If you were here now, I'd probably slip you some cash, twenty, thirty, maybe more. How much do you want? What are you having? What would you give me, sister, brother? Would you put an arm round my shoulder and tell me I was your kind of guy? I'd pay. I'd give you good money for it.

Leaving my bag in the lobby I marched straight off to the House of the Big One, where I ate seven Fastfurters. They were so delicious that tears filled my eyes as I bolted them down. Next I bought a joint, a popper, a phial of cocaine and a plug of opium from a fat spade in Times Square and snuffled it all up in a gogo bar toilet. This is a dumb move, they say, because the spades mix in strong stuff like devil dust with the dope. But where's the economics in that? What they really do is mix in weak stuff with the dope, so that in effect you're only buying a roll-up, a dime-store thermometer, some ground aspirin and a dog turd. Anyway, I snuffled it all up, as I say— and felt a distinct rush, I think, as I came bullocking out of the can.

Urged on by the cars and their brass, I crossed the road and hit the porno emporium on Forty-Third and Broadway. How to describe it? It is a men's room. These 25-cent loop cubicles are toilets, really: you enter your trap, putting money in the slot, you sit down and do what you need to do. The graffiti is written in black magic-marker on yellow cards, to which curious pin-ups are attached. This bitch has a gash so big. Watch the fuckpigs frolic in torrents of scum. Juanita del Pablo gets it in the ass. Who writes these things? Clearly someone on exceptionally cool terms with the opposite sex. Meanwhile, the black janitorial stroll with jinking moneybags . . . First I sampled an S/M item in booth 4A. They got the chick on her back, bent her triple, and wedged a baseball bat in the tuck behind her knees. Then they gave her electric shocks. It was realistic. Was it real? You saw a writhing line of white static, and the girl certainly screamed and bounced. I split before they gave her an enema, which they were billed to do in the scabrous hate-sheet tacked to the door. If the girl had been a bit better-looking, a bit more my type, I might have stuck around. In the next booth along I caught a quarter's worth of film with a sylvan setting: the romantic interest of the piece focused on the love that flowers between a girl and a donkey. There she was, smiling, as she prepared to go down on this beast of burden. Ay! The donkey didn't look too thrilled about it either. 'I hope you're getting good money, sis,' I mumbled on my way out. She wasn't bad, too... Finally I devoted twenty-eight tokens' worth of my time to a relatively straight item, in which a slack-jawed cowboy got the lot, everything from soup to nuts, at the expense of the talented Juanita del Pablo. Just before the male's climax the couple separated with jittery haste. Then she knelt in front of him. One thing was clear: the cowboy must have spent at least six chaste months on a yoghurt ranch eating nothing but icecream and buttermilk, and with a watertight no-handjob clause in his contract. By the time he was through, Juanita looked like the patsy in the custard-pie joke, which I suppose is what she was. The camera proudly lingered as she spat and blinked and coughed... Hard to tell, really, who was the biggest loser in this complicated transaction — her, him, them, me.

Now I come jerking and burping up the portalled steps of Fielding's club, having stopped off for a drink or two on the way. You'd think I'd be in pretty terminal shape by now, what with the rum and the dope and all. But not me. No sir, not this baby. You recognize the type by now? Some people get sleepy when they drink a lot, but not us. When we drink a lot, we want to go out and do things... Never do anything is the rule I try and stick to when I'm drunk. But I'm always doing things. I'm drunk. 'Never do anything': that's a good rule. The world might be a better place — and a lot safer for me — if nobody ever did anything.. . So, as I say, I was in capital fettle when the revolving doors hurled me into the hall — to meet Fielding Goodney, and Butch Beausoleil, the real Butch Beausoleil.

There was a white-haired old robot at the desk, and we shot the breeze for a while as he checked me out on the intercom. I told him a joke. How does it go now? There's this guy and his car breaks down and he—No, hang on. There's this farmer who keeps his wife locked up in the — Wait, let's start again... Anyway, we had a good laugh over this joke when I'd finished or abandoned it, and I was told where to go. Then I got lost for a bit. I went into a room where a lot of people in evening dress were sitting at square tables playing cards or backgammon. I left quickly and knocked over a lamp by the door. The lamp should never have been there in the first place, with its plinth sticking out like that. For a while I thrashed around in some kind of cupboard, but fought my way out in the end. Skipping down the stairs again, I fell heavily on my back. It didn't hurt that much, funnily enough, and I waved away the appalled footman who tried to help me to my feet. I then had a few pretty stern words with the old prong at the desk. He made sure I got there this time all right, personally escorting me to the door of the Pluto Room and saying with a bow, 'This okay now, sir?'

'Fabulous,' I said. 'Look, take this.'

'No thank you, sir.'

'Come on. What's a five?'

'We have a no-tips policy here, sir.'

'Just this once won't harm anyone. No one's looking — come on ... Okay then — fuck off!'

Well that sorted him out. I chugged into the Pluto Room loosening my tie and craning my neck. Boy, was it dark and hot in here. The bent backs of women and the attentive angles of their men stretched down the bar away from me. I took a bit of a toss on a stool-leg and sprinted face-first into a pillar, but stumbled on until I made out my friend Fielding down at the far end. Dressed in a white tux, he was whispering into the nimbus cast by a miraculously glamorous girl. She wore a low-cut silk dress in a razzy grey — it rippled like television. Her ferociously tanned hair hung in solid curves over the vulnerable valves of her throat and its buzzing body-tone. Giving Fielding no time to intercept me, I swanned straight up to the girl and kissed her lightly on the neck.

'Hi, Butch,' I said. 'How you doing?'

'Well hi. John Self. An honour,' said Butch Beausoleil.

'How goes it, old sport,' said Fielding. 'Hey, Slick, you look really lit. Now before I forget, here's a present for you.'

He handed me an envelope. It contained an air ticket, New York-London, first class.