Money: A Suicide Note (8 page)

The flight's at nine,' said Fielding, 'but you'll catch your plane—I guarantee it. Now, John, you look like you could use a drink.' The kids were on champagne and I soon hollered for another bottle. I spilt a lot of that and hollered for another. Butch was a million laughs — and an obvious goer: you should have seen the way she helped me dab her lap with the napkin, and the way she playfully retrieved the ice-cubes I kept dropping down her front. Whew, the stuff that hot fox was giving out, all miming so fluently with the pornography still fresh in my head. Heat, money, sex and fever — this is it, this is New York, this is first class, this is the sharp end. I was one happy yob up there in the Pluto Room, and then another bottle appeared, and my nose was fizzing with the stuff, and there was another room and terrible confusion, and someone turned me by the shoulder and I felt wetness and could see Fielding's face saying ...

——————

The yellow cab shouldered its way through the streets of New York, a caged van taking this mad dog home. The driver with his flexed brown arm gouged the car through the lights on amber and gunned us out on to the straight. Never do anything, never do anything. I watched his brown arm, the skin puckered and punctured by its lancing black hairs. I watched unfamiliar city acres surge past in their squares. Eventually the flat signs and white lights of the airport began to swish by my face.

'Wha you fly,' said the driver, and I told him.

I was lying. So far as I could tell — from my watch, and from the red streamers of the ticket-books — both my flights had flown. But a squad of surprises awaited me in the expo aviary of the terminal. The departure of the nine o'clock flight had been delayed, thanks to a timely bomb hoax. They had just started reloading the baggage, and expected to be in the air by eleven. I strolled to the first-class check-in bay. First class, they treat you right. 'How many bags, sir?' asked the chick. 'Just the one,'I said, and turned with an obliging flourish. 'Oh, you poor fucking moron.' 'Sir?' 'No, no bags. Just me,' I said with a dreadful smile ... I rang Felix at the Ashbery. He would store my stuff with no sweat. I'd be back ... Under the hot dental lights I traversed the building in search of a bar, having developed the idea of toasting my deliverance from New York. Far and wide did I roam. Ten o'clock and you're closed?' I heard myself yelling. This is fucking JFK, pal!' By that time I had a couple of navy-blue serge lapels in my fists. The guy reopened the duty-free counter and sold me a pint. I sat drinking it in the departure lounge. Boarding began, first class first. I stood up and entered the tube.

And continued to travel deeper into the tubed night — to travel through the night as the night came the other way, making its violent sweep across the earth. I drank champagne in the wide red throne, friendless in the plane's eye, tastefully curtained off from the coughing, snoring, shrieking, weeping, birth-giving innards of Business, Trimmer and Economy. How I hate my life. I called for divining cards. I've got to stop being young. Why ? It's killing me, being young is fucking killing me. I ate my dinner. I watched the film — they gave me a choice and I caught Pookie: it was terrible, and old Lorne looked like shit. What happened out there, with Fielding and Butch? Ay, keep it away! Don't let it touch me. I can't give it headroom. I've got to grow up. It's time

2

COME ON, JOHN, what's it feel like? You're one of the top commercial directors in the country, you're only thirty-five, you're about to make your first feature, you're working with people like Lorne Guyland and Butch Beausoleil. Come on, John — what's it feel like?'

Actually it didn't feel like anything. It just felt like I was in London again, dumped out of the sky into nothing weather. It didn't feel like anything, but I sipped my beer, smiled at the microphone, and said, 'Well, fantastic, Bill, obviously. Making your first film, it's never easy, but I've got a really good feeling about this project. Things are looking really good.'

'You're telling me. You must feel bloody marvellous.'

'The future certainly looks bright.'

Bill is the London stringer of Box Office, the Hollywood trade — hence his celebratory tone. I don't think Bill was feeling very celebratory this morning, though. Exulting in my success looked like pretty hard work. But that's what they paid him for.

'Fill us in a little. Will you be writing the script?'

'Me? Are you kidding? No, the idea is mine, but we'll be using a, the American writer Doris Arthur' — Bill nodded — 'to develop the screenplay. Originally the film was set in London. Now it's New York, so we need a writer who can speak American.'

Tell me, how do you feel about the prospect of working with Lorne Guyland? Excited?'

No doubt there was irony here, but I said, 'Very excited. Really thrilled. I'm looking to Lorne to help me over this hurdle — Lorne, with his years of experience and his—Hang on. You'd better not put that. Try this. Uh, Lorne is a true professional, one of the old school. Wait. You'd better not put that either. Just say he's a true professional, okay?'

'What about Butch Beausoleil?'

'The big thing about Butch is that she's not just a dumb blonde.

She looks like a million dollars but she's also a very intelligent and sensitive young woman. I think she's got a great future in our industry.'

'Last question. Money.'

'Well, as I said, Fielding Goodney is the money genius. This is his first feature too, but he's had a lot of experience in, in money. We're going to bypass the big studios until the distribution stage. We've got this quorum of medium-sized investors. Some of the money will be coming from California, some from Germany and Japan. As you know, this is the new thing in funding.'

'That's right. What's the budget? Six?'

'Twelve.'

'Christ. It's all right for some, isn't it.'

'Yup.'

Bill then buggered off, thank God, and I strolled back to the bar with my empty mug. Eleven-thirty, Sunday morning, the Shakespeare. In the booze-lined defile under the bendy mirror, Fat Vince and Fat Paul, two generations of handyman-and-bouncer talent, assembled beer crates with simian stoop. Fat Paul straightened up and I looked into his colourless, moistureless face.

'Same again?' he said.

'Yeah,' I said. 'Hey, and — Fat Paul. Give us a scotch and all.'

'Big one?'

'Nah, just a double'll do.'

Fat Paul placed the drinks on the bar. He folded his arms and leaned forward. He nodded pensively. 'There's a new stripper on today,' he offered. 'Veronica. Jesus. Beautiful.'

'I'll stick around.'

'Here, that — Selina. Still giving her one, are you?'

'Don't ask me, pal.'

We heard the sounds of chains shaking. We turned: a small shadow bided its time behind the locked glass doors.

'Fuck off out of it!' said Fat Paul, in his youthful way.

'No, it's all right,' I said. 'This must be my writer.' ——————

Five days of London time, and still no fix on Selina.

Twenty-four hours ago I ran Alec Llewellyn to ground, but then the trail went cold. Alec, that liar. He was holed up in a service-flat block off Marble Arch — a high-priced dosshouse for middle-management loners and transients, with the strict feel of the ward or the lab: fifty units of downward mobility, observable under controlled conditions. Alec sees himself as one of life's deep divers. Crime, debt, dope — these are the fathoms through which he swims. The pinch of his long fingers over bookmatch and cigarette packet corresponds to the lines of his handsome, nervous, nutcracker face. Yes, he's nervous. He is much weaker than he was a year ago. He could do it all then. He is not sure he can do it all now.

'Where's Selina?'

'I don't know,' said Alec. 'Lying in a pile of cocks somewhere. Wiggling her bum in some penthouse. Take your pick.'

'Who's she fucking?'

'How should I know?'

'You told me it was someone I knew well. Who is it. Who.'

'Doesn't matter who. Think about it, man. I can't believe I've got to sit here telling you this. She's a gold-digger pushing thirty, right? In other words, an exhausted sack artist with shrinking assets. She can't stop digging, she has to keep digging until she strikes. There's nothing else she can do. Okay, marry her. Or try another kind of girl: freckles and A-levels, career woman, divorcee with two kids, fat nurse —'

'Oh you're such a liar. You just don't care what you say. What's it like, being a liar?'

'Not too bad. What's it like being a moron? Where do you think she is. Summer school? Walking in the Lake District?'

I looked round the room, at the churned bed, the hairbrush, at the splayed, eviscerated suitcase. Lean Alec, at thirty-six, a father of two, with his education, his privilege — what's he doing in this hired coop? We were drinking pernod, or paranoid, from a litre bottle with Heathrow tab.

'You know,' I said, 'what you told me at the airport, it fucked up my whole trip. Thanks. You really gave me a bad time.'

'That was just a precaution.'

'Uh?'

'She wants all your money.'

This really got me going. 'So what?' I said. 'God damn it, what's that got to do with you?'

'...I want all your money.' He laughed, but the laugh had a lot of wince in it. 'Look, John, this is serious. I hate to ask you this.'

'And I hate to hear it. How much?'

He named the figure — a consternating sum. I said, 'You already owe me money. What's it for? A drug deal? Gambling debt?'

'Alimony! She's got the law batting for her now. We have a disagreement, I get a squad car full of rozzers coming round here to put her side of it.'

'Wait a minute. You told me you were still fucking her.'

'I am. Between you and me, it's never been better.'

'I don't get it.'

'It's like this. The pigs say I owe her all this money. If I didn't have the money there'd be no problem. But there it is, in the bank. Now I need that money to close a deal. I'm in with some bad guys on this and if I don't come across I'm going to get really worked over. They told me what they were going to do to me.'

I said, with interest, 'What, exactly?'

'No blows to the back of the head. In other words my face comes off. The pigs, they mean business too. Either I cough up on Friday, or it's Brixton.'

'Christ.'

'Give me the money. Come on, man — do it! Do it. How much are you getting for this film? Eighty? A hundred?'

'Nothing yet.'

'Do it. I'd do it for you.'

'Yeah, you keep saying that.'

'I pay you back in ten days. I swear. There's a cheque coming in. This is just a bridging loan.'

'Yes, I know all about this bridging business.'

I did, too. It was always the same. The money Alec was expecting — it looked like my money now. It looked as though it was all marked me. But when that money came, it wouldn't look like my money any more. It would look like his money. He wouldn't want to blow it all on me. Money is very versatile. You really have to give money credit for that.

I said some of this to Alec. He wasn't listening. Neither was I. An inner door opened and a long girl wearing a pair of fluted white pants tiptoed into the room. Now here's someone, I thought, who really understands about pants. The tone of her skin was almost laughably exotic. Where was she from? Borneo, Madagascar, Mercury? She held one hand over her face as she groped for her bag. She didn't care who saw her mahogany breasts. They looked as though a lot of people had checked them out by now. Behind her the windowless cubicle shone like a filament. I've been in bathrooms like that, battery bathrooms (as if bathrooms weren't testing enough). You feel like a rat, taking a rat leak, watched by scientists up in rat control.

'Can't find me face,' she said.

'Have a pernod, sweetheart,' said Alec. 'John — Eileen.'

'Just cleaned me teeth,' she said.

She turned and headed back to the bathroom, moving more naturally now. Alec and I silently noted her flowing shoulders and pampered rump.

'Where do these chicks do their sunbathing?' I asked. 'Some island?'

'It's all She-Gloss,' he said, gazing at the closed bathroom door. 'You wouldn't believe it, but her bum is as white as those pants. Eileen wouldn't want anyone to think she sunbathed with no clothes on. She'd think that was dirty. Funny, isn't it.'

'Those are cool pants,' I said briskly. 'Now listen.' I tapped the bottle with a warning finger. 'Maybe I've had it with you and money. How do I know you're not lying? I'd like to know where it goes, this money I keep giving you.' A pair of airline tickets lay curled on the bed. I reached for them. Paris, first class. 'What sort of girl is Eileen? A fat nurse?'

'A career woman. She paid for all that. I owe her too.' He shuddered and made a bedraggled flutter with his hands. 'I've got to get out of this crap. You're just a jammy yob riding a fluke. What do you care? Just shut up and give me the fucking money.'

This is what I wanted. This was what I needed to see and hear and feel, the salute of his fear as we passed each other by. Me going up, him going down. Perhaps this was what I was paying for.

'Well,' I said, 'let's see what I can do.'

A sharp bell sounded, followed by three grim thuds on the outer door. Instantly Alec stood up and backed off with practised stealth towards the bathroom, miming self-erasure with his palm. He nodded fiercely at me, and vanished.

Holding my glass and cigarette, I unlatched the door and tugged it open. A heavy man with ragged hair was leaning as if exhausted on the jamb, rubbing his eyes with his fists. His smile was mean and weary but not yet quenched of amusement. Yes, he was big, about my weight. His shiny fat suit caught the real light at the end of the corridor.

'Yeah?'

'Mr Llewellyn?' he said, and straightened his neck.

He wasn't expecting me, someone like me. 1 don't have Alec's gaunt, dandyish look, the scuppered cunning of the top-drawer desperado. He wasn't expecting me, someone of his own kind.

'Who's asking?'

'Is Mr Llewellyn at home, by any chance? Have I caught him in? Mind if I take a look?'