Money: A Suicide Note (9 page)

'You're not coming in here.'

'All it is', he said, 'is a little bit of silliness. He's very silly, your friend. Us, we're serious. We get aggravated when people start being silly.' He stepped forward. 'Now let's sort this out.'

'Oy,' I said, and stepped forward myself. 'I know your trade. You buy bounced cheques at half price, then go out on the squeeze.' This was no arm-breaker or face-flayer. He served low down in the money army, a freelancer, a forager. He didn't beat it out of you. He bored it out of you. He bored for money. 'You're hardly legal,' I said. 'You're a cowboy. On your bike.'

The heavy man dropped his head and turned. For a moment I saw him sitting in his parked Culprit or 666, red-faced and winded, thinking how to save his day. But then he spat on the floor and looked up at me wryly.

'You can tell your bent friend he'll be seeing me again. And so will you.'

'Oh you frighteners,' I said. This guy had no future in the frightening business. He just wasn't frightening.

'Soon,' he said, and walked off down the passage stirring his keys.

Feeling braced, I sauntered back into the flat. 'He's gone,' I said as I tipped open the bathroom door.

... Ah, pornography. Eileen was up on the basin deck. She was naked. No, she wore white pants. No, she was naked: that milky rift was simply the phantom of her bikini line. This girl (I thought suddenly), she takes pains to be realistic — but then, how hard are dancers working, when they pretend to be marionettes?... Her legs dangled over Alec's shoulders in the loutish white light. He turned to me with an expression of vexation and strain. She turned too. Her eyes were flat and reluctantly engaged, as if she were looking into a mirror without much prospect of liking what she saw. Her mouth was even stranger. So that was where the pants were hanging out. Their frilled edges curled from her lips like a crushed bouquet.

I left the cheque on the bed. As I walked back down the corridor to the stairs I heard something, exceptionally clear and rhythmical, the sound that imitates consenting pain, the sound of a child riding the brink of its sneeze, I heard something telling me that Eileen was a noisemaker who had slipped her gag.

——————

Now Fat Paul stooped, and worked the big black bolts. And now Doris Arthur stepped into the Shakespeare, wondering where to direct her grateful smile. But Fat Paul kept his head low, like all hell's doormen, like all hell's bouncers ... Fielding Goodney had told me that Doris was 'a feminist of genius'. I'd assumed that this was merely droll code for sack talent, but now I wasn't so sure. I sipped my drinks and let her seek me out in the blinding gloom. After all, Doris was the beneficiary of a university education, over at Harvard there. She could find her own way. As a rule, I hate people who are the beneficiaries of a university education. I hate people with degrees, O-levels, eleven-pluses, Iowa Tests, shorthand diplomas ... And you hate me, don't you. Yes you do. Because I'm the new kind, the kind who has money but can never use it for anything but ugliness. To which I say: You never let us in, not really. You might have thought you let us in, but you never did. You just gave us some money.

And told us to get lost... As for feminism in general, well, my position here was that of the unbudgeably powerful mob boss who, when piqued by bothersome incursions that threaten to sour the whole deal, calls the Ladies in and calmly says, Okay, so you want a piece of this. What kept you? We thought you were happy doing all that other stuff. You stayed quiet for however many million years it is. Now you tell us. But I'm a reasonable man. Some time soon there's a concession coming up in one of our out-of-town operations. If everything goes through okay and you keep your nose clean, who knows, we might be able to ...

'John Self?'

She stood there, poised, peering. No matter how butch and pushy they get, girls will never lose this air of sensitive expectancy. Or I hope they won't. She wore roomy dungarees and a much-patched flying jacket — anti-rape clothes, mace clothes. They didn't work. Now here's someone, I thought to myself, here's someone who's really worth raping. With a good lawyer you'd only get a couple of years. It's not so bad in the nick these days. They have ping-pong, telly, individual cells.

'Sit down, Doris,' I said, dead cool. 'Let me get you a pint. Fat Paul!'

'No — just water.'

'Designer water, or is from the tap okay?'

'From the tap is fine.'

I heaved myself up and trudged to the bar in my boxy suit. I turned. Doris was looking around with an anthropological eye ... Some months ago Fielding had sent me a copy of this chick's first book, a slender album of short stories. Young Doris had apparently done all right for herself in the States. The underlined bits of the clippings which Fielding's LA office had enclosed spoke warmly of her originality and offbeat erotic power. The book was called The Ironic High Style, for some reason. For some other reason, one of the stories was called that too. I had yawned and blinked my way through several of these tales, late at night, looking for this offbeat erotic power. I read the one called The Ironic High Style'. It was about a tramp who spoke exclusively in quotations from Shakespeare. All he did was beg and ponce and scrounge, but he talked Shakespeare while doing it. This old tramp — I can't tell you what a pain in the pipe he was. Anyway, even I could see that her straight dialogue had a lot of swing to it, and that's what Doris was on the payroll for. Fielding had said she was a Jewish princess. She was certainly a little miracle to look at, a North African queen bee, with satanic complexion, hot black eyes, a blazing, tearing mouth ... Oh, man. No wonder she dressed down. But there's probably nothing you can do about those kinds of looks. They're uncontrollable. They came at me straight through the shimmer of the heat-ripple hangover I was wearing. They peeled away its seven veils.

Like Bill from Box Office, Doris took out a pad and gazed at me encouragingly. 'The original idea,' she whispered. 'You want to tell me a little about it? I mean, where was it set?'

'What?'

'I said where was it set?'

I shrugged. 'Here,' I said.

Together we stared sadly round the half-converted vault — at the rosewood, the moist velvet plush, the curtains limp against the stained glass, the brutal slab of the pool table, the armless bandits, Fat Paul with his pale eyes, his pub face, slack-mouthed as he watched the clock, ticking its way to noon.

'Here. I was born upstairs. My dad owns this place.'

'No kidding.' The toy phrase slipped strangely from those opulent, deep-olive lips. Her teeth are like pearls, pearls in the oyster of the Shakespeare. I inhaled noisily and said, 'It's like this. There's a Father, a Mother, a Son and a Mistress. The Mistress is shared by Father and Son. She was Father's first, but then Son muscled in there too. Son knows about Father but Father doesn't know about Son. Okay? You with me? You see, Father has been —'

'I got it.'

'Fucking her for years, and now Son is too, in secret. Oh yeah, and Mistress has mob connections — she used to strip in a mob club. Anyway, one day, in the restaurant— they all work in a restaurant, or a pub, or a bar, or a club. We haven't decided on that yet. Mistress works there too. Anyway, one day — Mother and Son are pretty close, and Mother has a, a sort of mothering interest in Mistress. Mother doesn't know anything. Anyway, one day, at the restaurant, where they all work, or the pub, or the bar, or the club, there's the daily delivery from the bakery. Father and Son open a case of flour. But it's not flour — it's heroin. Now Father has had mob connections. He just wants to give the stuff back. But Son, he —'

I've done this speech so many times now — keep me fuelled, and I can drone it out with seamless fluency, making no effort at all. And so my mind was free to wander unpleasantly, as it always wanders now when unengaged by stress or pleasure. My thoughts dance. What is it? A dance of anxiety and supplication, of futile vigil. I think I must have some new cow disease that makes you wonder whether you're real all the time, that makes your life feel like a trick, an act, a joke. I feel, I feel dead. There's a guy who lives round my way who really gives me the fucking creeps. He's a writer, too... I can't go on sleeping alone — that's certain. I need a human touch. Soon I'll just have to go out and buy one. I wake up at dawn and there's nothing. And when I wake up at night, in minus time... better not to ask — better not to say.

Her devilish eyes never leaving mine, Doris swayed out of her jacket and pressed a handkerchief to her glowing brow. Her manly white shirt also glistened in its silk. I stared, and mumbled on. So far as I could see, she was definitively flat-chested. And yet her slender-ness, too, was weirdly stirring,especially when you gazed at the athletic, the intricate throat. Selina's throat is fuller, more volatile, more flammable,as indeed are her tits. What is it with tits? You don't need them, do you. Doris doesn't ... The pub doors opened and stayed that way. In they file: not so many regulars now, not so many middle-timers in brackish suits with a tabloid under the arm. No, here come the young, in manmade colours and animal health, in city noise and detail, with all their clothes and tits and money.

'So in the end,' I was saying, 'we come to the big showdown between Father and Son. Oh yeah, and the —'

Tell me,' said Doris. 'What's the motivation of the Butch Beau-soleil character?'

'Uh?'

'The Mistress. What's her motivation?'

'Uh?'

'Why is she sleeping with these two guys? Father gives her money. Okay. But why the Son. It's a big risk for her. And the Son's such a meatball.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'Maybe he's brill in the bag.'

'Pardon me?'

'Maybe he's a hot lay.'

'That's not motivation. That's not something we can show dramatically. The whole point about the Mistress is she's not just a dumb blonde, right? Then why does she behave like one? I don't think an audience would buy it. A considerable woman, wrecking her life for sex? I think we need to provide some motivation.'

Fat Paul cruised past. 'Veronica's on,' he said, and made the big-tits sign: two caved palms, raised and tensed. Doris looked up sweetly.

I said, 'Ah, you chicks. You writers. Come here.'

I led her by her cold knuckly hand. We passed through the damp dust of the velvet curtain, into deeper noise, deeper smoke, deeper drink. Twenty loud people watched the big woman on the small stage. She was spider-dark, and hefty, and good at her job — the face all voided, as it must be. For several minutes she danced slowly, then half-reclined on the waiting straightbacked chair. Now one hand welded the deep breasts, while the other sought the sequins of the pants, and slipped within, working, working. I bent down and whispered into the tracery of Doris's ear.

'Can you see okay, or do you want to sit on my face? Tell me something. What's her motivation? What's theirs? Listen. I got the Fiasco outside. Let's have some lunch at your hotel. Then I'll take you upstairs and give you a really long lesson in motivation.'

She looked at me assessingly. She nodded and smiled and walked out through the drapes, speeded by a loud flathander on her rock-hard rump. I followed, muttering, my eyes on the busy stage. Beautiful, isn't it, the way they're all the same, God bless them? You just need a big body — a big body, and a little nerve.

With her jacket hooked over one shoulder Doris was hurriedly gathering her things. Whoah, baby, I thought. An eager one, eh? Maybe we skip lunch and bunk out right away. Then I saw the tears flying from her face like sweat.

'Thanks,' she said as I approached. 'This is one of the worst times I've had for years.'

'Come on, darling, you know you love it.'

She steadied herself. She spoke with effort, but she managed to get it all out in the end. 'You asshole,' she said. 'I didn't know they were still cranking them out. You think that despite ourselves women like me are attracted to men like you. But I don't want to go to bed with men like you. I don't want men like you to exist.'

She swivelled. I lurched forward to intercept her. I failed. I fell over the table instead. This manoeuvre, together with the dozen empty beer beakers and whisky glasses I floundered among, began to persuade me of something. I thought my hangover was lifting. In fact my hangover had sunk without trace beneath another ton of booze. As I climbed upright and started brushing the wet shards from my suit I saw that my father was watching me through the vent of the red curtains. I looked at him confusedly, expectantly. But he gave a weak leer of dismissal and backed off into the shadows with his drink.

Ten minutes later I was still soothing my brow against the cool glossy stone of the Shakespeare urinal. I raised my head, frowning gradually, and mouthed out the graffiti on the limegreen tiles. KILL ALL NIGS. RAPE IS SHIT. FUCK KOFF.

'Who's Koff?' I mumbled to myself. 'Yeah, well, fuck him, whoever he is.'

——————

After my siesta I felt a little better, and clambered quite gamely from the back seat to the front, only pausing to disentangle my ripped trouser-leg from the handbrake. Then I drove myself home — from Pimlico to Portobello in my purple Fiasco. Now my Fiasco, it's a beautiful machine, a vintage-style coupe with oodles of dash and heft and twang. The Fiasco, it's my pride and joy. Acting like a pal, I lend the motor to Alec Llewellyn while I'm in New York. And what do I return to? An igloo of parking-tickets and birdcrap, with a ripped spare, a bad new grinding noise, and every single gauge resignedly flashing. What's the guy been doing to my great, my incomparable Fiasco? It feels as though he's been living in it, subletting it. Some people, they've got no class. You should see the way the boys at the garage simply cover their faces with envy and admiration when the Fiasco is driven — or pushed or towed or, on one occasion, practically coptered — into their trash-strewn mews. It is temperamental, my Fiasco, like all the best racehorses, poets and chefs. You can't expect it to behave like any old Mistral or Alibi. I bought it last year for an enormous amount of money. There are some — Alec is among them, probably — who believe that the Fiasco errs on the side of ostentation, that the Fiasco is in questionable taste. But what do they know.