I had about a half-hour to kill, I reckoned. Taking a couple of rights, I found myself on the ramp of lower Eighth Avenue — a medium-poor people's district, I assumed. Shoe Hospital, Asia de Cuba Luncheonette, Agony and Ecstasy Club, ESP Reader and Adviser, Mike's Bike World, also LIQ, BEE and BA. Are the clips on the sidewalk grills meant to look like the soles of giant feet? Young men playing chess on the hoods of parked cars. A pale tattoo on a pale old arm. Here they come again, young and old, health and distemper mixing like American prodigies of money and no money, beauty and malformation, Manhattan miracles of heat and cold. Some of the people are in terrible disrepair. Boy, could they use a little investment, a little gentrification. But I love the dense variety. Yes, it stirs me. After this, London feels watery and sparse... Now I idled in the yellow light of closed banks, municipality and bad business all done for the day. Why aren't banks as diverse and improvisational as every other American concern? Why can't we have Mike's Bank World? I don't know, but I feel steadier. I've drunk nothing all day. I drank nothing at lunch, despite the horrendous Malvinas Surprise I ordered (a triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks). I want to be at my very best tonight. I've showered and everything and I don't look too bad. That hike with Fielding, that uptown safari really did me good. I need it, I need to be strong. You think I'm paranoid but I tell you, man, there is something going on. Are you in on it? I've had this terrible feeling ever since I came to New York last time, a feeling of — a feeling of ulteriority. I fry to convince myself that it's conditioning, the poor boy and his fears of success. It's not the film. The film is fine. It'll happen. But something else is not fine, something bigger. It is bigger than what Frank the Phone is doing to me, whatever that is. It is bigger than what Selina is doing to me, whatever that is. It is bigger than what I am doing to me... Turning from a storefront window — and why must this always be the way? —I was confronted by a six-foot woman with ginger hair, bobble hat and tadpole veil frilling her chin. Her leaning presence was deliberate, challenging: I think I'd even felt the play of her breath on my neck. 'Yeah?' I said. But she just stood and stared through her mask ... Now where have I seen that mad bitch before? Look. Here she comes again. Somewhere, I've seen her somewhere.
I doublebacked through the faggot district, Christopher Street. I skirted the dike district too—or at any rate two big chicks denied me entry to their purple sanctum. Then I found a place that was clearly headlined as a singles' bar, and no one tried to keep me out... Now I'd read about these VD workshops in Scum and Miasma, both of which adopted a markedly high-handed line. Word was a year or two ago that the joints were popping with air-hostesses, models and career women: five minutes, a couple of lite beers, and you'd be in a hotel room or service flat with some little darling doing the splits on your face. Not so! says Scum. It might have been that way for a while, Scum argued, but after a couple of weeks the Boroughs shitkickers moved in, and the game was up. The chicks moved out. Miasma even sent a squad of personable male reporters out on a sweep, and not one of them scored ... Well, this place looked okay to me, the only hitch being that there weren't any women in it. They were all in the butch bars and the diesel discos. So I joined the half-dozen speechless loners and got to work on the Sidecars. Eight-twenty: no sweat. Here's to you, Martina, I said to myself, and flattened out a twenty on the moist zinc.
You remember Martina, Martina Twain? Now don't tell me you've forgotten. How is the memory, pal? Sister, what's the recall like? You remember her, surely. I know I do. She and I go way back. The thing about Martina is — the thing about Martina is that I can't find a voice to summon her with. The voices of money, weather and pornography (all that uncontrollable stuff), they just aren't up to the job when it comes to Martina. I think of her and there is speechless upheaval in me — I feel this way when I'm in Zurich, Frankfurt or Paris and the locals can't speak the lingo. My tongue moves in search of patterns and grids that simply are not there. Then I shout ... Consider the people I've been around all my life, stylists, models, actors, producers, seat-warmers, air-sniffers, knee-crookers, cue-card-readers, placemen, moneymen — funny men, not straight men. Funny women too, juggling sex, time and dough. Who's straight? I'm not. I am bent gouged pinched and tugged at, and squeezed into this funny shape. Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move, and now the flukey play is cramped and slow, a dream of constraint and cross-purpose, with each move forced, all pieces pinned and skewered and zugzwanged... But here and there we see these figures who appear to run on the true lines, and they are terrible examples. They're rich, usually.
Her English husband Ossie, now he's rich-for-life but he works in money, in pure money. His job has nothing to do with anything except money, the stuff itself. No fucking around with stocks, shares, commodities, futures. Just money. Sitting in his spectral towers on Sixth Avenue and Cheapside, blond Ossie uses money to buy and sell money. Equipped with only a telephone, he buys money with money, sells money for money. He works in the cracks and vents of currencies, buying and selling on the margin, riding the daily tides of exchange. For these services he is rewarded with money. Lots of it. It is beautiful, and so is he.
I switched from Sidecars to Old Fashioneds. I'm always early for these dinner parties anyway. I leave it late, but never late enough. Barkeep, let's do it again. As I feasted on my drink I sensed the hum, the confectionery of a feminine presence. I turned to find that a girl had joined me at the bar. Now she asked for white wine in her -charged voice. I diversified with a Manhattan. New York is full of heart-stopping girls with potent colouring, vanilla teeth, and these big tits they all seem to be issued with as a matter of course. There must be a catch. (There is. Most of them are mad. It pays you to remember this.) The chick on the stool — she looked like Cleopatra. I don't know what it was, but I instantly fingered her for an obvious goer, sack-artist, dick-idolator, and so on. I can always spot them. I glanced at my watch: eight-thirty—no, nine-thirty. Hey there! Time to be moving on.
'Buy you a drink?' I said.
Her face slackened. She gave a tremble of negation.
'White wine?' I said.
'No thanks.'
'What's with all this no thanks? Can't you read? This is a singles' bar.'
'Excuse me!' she said. 'Bartender! Sir! This man is bothering me.'
'Damn right I'm bothering you.' I tapped her shoulder. 'What d'you expect, kid? Why d'you come here anyway? You like the Californian Chablis or these plastic ducks they have on the wall?'
'Hey. Hey. You. Shut up or get out."
This was the bartender.
'What is this? Am I the only guy in here who can read? It says singles' bar out there, in neon. I'm single. She's single. What's the problem?'
'He's drunk.'
This was one of the loners.
'Okay, who said that?'
I slithered lithely from my stool. This deed somehow necessitated a second manoeuvre, that of picking myself up off the floor.
'He just had ten cocktails, for Christ's sake.'
'Here he's ... Put him ... Get the ...'
I felt several hands on my arms, a knee in my back and a tug on my rug. Well, time was travelling anyway, and I thought I might as well be moving on.
Fifteen minutes later, or it may have been twenty, I stood staring at a caged lift: the chest-flexing iron lattice, the accordion doors. I swivelled and strode up to the end of a passage. I rang the bell. I was drunk, okay, but I was getting my second wind by now. That's the thing about drink: some of us can take it, and some of us can't. Put another few down me and I'll be as right as rain. I straightened my tie and guided my hair back with my hands. I rang the bell — a good long ring. Someone clattered down a wooden staircase. The door sucked open.
Ossie was standing there in waistcoat and shirtsleeves. I could see Martina down the end of the passage, aproned, with plates in her hand.
'Hey my man!' I croaked. 'Was coming down a track!'
He took one step forward. 'It's late,' said Ossie
. Martina's curious face appeared beyond his shoulder. Ossie said, 'Go home, John. Just go home.'
The door cracked shut. What's with him? I wondered. Some guys ,.. Okay, so I'm running a bit behind schedule, but... I looked at my watch. It said one-fifteen. Then I remembered something. I wasn't only late to arrive — I was late to leave, too.
That's right. I had already been to the dinner party. And something told me I hadn't behaved too well.
——————
Today is my birthday. I am thirty-five years old. According to the last good book I read, this means that I am half way through my time travel, my travel through time. It doesn't feel like that — it doesn't feel like half way. The prestige number-plate on my Fiasco says OAP 5. I've got the mind of a kid, but I'm a pretty senior partner over at Rug & Gut & Gum. It feels as though I have just started out. It feels as though I am just about to end, just about to end. That's what it feels like.
Morning came, and I got up ... That doesn't sound particularly interesting or difficult, now does it? I bet you do it all the time. Listen, though — I had a problem here. For instance, I was lying face-down under a hedge or bush or some blighted shrub in a soaked allotment full of nettles, crushed cigarette packs, used condoms and empty beercans. It was quite an appropriate place for me to be born again, which is what it felt like. Obviously it hurts, being born: that's why you scream and weep. Next, I had to frisk myself, to make sure I still had my wallet, limbs, face, dick, being. Next, I had to run crying through the concrete concourses in dawn rain until my panic slowed and I recognized the city and myself in the matt and muffled streets. Then I had to find a cab and get back here. The guy wouldn't take me until I showed him money. I didn't blame him. I had dreamed — and who needs dreams with this kind of nightlife? — of torture, laughter, pincer-grips on the frail-tubed spine.
In the bathroom I stripped slowly before the mirror. Face first: there was a grey swelling over my left eye, and my rug was quite badly singed on the same side. A fight? I didn't think so. If there'd been a fight, then I must have won it. My body was all there, trembling, whimpering in the graphic light, but all there. I turned — and gasped. Dah. .. Oh, Christ. My back, my great white back was scored with thirty or forty sharp red welts, regularly patterned, as if I'd slept on a bed of nails. Taking a two-fisted grip on my spare tyre, I was able to wrench round some flesh and get a good look at one of these bloodless wounds. An indentation, a red hole: I could insert my quivering pinkie to half-nail depth. I stepped back. No other damage. No new damage. My bumf-crammed wallet was intact:
credit cards, eighty-odd dollars, thirty-odd pounds. My hangover was fine. My hangover had come through okay.
So. I had spent the night, or part of it, on a patch of earth in alphabet-land — Avenue B, deep down on the East Side. After an evening of pleasure and profit with my friends in Bank Street, I had clearly gone out for a drink or two. Bad idea! Oh very bad! Someone, at some stage, had worked me over with a tool, a spike or a blunt shiv. My shirt was punctured in places, but not my jacket — my good, my best jacket. It was now eight-thirty. I bathed my face with water and felt hot fingers beginning to tickle my back. For ten minutes I vomited elaborately, with steamhammer convulsions that I had no strength to resist or contain. Then for twice that long I sat twitching on the shower's deck, the silver snout tuned to full heat and heft but doing nothing much to wash off my rot. I must be very unhappy. That's the only way I can explain my behaviour. Oh man, I must be so depressed. I must be fucking suicidal. And I wish I knew why.
Look at my life. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: But it's terrific! It's great! You're thinking: Some guys have all the luck! Well, I suppose it must look quite cool, what with the airplane tickets and the restaurants, the cabs, the filmstars, Selina, the Fiasco, the money. But my life is also my private culture — that's what I'm showing you, after all, that's what I'm letting you into, my private culture. And I mean look at my private culture. Look at the state of it. It really isn't very nice in here. And that is why I long to burst out of the world of money and into — into what? Into the world of thought and fascination. How do I get there? Tell me, please. I'll never make it by myself. I just don't know the way.
——————
Nothing much happened for a couple of days, which was fine by me. Nothing happened. Well, I say that, but of course me and my sore back got up to all kinds of stuff.
Me and my sore back composed a letter to Martina. Yes, a letter. I even went out and bought a dictionary on Sixth Avenue to assist me in the project. You know those hangovers where you can't spell I'm or you're, let alone sorry or again? It took me about a day each to write, seal, stamp and post this letter of mine, but I managed to get the thing off in the end. I apologized for my behaviour (you know how it is: a few drinks, a few laughs, you step out of line), and asked if I could buy her lunch some time. After all, I pointed out, lunch was the one date we hadn't yet tried. Drinks, breakfast, dinner— but not lunch. I said I would 'quite understand' if she wanted to cut her losses and call it a day. I wouldn't let me buy me lunch, I said, and I meant it. Jesus, would you?
Me and my sore back had cocktails with Butch 6eausoleil. There was no mention of the debacle at the Berkeley Club, thank Christ. Butch looked beautiful—a cauldron of youth and health—and she seems docile enough at this stage. That makes sense. She's getting $750,000. Her only proviso is that she won't do any housework. In the film. She won't sweep a floor. She won't even rinse out a coffee cup. Chicks' liberation. Who do you want to play opposite you? I asked her. Christopher Meadowbrook, Spunk Davis or Nub Forkner? Butch said that she would favour a dark-complected co-star. The big thing aboutButch is that she isn't just a dumb blonde, as she herself stressed. I agreed. She might look like one. She might even behave and talk like one on occasion. But she isn't just a dumb blonde. That's the big thing about Butch.
Me and my sore back have had several meetings now with Fielding's moneymen. We had dinner in La Cage d'Or with Steward Cowrie, Bob Cambist and Ricardo Fisc. We went night-clubbing at Krud's and Parlour 39 with Tab Penman, Bill Levy and Gresham Tanner. They're an odd crew, these moneymen, Miami hotel barons, Nebraskan ranching bosses, Marylander oil kings. Their only topics are moviestars and money. They talk about money in that sharky American style, as if money were the only gauge of anything, the only measure. They're pretty relaxing company, 1 find. Fielding picks up the checks. Fielding picks up the cheques, too. Each meeting ends with the moneymen all saying things like I'm in or I want in on this or You got it or Let's do it. Fielding is already making plans to cut one or two of the smaller guys out of the action.
Oh yeah and me and my sore back got hold of little Selina late one night. It was seven in the morning over there in my sock. Her voice was thin and cold, the way 1 like it. After a while she cooed and cursed me into peace, I have to tell you that these hotline, Jong-distance blowjobs are another of our regrettable routines ... This particular perversion, I notice, like every other, has been set up on a professional basis in go-getting New York. The small-ad columns of Scum magazine are full of remote-control hookers who just sit by a telephone all day for money, like Ossie Twain. You ring them up, give your credit-card number, and they talk dirty to you for however long you can afford. They're probably cheaper than Selina, come to think of it, what with the hotel mark-up. They're here and she's there, after all ... I was on the point of signing off when Selina started telling me, in accents of alarmingly genuine arousal, about this rich new boyfriend of hers, this transatlantic moneyman, how he took her to hotels and dressed her up and fucked her on the floor like a dog. This was fairly standard stuff, but I deplored her tone. Quit it, I said. Her thin voice teased on. She said that when she wasn't here she was there — with him, doing that. Enough, I said. 'Then marry me,' said Selina, but not nicely.
——————
Fielding smoothed his back against the scalloped seat of the limousine, like a cat. He straightened his cuffs and said firmly.
'I say we go with Spunk.'
'He's not really called that, is he?'
'Sure,' said Fielding, and went on to tell me about two Southern actors called Sod MacGonagall and Fart Klaeber. He gave his laugh, his rich, his million-dollar laugh, reluctant, like all the most lovable laughter. You long to hear this sound. You would do almost anything to inspire it. 'Maybe,' he said, 'maybe for the British market we can call him Scum.'
'It's a problem, you've got to admit.'
'I talked with his agent. He knows Spunk's going to have to have his name fixed sometime. Thing is, he was christened that way, and he hates the whole moviestar bit. He's a tough Bronx kid but he acts up a storm. You want a drink?'
'No thanks.'
'What's the matter? It's five o'clock.'
'No thanks.'
I had my reasons. Do you want to hear the good news first, or the bad news? The good news is that Martina called this morning and we're having lunch tomorrow. The bad news is that the good news made me feel so relieved and excited that I ran out to a bar and drank a bunch of big ones. Yeah? you'll say. And? Nothing new in that. Agreed, but the bad thing about the bad news is that the alcohol had a really bad effect on me. It didn't make me drunk, which was what I was confidently expecting it to do. It made me hungover instead. It did. I kept incredulously ordering more drinks, in a doomed bid to stave off this conclusion. That's why I had so many. All the more ironic, too, because I woke up this morning feeling bloody marvellous after a really late and heavy night with the TV and the ß & F. Was the phenomenon a new jet-lag deal, or the terminal mutiny of my whole bodybag? Oh man, I'd better get to California soon, while the transplant people still have something to work on. Maybe I'd better wing out there right away and have them fix me up with a temporary. And the mind was suffering too. Yes, the mind had its sufferings also. It was crammed with sin and crime, the thoughts nowhere, all in freefall and turnaround. I've got to get this stuff out of my system. No, more than that, much more. I've got to get my system out of my system. That's what I've got to do.