by Martin Amis
Lionel sounded fine. For instance,
“You watch. We’ll do you at Upton Park. Then we’ll come to your place and nick a point,” he might say to Brent Medwin (we being West Ham United).
“The important thing about fame? Don’t let it change you personality,” he might say to Lorne Brown.
“So that’s how you do it. You pick the bird you like and send one of you deaf roadies to go and bring her in,” he might say to Scott Ronson.
“I can get stun. I can get screw. But I can’t get deep screw. The white always jumps off the table!” he might say to Eamon O’Nolan.
Or else Lionel was in the Los Feliz Lounge with Megan Jones, going through the interview requests (and the assorted business proposals) over a cup of cappuccino. Megan had a strategy for her client. Now Lionel. No one wants to see a multimillionaire with a scowl on his face. You’ve got a lovely sense of humour. Just let it shine through! And we’ll turn you into a national treasure. Lionel nodded absently; he was gazing, as he often gazed, at the plasma screen above Megan’s head. Uh, yeah. Okay, he said, and wiped the froth off his upper lip. They were occasionally joined by Megan’s number two, Sebastian Drinker. Drinker noticed the peculiar way Lionel reacted to the sound of nearby laughter: his head jerked round like a weathervane in a crosswind.
Every suite had a balcony, which took pressure off the smokers (and gave all the parasuicides somewhere conspicuous to threaten to jump from). And anyway, there was the Sepulveda Cigar Saloon in the basement. It featured video games and pinball machines, a snooker table (the swerve Eamon could put on the cue ball: defied the laws of physics!), and a full bar (twenty-four-hour and self-service). The food was good, the waiters prompt, the pornography decent, the gym ever-empty. And though he continued to inspect certain properties (a Canary Wharf penthouse, a fourteen-room mansion flat in Chelsea), Lionel had no plans to move.
There were large screens in all the public rooms at the South Central—a soundless succession of clips and images, newsreels, silent movies, Miss World, Sputnik, 101 Dalmatians, chorus line, death camp, Bela Lugosi, Victoria’s Secret, goosestep, wet T-shirt, moon-shot, Dumbo, what the butler saw, grassy knoll, catwalk bikini, Bikini Atoll …
“Yeah, but I don’t use those girls,” said Scott Ronson (he meant the frilly little half-clad fans who gathered daily in the roped-off area just to the left of the forecourt). “They’re too young, half of them. I use the uh, the in-house amenity. We all do.”
“Eh?” queried Lionel. The two of them were enjoying a few midmorning Bloody Marys in the Beverley Bar. “What amenity’s this?”
“On your phone there’s a button marked Companionship. Press that.”
“Then what?”
“They put you through to this chummy bloke at the escort agency. Then you give your specifications … You know. Blonde. Big tits. Whatever. Dead confidential. And bingo. It’s addictive, mind.”
Lionel said, “I’m not bothered.”
A day or two later he took his lunch in the Watts Diner—with Brent Medwin and Eamon O’Nolan.
“Give it a go,” suggested Brent. “I told the bloke, I want a woman with a bit of class. No tattoos. Next thing I know, I got fucking Snow White stood over the bed. For a flat grand!”
“You give a tip?” asked Eamon.
“Service included. Goes on your bill. No questions asked.”
Lionel said, “I’m not bothered.”
A day or two later he finally admitted it. He was bothered. Well. How else do you get through all the hours before seven-thirty (when the casino opened)?
This, at any rate, was how Lionel put it to himself. Thereby evading a recurrent question, and one of enormous size. Why, with the exceptions of Cynthia and Gina (both, for different reasons, exceptional girls), had he steered so abnormally clear of the opposite sex?
Too busy with me career, he murmured. Workaholic, if you like. Earning a crust and keeping the old wolf from the door … But now? Resentfully Lionel twisted round in his chair. Load of bollocks, all that. Never paid for it in me life. More trouble than they worth. Stick to porn, mate. You know where you are with the porn. No, you can’t go far wrong with the …
A day later Lionel pressed Companionship and gave the bloke a reasonably unsalacious description of Gina Drago. An hour later he heard a tactful knock … She was called Dylis, she was twenty-seven, she was from Cardiff, she was dark and round. Very soon it became clear, even to Lionel, that he was the wrong kind of man to consort with prostitutes. Dylis took her leave twenty minutes later, trying to hurry but swaying about quite a bit and bumping into things …
That’s a turn-up, he said into the silence. Christ. Frighten meself sometimes. No, mate. No. Anyway, look at the time! A quick shower. Then off to the penthouse floor (have a steak sandwich around ten), the green baize, the little white ball gliding and then hopping up and down in the twirl of the spun wheel.
Lionel was shaving—he relied on the plastic razor provided by the South Central (and faithfully replaced every day). Becalmed for a moment in front of the mirror, he weighed the toylike implement in the palm of his hand … Hollow. Hardly there. Not like the bloody great spanner provided by Mr. Firth-Heatherington (which Lionel had lost in the Castle on the Arch or the Launceston). They called the South Central the heavy-metal hotel, but everything was light, the cutlery, the glassware, the furniture, even the bedclothes (his white duvet caressed him like a mist) … Without warning the flow of water hesitated, paused for a mesmeric minute, gave a polite cough, and coolly resumed. Amazing how fast they patched things up and got them working again. That afternoon, a well-known vocalist on the floor above had dropped a kind of hand grenade into his toilet bowl …
That’s what I need, said Lionel. A fucking hand grenade in me toilet bowl. His insides had loosened, somewhat; but his crouched vigils bore little resemblance to the thoughtless evacuations of old. All the same he felt light, light, insubstantial, hardly there. Every time he went to the casino and the lift came to a halt on the penthouse floor, Lionel expected to keep on surging upward, past the helipad and the Century City Eyrie and out into the summer blue … The weightless world, the light limbo, of the South Central, where nothing weighed, nothing counted, and everything was allowed.
He peered into the mirror; it peered back at him; he raised thumb and forefinger to part his sticky lids … A process was under way within Lionel Asbo, within his head and breast. He was twenty-four—and he suddenly had time to think. Money, money (his sole and devouring preoccupation since infancy), was now meaningless to him. Lionel, a voice would say. Yeah? What you want? Then silence. Then, Lionel, mate. And he’d go, Jesus. What? What you want? Then they’d talk. Lionel was no longer merely thinking out loud. He was having a conversation with what seemed to be a higher intelligence. The voice was cleverer than he was. It even had a better accent.
Lionel dressed with slow care. He was going out to dinner. Table for one. Just him and his thoughts. Before he left he popped up to see Scott Ronson: they were going to have a little smoke on his balcony. That feeling again in the elevator. He stepped out and paused. Right floor—but what was the number? Lionel barged around for a bit. Ah, there he was. Scott had just sawn off the top half of the door to his suite, and he was standing there waiting like a horse in a stable.
At 7:45 p.m. Lionel had a few words with the girl at the desk, and extended his stay for another three weeks.
In fact he wouldn’t be returning to the South Central—not for another three years.
10
“Off to a function, are we, Lionel?”
“What, no Megan, Lionel?”
“Any truth in the rumours, Lionel?”
“Rumours? Me and Megan? No, footloose and fancy-free. That’s Lionel Asbo. More trouble than they worth if you ask me.”
“… Off to a function, are we, Lionel?”
This was a second reference to Lionel’s oufit, which of course had raised no eyebrows in the hotel. In the hotel there were loads of peo
ple dressed up as pirates and nuns and Nazis. But now Lionel was out and about—strolling across Sloane Square and down Sloane Street, in flawless weather. The traffic, seeming to shrug something off, rolled forward into the ease and freedom, the innocuous proficiency, of a London summer, beneath a flattering sky. Lionel said buoyantly,
“No, lads, I’m off to me new job. Bouncing in a bingo parlour. But tonight I’m calling the numbers!”
There was laughter from the three representatives of the Fourth Estate. This laughter went on for longer than usual—because Lionel did in fact quite closely resemble a bingo caller. His tuxedo, true, and his vast trousers were impeccably and superaccurately cut; his buxom bow tie was no elasticated clip-on but a fine length of schmutter (Eamon, who earned his living in a bow tie, showed him how you looped it); and the shoes, at ten thousand pounds apiece, performed as expected—two padded floats of glistening ebony. On the other hand, only an unusually confident and sexually secure bingo caller would have consented to wear Lionel’s shirt and waistcoat. The waistcoat was of canary-yellow suede, with turquoise buttons. And the white shirt was an impossible orgy of vents and flounces (his hands were only just visible beneath the ruches of its cuffs). He slowed as he lit a cigar, saying,
“Here, lads, I got one for yer. What’s got lots of balls and screws old ladies? … A bingo machine!”
“You won’t win a hundred and forty mil on the bingo, Lionel.”
“You know, lads, back in Diston, me mum used to take me to the bingo. Every Friday. Friday. Reno Night. Can do all the numbers, me. Legs eleven. Sweet sixteen. Thirty—dirty Gertie. Ninety—top of the shop.”
“Where’s the function then, Lionel?” persisted the man from the Sun.
“What fucking function? … No, seriously, lads. Remember the uh, remember that bistro I popped into for a minute this afternoon? Down that little alley behind Harrods? Well I booked a table.”
“For two, Lionel?” said the man from the Daily Telegraph.
“You deaf? I’m on me tod tonight. Get a bit of peace. And read me paper.”
“Which paper, Lionel? Where’s your trademark Lark?” said the man from the Lark.
“It’s all in hand, son,” said Lionel, patting his trouser pocket. “It’s all in hand.”
To a relay of encouraging cheers he climbed the seven steps to the restaurant (which was called Mount’s). Obligingly he paused and posed—but soon drew back beneath the awning, his head and shoulders lost in shadow, and the three men turned away, leaving him in quiet communion with his cigar … It should at this point be revealed that Lionel had just smoked two nine-paper joints on Scott Ronson’s balcony: Swaziland skunkweed marijuana. Now, in normal times the fiercest possible intoxicants made no mark on Lionel Asbo. Tonight would be different. And the difference had to do with the recent activation of his subliminal mind. For the time being, though, Lionel was in excellent fettle, and imagined that a nice little treat lay ahead of him. A quiet dinner, and a thoughtful read of the Morning Lark.
“Good evening, sir,” said a resonant and resolute voice. “Welcome. Your table.”
“Ah. Lovely.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, sir, are you going on somewhere after your meal? To the amateur boxing at the Queensbury perhaps?”
“Amateur boxing?”
“Yes, sir. I hear Prince Philip’s going to be there. You know—for the Duke of Edinburgh Awards.”
“The Duke of Edinburgh? … Yeah well I follow the boxing. That’s a proper sport, boxing. Not like all the other rubbish. What’s you name, mate?”
“… Well, here they call me Mr. Mount.”
“No.” Lionel looked him up and down: a tall and mournful figure in lounge suit and tie, with an icecap of thick white hair. “What’s you first name?”
“… Cuthbert, sir.”
And Lionel said simply, “Cuthbert.”
Mr. Mount took a step backwards. He hadn’t heard Cuthbert pronounced quite like that for thirty years. Not since 1979, when he stopped going to Billingsgate Market (at five o’clock on Monday mornings, to assess the catch). He now said,
“Yes. Cuthbert Mount.”
“Well I’ll tell you what, Cuthbert. I’m starting me new job! Bouncing in a bingo parlour! And tonight I’m calling the numbers!”
For some reason all this came out much, much louder than Lionel intended—as if through a stadium bullhorn. He grew aware that thirty or forty faces, crowned with wisps of hoar and rime, were staring his way.
He thought, Must be cold, getting old. Old, cold: like poetry. “Evening all!” he found himself hollering as he lowered himself into his chair.
“… Would you like a drink before your meal, sir?”
“Yeah. Guiss a uh, give us a—”
But Mr. Mount stepped aside, and was instantly supplanted by a knowing youth in a white dinner jacket.
“What’s up with you?”
“Sorry, sir?”
“You amused,” said Lionel.
“Amused, sir? No, not at all, sir.”
“You look too light on you feet, mate …” Lionel sniffed and said, “Okay. Fuck it. Guiss a pint of …” In the South Central you could get champagne by the pint (and by the half-pint—very popular with the ladies); and Lionel had in any case come to regard champagne as rich man’s beer. “Bubbles, son. What kind you got?”
A ribboned wine list was opened and handed over. Lionel pointed to the most prohibitive of the vintages, and the waiter bowed and withdrew.
The restaurant was something of a surprise. Earlier that day, when he poked his head round the door, his sunstruck stare registered a grotto of pulsing shadow, and he imagined a kind of family brasserie. But Mount’s … The furnishings were plump and plush, the walls practically panelled with paintings, with haywains and cloudscapes and cavaliers. Yeah, the place was like some fat old cavalier, buttoned up far too tight. Lionel hefted but did not yet open the crested red-leather menu. England’s Oldest Restaurant. Established by Clarence Fitzmaurice Mount. 1797. And Lionel thought: 1797!
“Your champagne’s on its way, sir.”
Lionel had intended to make a start on the Morning Lark while enjoying his aperitif. Catch up on current events. But now he was having his doubts. He already knew that the cover was devoted to a truly mountainous blonde; and it might look a bit … The Lark, that day, appeared for the first time in two editions, tabloid and broadsheet, and Lionel had succumbed to the novelty of the larger format. Anyway, he slipped the thing out of his trouser pocket, unfolded it under the table, and awkwardly searched for a page that didn’t have a topless model on it. Page two usually contained the day’s news, but today the day’s news was about a topless model (bust-up with childhood sweetheart) … Looks a bit like Gina, he thought—and Lionel was abruptly transfixed by an unpleasant memory.
As he was finishing off with Dylis, he happened to glance sideways at the closet mirror. And there it was, his body, all hammer and tongs, like the driving mechanism of a runaway train. The expression on his face. Teeth bared, and furious eyes, and his—
The champagne arrived in its steel bucket. Lionel calmly compressed the Morning Lark between his knees, and said,
“Got a bigger glass? You know, like a beer mug.” Lionel grimly monitored the waiter’s movements. “… Yeah, that’ll do. Fill her up, boy.”
Then it started happening. For just half a minute or so, Lionel’s mind became a vertiginous succession of false bottoms, of snapping trapdoors …
Champagne in a beer mug? he fiercely subvocalised. Are you a cunt? They staring now! No they ain’t! They thinking you off to the boxing with the Duke of Edinburgh! No they ain’t! They laughing at yer—they pissing theyselves! Why’d you say that about the bingo? They thinking you some cunt of a bingo caller! No they ain’t! They see they Daily Telegraph! They know you the Lotto Lout! They know you a cunt anyway! They—they …
Lionel looked up. The diners were dining, hypernormally. The soft echoes and vibrations, the pings and ch
imes, of tableware, the drones and murmurs of polite conversation …
“May I take your order, sir?” said his waiter.
“Hang on … Hang on. I don’t see no meat.”
“This is a fish restaurant, sir.”
“What, just fish? … Oh well. So be it.” He chose the most expensive starter (caviar), to be followed by the most expensive entrée (lobster). “Fresh, is it?”
“Oh yes, sir. Alive and kicking. Flown in today from Helsinki.”
Helsinki! thought Lionel.
“And how would you like it dressed?”
“Uh,” said Lionel. He’d only ever had lobster in cocktail form, when Gina made it for him in traditional Maltese style: with lashings of ketchup. “As it comes,” he said from under half-open eyes …
“Shall we shell it for you, sir?”
“Shell it?” said Lionel with sudden and inscrutable venom. “I’m not helpless, son. Do I look helpless? I’m not helpless. Do I look helpless? … Ah, don’t cry. Here, do me napkin.” That’s what they did in decent restaurants—smoothed it over your lap. “Où,” said Lionel.
He finished his pint and ordered another. The caviar came. He’d had caviar before, because it was often the most expensive starter, and caviar, he found, was tasty enough so long as you seasoned it with Tabasco and plenty of … Not that he was feeling weak or giddy or anything, but he noticed that the salt cellar was heavy, was implausibly heavy. The knife in his hand was implausibly heavy. That was when you … The rich world was heavy, rooted to the ground. It had the weight of the past securing it. Whereas his world, as was, Diston, things were …