‘My olfactory acuity is poor.’
‘I smell like a vat of mashed pineapples. As we’re both quite uncomfortably aware. Suffice it to say that my wife is not sufficiently wary of the native merchants.’
Penny holds her tongue.
Kimbali produces a yellow cardboard wallet: photographs.
‘The body found in the swimming pool was that of a forty-year-old CIA operative. You talked to him at length at Doctor Sutton’s garden party. Am I ringing any bells, my subtle Miss America?’
Fade-out
I’m ambushed by a mob of tattooed yobs. I’m making for the sea when I’m confronted. I’m in a dank, low-ceilinged, rough-hewn sort of tunnel leading to the harbour when the louts decide they owe it to themselves to fuck with me and mess me up somewhat. They punch their palms and make lascivious faces, but then it emerges that I’m popular with them …
hOW CAn i FIND SCa
Where is Scanlon? How can I find Scanlon, lost as I am in the vast, humid, overcast city he calls his own? How can I telephone Scanlon if I don’t know his number?
Do I have an abode? A room in a hotel? Luggage? Have I left a suitcase perhaps in some motel somewhere? Have I ever had a home, of any sort?
A foxy female publicist shows up. ‘You’re scheduled to appear at Giordano’s this evening. I trust you’ve got your own copy of the book?’
‘I’m not sure I have.’
‘Never mind. Plenty at the venue. I’ve gone that extra mile on your behalf, but you’re very big already in this part of the world.’
‘Big? Already? Me?’
‘Giordano’s seats ninety. I introduce you, you read from Petroleum Jelly, we take requests and questions for ten minutes, tops.’
‘And then you break it up?’
‘And then I break it up and the HarperCollins broad presents you with your prize money.’
‘There’s a light above the lectern?’
‘Hey. Don’t worry about a thing. I’m sure you’ll be sensational.’
She zooms off in her cherry-red sports car. The quarter in which she’s left me has a sticky, corrupt, New Orleansy feel. Masses of vegetation drip from balconies with wrought-iron balustrades.
I’m taken up by a gent in a white panama. ‘You could do with a suit, laddie. I’ve a nice fawny suit you can have.’
The man bears a strong resemblance to Scanlon. Am I entirely sure he isn’t Scanlon? ‘I’m really not in need of a suit,’ I tell him.
‘No? Hemingway eschewed underpants. Disliked underpants but had a fondness for guns. And didn’t he at some stage commandeer a tank?’
‘Probably.’
‘I tasted combat myself, in Pharaoh’s army.’ White Panama looks spookily distant. ‘When dawn came and the fog began to lift, we could see what he was up to. Warpaint black pyjamas monkey wrench, a deucedly unnerving spectacle. He was doing his best to take out our auxiliary, we let him have it pop kerwhiffle plop, we disappeared him good the crazy slope. Turned him into a soup of bloodied water and chopped parsley may God forgive us. Never found the wrench, it’s still in orbit I guess, up there with his kayak and his telescopic blowpipe.’
Cut to a colourful bar. We seem to be drinking in a bar, White Panama and I.
Do I have money? How much do I have and where do I keep it? Am I broke again, completely, as I always was as a young man? How am I to pay for the bourbon and Coke in my hand, and should I be ingesting alcohol at all, given my many past failures and despairs, despairs and failures?
Dissolve to a muggy grey elsewhere. I wander, in a floaty sort of way. I ooze or tend miasmally in this direction and that. But here it is at last, erected all about me in a twinkling, the floor and walls and ceiling of Penelope’s People, the most prestigious agency in town. And the woman of the cherry-red sports car has multiplied, has become a team, a chorus of publicists. ‘You’re a breaking story, man.’ ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve got on the line!’ ‘Do you fancy a gig in Berlin?’ ‘Would you like to appear on Letterman?’
Letterman. Parkinson, Oprah. ‘But I don’t want it,’ I find myself saying. ‘It’s all too silly for words and I don’t want any of it.’
‘Sure you don’t.’
‘A little goes a long way. I preferred obscurity.’
‘But you’ll do Giordano’s?’
‘I’ll read at Giordano’s, if I can find it.’
‘Then you’d better move your butt. You’re on in an hour.’
Very well. So be it. And thus I embark on what begins as a scramble (the streets are suddenly full of rush-hour traffic), but ends in the sadness of desultory traipsing (I can’t find a taxi, yellow or otherwise).
No, I can’t find a cab and I can’t find Giordano’s. The broad wet avenues are emptying; lights are coming on in the tall apartment buildings; my last chance to live is dwindling, dwindling.
Where will I sleep tonight? But where will I bed down, tonight and in the future?
Perps
1
On planet JXZ-19, the liquorice logs are delicious, particularly those with apricot centres.
No inhabitant of JXZ-19 enjoys being idle. Many like to fashion leather belts, stamping them with dies and staining them with inks of green and red.
4D takes K8 to a drive-in movie. K8 notices that 4D has secured the top button of his shirt. ‘What, you queer or something? No self-respecting guy on ZXJ-19 ever does up his top button.’
‘I’ve got a hairy throat,’ says 4D.
‘But I like a little hair on a man,’ says K8.
‘There’s an ape inside me, trying to grow his way out.’
Tangerine moons supply a nice effulgence. The movie, however, is nowhere. ‘This picture stinks,’ says K8.
‘How’s about fellating me, sweetheart?’
‘Only if you’ve remembered to bring the peppermint mouthwash.’
‘Drat,’ says 4D. ‘Tarnation.’
2
At another time, in another part of the cosmos, René Lalique and François Coty are having a yarn on the dog-and-bone.
‘Good of you to ring me, François.’
‘Not at all, my dear René. Listen. I’ve invented an entirely new perfume.’
‘Good for you, François.’
‘A brave new fragrance which must go to meet its public in bottles by Lalique.’
‘Well bethought, my friend.’
‘The world embraces your frosted surfaces, your inlaid colours and deep-relief designs.’
‘It does indeed, François.’
A crackle on the line, as of summer lightning. ‘Are you still there, René?’
‘Of course.’
‘Ah. I still get rather nervy, using the telephone.’
‘No need for that, you silly sausage you.’
‘Yes. Well. Just because the great Lalique continues to escape electrocution …’
‘Not so his portly maid, alas.’
‘What was that? Hello? You seem to be breaking up, René.’
3
Worry and inaction beget one another. Worry and inaction demand discussion. If not here, elsewhere. If not now, soon.
4
‘Your tales are short and slight, Mr Lee.’
‘Just so.’
‘Short and slight, but lovely.’
‘Thank you. It amuses me to write them.’
The interviewer presents the elderly Chinese with a bottle of ouzo wrapped in Christmas paper. ‘You seem to own but few books, Mr Lee.’
‘Five. And they suffice.’
5
‘Where you bin, Stevie?’
Detective Steve Targett frowns. ‘Minimart. Bought a can of beetroot. Did I miss much?’
‘Not a goddamn thing. Perp throwed a goddamn fit is all.’
‘Inconsiderate freak. And you did what?’
‘Adopted a hands-off, wait-and-see profile.’
‘You did good, detective.’
‘Perp’ll maybe need his tongue sewed up.’
‘Scant
blemish there, attaching to ourselves.’
‘High-strung goddamn perps. They can’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.’
‘Amen to that, Ricardo.’
It’s four in the afternoon. The water in the cooler’s lukewarm again. Ricardo’s wife of three weeks swings by.
Wild spiders crying, thinks Steve Targett.
Buying beetroot was a mistake. Whatever elusive nutrients my body and soul are lacking, beetroot tinned in Mexico will never supply them.
Worry and inaction. I’ve fallen for a twenty-three-year-old crackhead. I pick him up on Sunset Boulevard, I buy him burgers and cigarettes, I offer to pay to have his teeth fixed, but he’ll only see me Tuesday afternoons. I’m not quite real to him, he thinks I come from a distant planet, he can’t quite find me likely, credible.
Worry. And inaction. And wild spiders crying.
Cactus Juice
1ST DISK
Rick Gadd had washed and dressed. Yip Nash was still in his cot.
Molloy entered the cell. ‘You guys are really getting up my nose.’
‘Good morning, Occifer.’
‘I’ve had it with your crap.’ Molloy hauled all the bedding off Yip, dumping it on the floor. ‘I want you up by the time I reach this slot. And you, Gadd—you’ll see that he complies.’
‘I’ll try, Mister Molloy,’ Rick told the departing screw.
The gaol was all moist ramps and passages. It smelled like a grandstand in winter. When you spoke above a whisper, your voice slapped the walls. Your voice echoed flatly, its bonky ring compacted and shaped by concrete.
Standing on his toes, Yip stretched and yawned. His body was pale but well-made and complete, chevrons of muscle above the knees.
Rick began to sharpen his 4B pencil. ‘Welcome to Chelworth.’
‘What did we do to deserve that wanker?’
Rick tapped frilly shavings into an ashtray. ‘He’s not so fucking bad. Put on some clothes why don’t you.’
The distant cities smoked. Chelworth’s ashen star was itself contracting, cooling. Molloy delivered towels, spotty little apples. ‘You’re better off in here,’ he was fond of saying. Shaped and compacted by walls, voices had a bonky ring to them.
The guys were treated to a lecture on VD, candy-coloured slides in the dark gymnasium.
Herpes. Vaginal warts. A cock with violet chancres. Using a remote, the MO shunted pictures. ‘This clown was a serial infector. He carried every bug known to microbiology.’
Gonorrhoea. Syphilis. Deposits of goo hooded by a prepuce. ‘That gunk you see is Cashmere Bouquet. Keep soap away from your foreskins. Under your foreskin is no place for soap.’ The MO clicked his clicker. ‘In this day and age, tattooing’s out. And those of you with haemorrhoids should not be indulging in practices.’
They heard old news and rumours of news. Tidings sifted in like light into a cellar. Rumours came with dusk, when pigeons alighted with a clatter.
There’s this one lag called Skeat. He picks up Rick’s pencil and fingers it. To give him his due, he seems to respect that pencil. ‘You need any smoke or alcohol, you don’t want to deal with nobody but me.’
‘No way,’ says Yip.
‘Wouldn’t dream,’ says Rick.
They heard the slap of wings, the soft clatter of pigeons taking flight. Caged bulbs flickered, seeming to peck. The corridors and ramps channelled sounds, the bonk and clap of voices.
Stonily white, Yip Nash stood in the shower, his sturdy legs a large part of him, water pouring from elbows and prick. His big beige knob pouted; no foreskin there.
Rick would exercise until he sweated. He did push-ups and sit-ups on the floor of the slot. He picked a flight of steps near the kitchen and ran up and down it, up and down.
A villain called Ted Smith came to the cell. An older man, notorious and gloomy, he lay on Nash’s cot with his hands behind his head. ‘Did you ever play golf, Yip? I liked to hide out near a golf links, take a motel unit and get in with the toffs.’
Yip sat on the floor between the cots. ‘A bit of a toff yourself, by all accounts.’
‘I like to think I earned a certain reputation. I was always clean and sober for a job.’
‘How many’d you do, all up?’
‘One too many, by the looks. I was never the dangerous thug the papers made me out. I only ever owned that silver Magnum. For good or ill, that gun became my trademark. A teller saw that piece, he knew he was involved in a quality stick-up. It made for a certain confidence on both sides, that great big gleaming mother. It was never loaded, of course, but it did the trick.’
‘Would you like some gum?’
Smith took a tablet of spearmint from Yip’s packet.
‘They claimed you wore disguises,’ said Rick.
‘I distinguished myself by maintaining a makeup kit. I had sticks of theatrical grease, rinses for the hair, different pairs of glasses. I could barber my hair and tint it, give my face a whole new character.’
‘And yet,’ said Rick, ‘you always used the same silver Magnum.’
‘Experts have examined the issue. What a gambler really wants is to lose everything.’
2ND DISK
Rick drew a pair of hands steepled in prayer.
Each morning in the slot, Yip Nash examined his shoulders for pimples. He stood there bollocky, scrunching a shoulder forward to peer at it. A nude ape fastidious and vain, he prodded and stroked each shoulder in turn.
They asked you about yourself. They asked you about the sort of kid you were, were you ever bashed or mucked about with, did you go in for torturing animals. The psychologist had spaces on a form.
‘I’m not a fucking serial murderer.’
‘Cool it, Rick. You’re part of a sample we’re following.’
Molloy delivered toilet rolls and freckled mandarins. Returning from the showers, Yip sat on his cot like a yogi, examining his soles. His long scrotum sagged; you could see the balls in it.
When Rick went to the kitchen at dawn, the pilot light on the gas range was bluely visible. Of the many dour constraints of life in Chelworth, there were those you might one day think about, isolate as having had flavour, attach nostalgia to. Autumnal things crepuscular and soothing might one day recall your time inside, remind you of a life of relative contentment.
Caged bulbs flickered, seeming to peck. Skeat went mental and wasted a screw. Rick sat a personality test, exercised till he sweated, jogged up and down his flight of steps.
The psychologist had a tan leather jacket. ‘You have a problem with anger. You express your anger belatedly, in explosions of inappropriate rage.’
‘So now we fucking know.’
‘I’m thanking you again for your cooperation.’
‘It gives me an interest.’
‘Your tests show a certain conspicuous bias. You don’t want to be thought effeminate.’
‘There’s boxes I’m not about to tick. Forget flower-arranging and needlework.’
‘You completed the Minnesota Multiphasic. You’re determined to evince a maximum of masculine affect. One might even infer a degree of homophobia.’
‘I want to be a fireman when I grow up. I want to be a fucking test pilot.’
Rick spent an afternoon in the kitchen, skinning potatoes in the machine, freeing the big dishwasher of chips of glass and other debris. He worked in a littoral twilight, the sorrowful dusk of rainy quays.
Yip returned to the slot with a flagon of Cactus Juice. ‘At last a chance to fuck our tiny brains. I scored a joint as well.’
The two-person party began after lock-in. Fixed within its strutted hutch of wire, the bulb on the ceiling seemed starved of wattage.
Yip had swished a bendy plastic cup. This he filled with the stagnant yellow mead. ‘Have a go at this. It’s supposed to contain laboratory alcohol.’
‘Smells more like meths.’
They passed the joint between them, Gadd and Nash. The slot was soon a submarine, one in which the power w
as slowly failing. Yip’s face looked dark and gaunt, sinister and holy. ‘You lie dee Cictus Jutes?’
‘It’s vile fucking muck, as well you know.’
‘Myself I deeg dee Cictus Jutes,’ said Yip.
‘I’ve been thinking more and more about absconding,’ said Rick.
The joint was now a roach, a fiery speck. Yip sucked at it wetly. Trying to talk while holding his breath, he sounded like a wheezy cartoon dog. ‘I’ve been thinking along the same lines, amigo. What say I come with you?
3RD DISK
Two screws got drunk and rioted. You could hear them larking about, kicking over the traces in C Wing. One was shouting taunts through a megaphone. You could hear the graunch and squeak of a firehose being dragged off its reel.
Boos and cheers. The sizzling gush of water. ‘Mind our bedding, cunt!’
Brought to a certain level of engagement, Yip began to scowl. The gaping slit in his silvery glans became a little well. It bled or leaked a watery sort of stuff, thinner than actual come.
Ted Smith appeared again, his thumbs in his belt like an elderly Texan cowboy. ‘Mind if I linger, boys?’
‘You’re not looking too clever,’ said Yip.
‘I’ve asked the quack to run some tests. There are cancers of the liver and pancreas. They fan out through the body using ancient tunnels. Liver, lymph nodes, brain—that’s the usual pattern of distribution.’
‘We’ll keep our fingers crossed,’ said Rick, ‘but there’s something else we’d like to discuss with you.’
A Sunday night in Chelworth was a hushed, domestic time. Men turned their radios down, tidied their tidy cells, aired the socks and shirts they’d wear in the week ahead.
Rick tugged a recent drawing from his pad. It depicted a Negro in chains, and seated on the floor of a dungeon. His striped convict’s jacket failed to cover his ebony chest. His extended fingers held a chunk of bread, a fragment torn from an old-fashioned loaf, and a large rat was nibbling at this morsel.
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