Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [28]
“Dad?”
“Jet mate.”
“They’re ready.”
Mal kicked off his tasselled loafers and started limbering up: A! He was giving Jet his jacket to hold when his mobile rang.
“Lol! Been trying you all day, mate. Some Arab answered.”
Fat Lol said he’d had to flog it: his mobile.
“How come?”
His van got clamped!
“Tell me about it. They did me BM!”
You and all!
“Yeah. Look, can’t talk, boy. Got a race to run.”
Fat Lol said he was going to do something tonight.
“Yeah?”
Onna car alarms.
“Yeah?”
“Dad? They’re waiting. Boost it.”
“I’m on it, mate. Bye, son.”
“And don’t fuck up,” said Jet.
“When do I ever?”
“You’re a crap sprinter, Dad.”
“You what?”
“You’re a sad sprinter.”
“Oh yeah? Watch this.”
The dads were in a rank on the starting line: Bern, Nusrat, Fardous, Someth, Adrian, Mikio, Paratosh and the rest of them, no great differences in age but all at various stages along the track, waistlines, hairlines, worldlines, with various c.v.s of separation, contentment, estrangement, some of their dads dead, some of their mums still living. Mal joined them. This was the dads’ race. But dads are always racing, against each other, against themselves. That’s what dads do.
It was the gunshot that made the herd stampede. Instantly Mal felt about nineteen things go at once. All the links and joins—hip, knee, ankle, spine—plus an urgent liquefaction on the side of his face. After five stumbling bounds the pain barrier was on him and wouldn’t get out of the way. But the big man raced on, as you’ve got to do. The dads raced on, with heavy ardor, and thundering, their feet stockinged or gym-shoed but all in the wooden clogs of their years. Their heads bent back, their chests outthrust, they gasped and slavered for the turn in the track and the post at the end of the straight.
New Yorker, 1996
LET ME COUNT THE TIMES
VERNON MADE LOVE to his wife three and a half times a week, and this was all right.
For some reason, making love always averaged out that way. Normally—though by no means invariably—they made love every second night. On the other hand Vernon had been known to make love to his wife seven nights running; for the next seven nights they would not make love—or perhaps they would once, in which case they would make love the following week only twice but four times the week after that—or perhaps only three times, in which case they would make love four times the next week but only twice the week after that—or perhaps only once. And so on. Vernon didn’t know why, but making love always averaged out that way; it seemed invariable. Occasionally—and was it any wonder?—Vernon found himself wishing that the week contained only six days, or as many as eight, to render these calculations (which were always blandly corroborative in spirit) easier to deal with.
It was, without exception, Vernon himself who initiated their conjugal acts. His wife responded every time with the same bashful alacrity. Oral foreplay was by no means unknown between them. On average—and again it always averaged out like this, and again Vernon was always the unsmiling ringmaster—fellatio was performed by Vernon’s wife every third coupling, or 60.8333 times a year, or 1.1698717 times a week. Vernon