Money_ A Suicide Note - Martin Amis [110]
The Ashbery, Room 101, I sit with my big croc face flickering to the last veils of the late, late movie. I don't — I don't remember the pale boy with glasses crying in the playground — but no doubt there were one or two, and I was a mean kid. There always are those pale boys — I was in LA last December, and I hired a car all right. There were near things, there were skids, emergency stops, emergency sprints. There always are those near things... I did hold auditions in the Walden Center in '78, checking out some models for the big-bim role in a Bulky Bar commercial. There must have been the odd redhead among them, and I was my usual working self (I'm an altogether different proposition when I'm working—I'm not very nice at all). There always are those redheads ... I was a mean kid in 1978. I was a mean kid last year. And this.
Yesterday I was walking up golden Fifth Avenue towards the tawny gulf of the Park. The powerful stores were in full exchange, drawing people in, easing people out, superintended by the lean Manhattan totems, these idols or rock-statues that stare straight ahead in grim but careless approval of the transactions compounded in the street beneath. It was pouring money. On the pavement the monkeynut operatives and three-card trick artists, the thimble-riggers, hot-handbag dealers, contraband bandits — they all plied their small concerns. A lot of dinky women taking the goods and the air today ... there's no shortage of big tits in Manhattan. It's not a problem. Nearly everyone seems to have them over here ... Then I saw something you see pretty often over here too: a have-not, a real flat-earther, a New York nomad lying face down on the flagstones like a damp log, sideways-on to the streaming spenders in their waves and sheets and racks. As I stepped over him I looked down (the rug as stiff as bark, an ear the texture of pomegranate peel) and said, rather affably I thought, 'Get up, you lazy bastard.' I walked on — and hailed Fielding as he strolled out of a bookstore. Arm in arm we gained the Carraway and met with two more of our moneymen, Buck Specie and Sterling Dun. They were both very excited by the venture and were alike convinced that I had a big future in our industry. Then they all went off nightclubbing in the Autocrat, but I was already massive and speechless with rice wine, and so I...
Zelda's — Dinner and Hostess Dancing. Inside was the message, the hand forward-sloping, tremulous, not unlike my own. Here in the States, in my day, writing lessons began with you tipping your pad forty-five degrees to the left, in order to promote this wavy, tumbling style. 'Frankie and Johnny were lovers', sealed with a kiss, a full lip-print in sweetest pink.
All in all, I'm none too clear what this guy means by motivation.
——————
The new televisual intercom on the steel desk gave off its throttled bleep. Fielding pressed the button and waited for the picture to form. He looked mildly startled.
'Who's this?' I asked him.
'That's fine, Dorothea. Thank you. No, you just wait for our call.' Fielding sat down and said, 'Nub Forkner.'
'Good,' I said. With Spunk Davis going AWOL, with Spunk sulking and failing to return our calls, Fielding and I had decided to check out Nub Forkner as a possible reserve. I made a note of the name on my pad, for something to do.
'That's o-r-k, Slick,' said Fielding.
I glanced down at the page. 'That's what I've got.'
'... You read much, John?'
'Read what?'
'Fiction.'
'Do you?'
'Oh sure. It gives me all kinds of ideas.