Money_ A Suicide Note - Martin Amis [48]
We went on to discuss our distribution problem, which, according to my pal Fielding, was absolutely non-existent. We would simply lease out the finished product: that way, said Fielding, we preserved our artistic freedom while making much, much more money. I thought only the big boys could pull off a gimmick like this, but the kid had it all worked out. His contacts were extraordinary, and not just in movies either. As he talked, and as I hunkered down to a long train of grappa and espresso, I felt the clasp and nuzzle of real money. Money, my bodyguard.
'You know, Slick,' he said,'— sometimes business looks to me like a big dumb dog howling to be played with. Want to know my hunch for the next growth area in the addiction line? Want to make a million? Shall I let you in?'
'Do it,' I said.
'Cuddles,' said Fielding Goodney. 'Cuddling up. Two people lying down and generating warmth and safety. Now how do we market this. A how-to book? A video? Nightshirts? A cuddle studio, with cuddle hostesses? Think about it, Slick. There are millions and millions of dollars out there somewhere in cuddles.'
Fielding caught the unspectacular tab, leaving a twenty on the plate. His hired Autocrat was waiting on the street. At one point Fielding turned to me and said, with midtown flashing against his face, 'Oh, I misled you, Slick, earlier on there. It's murder two not murder one. New York, murder one is just for cops, prison officers, shit like that. Forgive me.' I slipped out near Times Square. I heard Fielding give the driver an address on feminine Park Avenue.
I walked unsteadily through the heat of the pornographic night. As for my own body-clock readings and time-travel coordinates, well, it was 6 a.m. in here, and fuming with booze. I had travelled far that day, through space and through time. Man, how I needed to crash. Among the alleys and rooftops near the Ashbery, Fielding tells me, a nimble maniac sprints and climbs at large. What he needs to do is drop slating and masonry on to the heads of strolling theatre-goers and diners. He has done it five times now. He has had five hits. One was fatal. Murder two. Ultraviolet policemen lie in wait up there but they can't seem to catch him, this rooftop psychopath, adept of eave and sill, of buttress and skyhatch, this infinite-mass artist. So he darts and shinnies his way through the gothic jaggedness of fire-escapes, drainpipes and TV aerials, while beneath him Broadway crackles in late-night styrofoam, and there is no money involved. There is no money for him up there at any point.
—————— Now you've seen me in New York before, and you know how I am out here. I wonder what it is: something to do with the energy, the electricity of the place, all the hustle and razz — it fills me with that get up and go. I'm a different proposition in New York, pulled together, really on the ball. I was at it again first thing this morning, straight down to business despite my jet-lag and the kind of hangover that would have poleaxed any lesser man — worse, even, I think, than the hangover I caught in California. The hangover I caught in California was now seven months old, and I still showed no signs of recovering from it. It'll probably be with me till my dying day ... I told you all about my LA lark, didn't I. It's a good one, isn't it. The big black guy with the baseball bat — remember? Jesus, the risks one takes for a couple of laughs. I often think that the staying-power of my Californian hangover has something to do with an inability to believe I'm still alive.
Lying in bed, with telephone, address book, ashtray and coffee-cup efficiently arranged on the pouffe of my gut, I now buckled down to the first item of business: Caduta Massi... Like everyone else, like you yourself, I had seen Caduta many times up on the big screen, in costume dramas, musicals, Italian sex comedies, Mexican westerns. I had seen Caduta cringe and prance and pout and sneer. I