Money_ A Suicide Note - Martin Amis [68]
'Oh Jesus. What sort of joke? How dirty?'
'I can't remember it. You couldn't either. Something about a farmer's wife? Yes, and a travelling salesman.'
'Oh Jesus. What then?'
Then I went to sleep. I didn't simply black out at the table, oh no. I stood up, yawned and stretched, and threw myself on to a nearby sofa. There I snored and whinnied and gnashed for nearly three hours, awaking refreshed and raring to go at a little after one. Everyone had gone. I went too. Then I came back again. Then I went away again.
'What did I say to Fenton Akimbo? Did I say anything?'
'How do you mean?'
'I mean, I didn't call him a black bastard or anything?'
'Oh no. You only said your joke, and that was about it.'
'Great.'
'You said something to me though. As you left, the first time.'
'What?'
She smiled, rawly, savagely — not a grown-up smile. A tomboy smile. She had easy access to the girl inside her. The girl was always available.
'What?' I repeated.
'You said you loved me.' And she laughed her laugh, that shocking laugh which turned heads and caused her to blush and put a hand over her naked mouth.
'And what did you say?'
'I said ... let me think. I said — Don't be an idiot.'
'Well, maybe it's true,' I said, emboldened. 'In vino — you know, when you drink you tell the truth, and all that.'
'Don't be an idiot,' said Martina.
Yes, she sounds sane, doesn't she, among all these other people I'm working around? But then she has always had money — she has never not had money. Money is carelessly present in the cut and texture of her clothes, her leathery accoutrements, in rug-brilliance and mouth tone. The long legs have travelled, and not just through time. The clean tongue speaks French, Italian, German. The expectant eyes have seen things, and expect to see more. Even as a girl her lovers were always hand-picked, an elite, far above the usual rabble of irregulars, mercenaries, pressed men. Her smile is knowing, roused and playful, but also innocent, because money makes you innocent when it's been there all along. How else can you hang out on this planet for thirty years while still remaining free? Martina is not a woman of the world. She is a woman of somewhere else.
'Hey,' I said. 'How come you always know when I'm in New York and when I go back?'
She shrugged. 'Ossie tells me.'
'How does he know?'
'He's back and forth from London all the time. He must know people you know.'
'I suppose that figures,' I said.
'How's — your girlfriend?'
'Selina.'
'Yes. How's all that? You're with her. You're together.'
I considered. Then I said, or perhaps one of my voices Said it for me, 'I don't know. I mean — you can be with someone and still be alone.'
'... She's beautiful.'
True,' I said. 'How's Ossie?' '
She didn't say anything.
'He's beautiful,' I said.
But she still didn't say anything. Instead, she asked me why I thought I drank so much, and I told her why I thought I did.
'I'm an alcoholic,' I said.
'No you're not, you're just a greedy kid with nothing better to do. Aren't you tired of it?'
'Yes, I'm tired. I've been tired of it for years ... Yes, I'm tired.'
Twenty minutes later we stood outside on the spongy pavement. Before us, across the road, the line of shop windows glistened like a strip of film — Manhattan and its little concerns: a Thai laundry, a handbag hospital, a delicatessen (' "Lonnie's" — For A Better Sandwich' — 'No Nukes' — 'Sorry. Closed'), a florist's forest, a Zen nicknackery which welcomed all major credit cards, a diesel bookstore. Martina and I performed the uncertain dance of people parting, with its limited steps. She still faced me, but her shoulders had already begun to turn away... If you're small and the thing you evade is big (have you ever had this dream?), then the only place to hide is a place where the big thing can't fit. But then you have to stay there, in the small place, or must