Read Online London Fields by Martin Amis - Free Book Online Page A

Imagine saying it in Detroit. 'We don't, much.' Gradually, as if controlled by a dial, pleasure filled Shakespeare's eyes – which, it seemed to me, were at least as malarial and sanguinary as my own. One of the embarrassments of my condition: although it encourages, or enforces, a quiet life and sensible habits, it makes me look like Caligula after a very heavy year. What with all the grape and the slavegirls and everything, and all those fancy punishments and neat tortures I've been doling out. . . 'It's all in the eyes, man,' said Shakespeare. 'All in the eyes.'
    In he came – Guy – with a flourish of fair hair and long-rider raincoat. I watched him secure a drink and settle over the pinball table. Smugly I marvelled at his transparency, his flickering, flinching transparency. Then I sidled up, placed my coin on the glass (this is the pinball etiquette), and said, 'Let's play pairs.' In his face: a routine thrill of dread, then openness; then pleasure. I impressed him with my pinball lore: silent five, two-flip, shoulder-check, and so on. We were practically pals anyway, having both basked in the sun of Keith's patronage. And, besides, he was completely desperate, as many of us are these days. In a modern city, if you have nothing to do (and if you're not broke, and on the street), it's tough to find people to do nothing with. We wandered out together and did the Portobello Road for a while, and then – don't you love the English – he asked me home for tea.
    Once inside his colossal house I saw further avenues of invasion. I saw beachheads and bridgeheads. His frightening wife Hope I soon neutralized; I may have looked like a piece of shit Guy'd brought back from the pub (on the sole of his shoe) but a little media talk and Manhattan networking soon schmoozed her into shape. I met her kid sister, Lizzyboo, and looked her over for possible promotion. But maybe the current au pair is more my speed: a ducklike creature, not young, with a promisingly vacuous expression. As for the maid, Auxiliadora, I didn't mess around, instantly hiring her for the apartment . . .
    I kind of hate to say it, but Mark Asprey was the key. Everyone was frankly electrified when I let slip my connexion to the great man. Hope and Lizzyboo had seen his latest West End hit, The Goblet, which Asprey is even now escorting to Broadway. Dully asked by me if she'd liked it, Lizzyboo said, 'I cried, actually. Actually I cried twice.' Guy didn't know Asprey's stuff but said, as if to himself, in amazement, 'To be a writer like that. Just to sit there and do what you do.' I fought down an urge to mention my own two books (neither of which found an English publisher. Run a damage-check on that. Yes, it still hurts. It still exquisitely burns).
    So one dud writer can usually spot another. When we were alone together in the kitchen Guy asked me what I did and I told him, stressing my links with various literary magazines and completely inventing a fiction consultancy with Hornig Ultrason. I can invent: I can lie. So how come I can't invent? Guy said, 'Really? How interesting.' I sent a sort of pressure wave at him; in fact I was rubbing my thumb and forefinger together beneath the table when he said, 'I've written a couple of things . . .' 'No kidding.' 'A couple of stories. Expanded travel notes, really.' 'I'd certainly be happy to take a look at them, Guy.' 'They aren't any good or anything.' 'Let me be the judge.' 'They're rather autobiographical, I'm afraid.' 'Oh,' I said. 'That's okay. Don't worry about that.
    'The other day,' I went on. 'Did Keith follow that girl?'
    'Yes he did,' said Guy instantly. Instantly, because Nicola was already present in his thoughts. And because love travels at the speed of light. 'Nothing happened. He just talked to her.'
    I said, 'That's not what Keith told me.'
    'What did he say?'
    'It doesn't matter what he said. Keith's a liar, Guy . . . What happened?'
    Later, I got a look at the kid. Jesus.
    I'm like a vampire. I