MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

Six minutes ago Crash was 400 yards to the northeast, showing Demi how you reversed over a mini-roundabout.

Four minutes ago Crash was 450 yards to the north-northeast, showing Demi how you did a hand-brake turn on a zebra crossing.

Two minutes ago Crash was 200 yards due north, showing Demi how you jumped a red light with your eyes shut.

No minutes ago, intending to show Demi how you careened in the wrong direction up a one-way street, Crash performed an emergency stop, smacked his palm on the horn, and slid with massive ease through the opening door (his belt lay in a coiled pool on the floor mat, despised, disdained, dull with disuse). By the time Demi climbed out and fixed her fragile vision on the scene, she saw the Morris Minor reversing at speed down the one-way street (she was momentarily impressed), and Crash standing by her husband's car with her husband.

The sun liked him. The universe still liked him. Either that, or the universe was through with Richard Tull.

Shortly after noon the next day Richard was to be found in the snug bar of the Warlock Sports Club. He was drinking brandy and smoking cigarettes and staring at his shoe. A broadsheet newspaper, uncomfortably perched on the round table nearby, carried a front-page photograph of Gwyn and his wife, and described him, in its caption, as the Inaugural Laureate of the Cairns-Du Plessis Profundity Requital. Richard went on drinking and smoking and staring, with some show of serenity, at his shoe. The snug bar was often called the squash bar, and it was certainly very cramped and airless, but it never contained any Squash Members, or Tennis Members, or any exponents of snooker, darts, or bowls. It contained Social Members. Who were all sociopaths. So around Richard were arrayed a few tattoo-bespattered warthogs and authentic thirty-year-old methuselahs fingering their earrings as they applied themselves to their tabloids, and the odd clutch of regulars whispering into the foam of their pints, shrugging, and warily rolling their necks, and marked by that air of watchful cruelty which traditionally attends the criminal twilight. The barmaid, She, moved from table to table noisily collecting empties. Richard was still recovering from another bad moment, on the Knowledge. Having taken the trouble to stagger over to put a quid in it, he was almost at once confronted with:

Who wrote the novel Dedmator, on which the film was based?

A. Chuck Pfister

B. Gwyn Barry

C. Dermott Blake

Dermott Blake was the fiery playwright whom Gina used to go to bed with-and continued to go to bed with (in Richard's view), every Friday. Paralyzed, and soon in time trouble, Richard distractedly and ridiculously punched the C. Whereas Dedmator, of course, was the handiwork of Chuck Pfister … He staggered back to his newspaper and reread Stanwyck Mills's Profundity address: "Initially we felt that the optimism of the Amelior novels was altogether too frictionless. We had to ask ourselves whether that optimism was the result of struggle-whether it was earned. We decided it was. And we chose to honor that struggle." Richard drank brandy and stared at his shoe.

Something happened to the snug when Steve Cousins walked into it. An outsider might have identified him as a force for good, for order- the relay of minute straightenings and self-corrections that his presence entrained. Here, the graffitied young reined in the sprawl and slobber of their sports pages, their TV pullouts; there, the cardiganed elderly sniffed briskly and lifted their chins: everyone seemed to grow an inch or two in their chairs.

"Ah. Mr. Cousins," said a swampy old voice.

Richard looked up. His eyes and Scozzy's eyes dully encountered each other. Richard said, "You're late."

"Mr. Cousins, sir. The very man."

Now Richard looked sideways. At a nearby table sat two speckle-faced and ash-haired gents whom he had come across pretty often. They weren't like the other older guys, the arthritic artists of the bowling green who, as they aged still further, appeared to be fading into sweet-jar colors of caramel and nougat, into drip-dry and ready-to-wear. No, they retained a halo of dwindled charisma, of robberies and readies-these old thrusters, with the complexions of crumpled tenners. Laconic and discreet inquiry would have revealed that they were long-retired target burglars whose deeds had made a few headlines in past decades: the round-eyed actress relieved of her jewelry box while she slept in the West End hotel; the emptied stockroom of the Mayfair furrier; the rueful viscount pointing to the yawing drainpipe, the scrabbled-at first-floor window frame …

"Mr. Cousins, we desire your assistance. The very man we need. A man of parts."

"Ben," said Scozzy, with formality. And then: "Den."

"Vermin," said Den.

Slowly twisting in his seat, Richard absorbed the fact that Ben and Den were poring over something that both gripped and galled them. It was a newspaper, folded a good sixteen times, almost to the density of a pack of cards. They were doing the crossword.

"We're almost there," said Ben. "It's the top right-hand corner. Just can't get it."

"Vermin," said Den. "Four letters."

This wasn't the kind of crossword that Richard used to complete. This wasn't a grid of winsome quibbles, of little winks at Restoration drama, at Greek mythology, at Cartesian philosophy, where the poet, Noyes, can never make up his mind.

"Vermin," said Ben. "Blank, blank, C. Blank."

This was a crossword of bald synonyms, where neat equaled tidy and tidy equaled neat, where big meant large and not small meant big.

Scozzy faced the old men, in his tan leather mack. Once again his glance moved past Richard's eyes. After a long interval of subjective time he said, "Mice."

Den said, "That's what Ben said. But then you got… 7 across."

Ben said, "Messenger. Six. Say it is mice. Then you got… M, blank, G, blank, T, blank."

"Maggot," said Den.

"Midget," said Ben.

Even the fucking tabloids had run the Gwyn Barry story: the guru from Gower, married to Lady Demeter, and his mini-Nobel: the romping zeros of the annuity, granted for life, forever and ever and ever …

"Messenger," said Scozzy.

"Jesus," said Richard. He climbed to his feet. And he did mean climbed. It took him up the rungs of all his years. "Legate," he said.

Den said, "Legit?"

"Legate" he repeated. "L-e-g-a-t-e. Christ, well what can you expect around here, where all Aristotle is is slang for arse. Legate. It's not maggot. It's not midget. And it's not mice. It's legate. Messenger. Jesus." Scozzy had turned to him and Richard stood there, resolutely swaying, and saying, "You think you're a frightener. Yeah, you're really terrifying. All you've got to do is fuck someone up. And you even fuck that up. You think you're a frightener and you don't even frighten me. And what do I do? I review books."

The room was attentive to him and his voice. His voice was right out there on its own. The voice of half a ton of opera singer, abysmally deep-the voice of Baron Ochs.

"You think you're some kind of wild boy. Some kind of wolf child. Instead," said Richard, "instead of a fucking dog who, for a while, stopped being a tramp in the city and started being a tramp in the country. Yeah, The Wild Boy ofAveyron. I've read it, mate. I reviewed it! They thought he was going to tell them everything they didn't know. Nature and nurture. Civilization. Nobody calls your mum a cunt? Everybody calls your mum a cunt, I call your mum a cunt."

"Leave it, he's pissed," said Ben. Or Den. Because there was no way, no day, that Scozzy was going to speak. Not now or here.

"But he couldn't talk. The poor boy couldn't talk. Wild boys never can. And what have you got to say? What have you got to tell us. Give me my money back. Give me my money back."