Irvine Welsh - The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

— I’m. . I’m good, but when did you get back? What are you doing here? The reconciliation trip—

— Went better than expected, picks, and she extends her hand showing me a sparkler. — Meet the future Mrs. Benjamin Lieberman. And I’m turning a.s.a.p.

— Congratulations. .

Mona gasps, — It’s sooo beautiful. .

— But what about the cruise? I hear myself urgently gulp.

— We got back yesterday. Cut the trip short by jumping ship in Jamaica, skipping the South American coast, flying across via Miami, she says, narrowing her brows and peering over her glasses. — Is my apartment okay?

— Yes, of course it is, I tell her, in abject relief, as we focus back on the event interviewer.

— Tom Brennan has emerged from almost nowhere to become not just one of the bestselling crime novelists in America, but also one of the finest literary voices we have, in any genre, and he looks into the crowd, almost challenging dissent, as Mom rolls her eyes. — Looking at the quality of what is called crime writing these days, he continues, — I’d say the real crime is that those works do not get considered for top literary awards like the Pulitzer Prize. .

Mom drops her voice and bends in close to me. — Good, cause we need you to look after the place for another month. We decided the Caribbean had worked its magic, and there was no point in hanging around, it was time to close the deal, she says, Lieb giving her hand an affectionate squeeze. — We fly to Tel Aviv tomorrow, she gasps, again displaying the ring, — to tie the knot.

— Congratulations, I whisper.

— That is great, Mona squeaks at that irritating high frequency of hers, causing the people in front of us to turn around.

— My idea, says Lieb. — I’ve never been to Israel before. I wanted us to get married there.

— Jerusalem, picks, everybody should have that place on their must-see list. I say must-see as opposed to bucket, as Debra Wilson advises us edit out morbidity from our language, Mom says, then sits back in her chair, examining Dad on the stage. It must be the best part of two decades since they were in the same room together.

Dad’s trying not to look too smug as the academic continues to sing his praises, — . . a remarkable man who made the transition from fighting crime to writing crime. And his Boston, and that of his complex protagonist, Matt Flynn, is rendered so vividly by a fluid but spare, scalpel-precise prose style. .

— Won’t that asshole stop already? This is feeling like one big mistake, Mom moans, as a man in front turns around again.

Lieb shoots her an I-told-you-so look.

— Dad looks well, I tell her.

— Well, yes, she says grudgingly, squeezing Lieb’s paw, — but I got the real goods on my arm here. She drops her voice another octave, and I can smell the drink on her breath. — A Jew versus a Paddy in the sack? If ever there was a no-contest, honey!

As the sycophantic intro closes and Dad gets up to the podium, Mom starts again, only to be shushed by a battleax sitting behind us. Mom abruptly stands up and turns on her. — That man couldn’t silence me in nearly seventeen years of marriage. He ain’t gonna start now! And she grabs Lieb’s hand and drags him to his feet behind her, as they take a ceremonial walk toward the door.

The academic remains unfazed. — So I invite you all to join in the wit and wisdom of Matt Flynn, and, above all, Mr. Tom Brennan!

The audience erupts into cheers, a few of them following Dad’s eyes as he tracks Mom and Lieb. She yanks open the door and departs without looking back.

— Another satisfied customer, Dad remarks into the microphone, to middle-class laughter, barely breaking his stride. I’m wondering if he even recognised her. — Anyway, this passage I’m going to read is from the new Matt Flynn novel, entitled The Doomsday Scenario .

MICK DOHERTY KNEW how this one would play out. Every time his daughter Lindy returned home to Boston from her current haunt in Miami it meant trouble. Big trouble. Mick rose in the filtering sunlight, wrapping a robe around himself, feeling that familiar mild sting of dismay as the ever-tightening cord slipped under his solid ball of a gut. He could hear the bland sounds of early-morning TV seeping through the house from the living room. Lindy was already up, crouched in a lotus position on the recliner, watching infomercials and eating a power bar. She was dressed in running gear: a tank top and shorts, with her Nikes kicked off onto the rug. Thin runnels of sweat on her forehead attested to recent physical exertion.

He looked at his daughter, taking in that noble, slightly long face, inherited from him, and those flowing brown locks, tinted with streaks of gold. Then there were those eyes, blazing lamps which could narrow into focused slits of hate; they came straight from her mother’s arsenal. It was always so hard not to see Jenny in the girl. Right now those eyes were set on neutral, which suited Mick; he generally avoided asking Lindy about her personal life.

But she wouldn’t have changed. She would be the same hardcore, demented, dyed-in-the-wool slut of old. That was such a terrible thing for a man to admit about his daughter. But the stone-cold truth was that since puberty Lindy had seemed unable to resist the attention of just about any suitor; male or female, she wasn’t picky. Worse, she actively pursued the bulk of them in the most wanton, predatory manner.

He recalled with his customary shudder the trauma of that horrific day, now so long ago but burned into his psyche so as to cast it up as vivid and stark as if it were yesterday. Taking a run through the parking lot behind the strip mall, he turned the corner, coming across a crowd of youths tightly gathered round at the mouth of a narrow L-shaped alley. This was a popular spot for kids to hang out, and Mick reckoned by the jeers and the charge in the air, it would be two boys having a fight. As a conscientious Boston Police Department Officer, he went over to break it up. But it had been Lindy, just in ninth grade, lying there, getting fucked by a kid who barely looked old enough to have a set of balls in his sack! Mick had stood for a second, uttering a disbelieving curse as the kids around them scattered, then his next shout echoed across the park, as he pulled the copulating pair apart like two dogs. The terrified boy fled, yanking his pants up, while Lindy did the same with her underwear, then tugged down her skirt, Mick turning away till his daughter had completed this mortifying task. Then he dragged her to her feet and out of the park. The thing that struck him on his tense, shameful walk home was that Lindy seemed totally unrepentant, unconcerned, and barely even embarrassed once she’d gotten over the first flush of shock. — We were just making out at first and things kinda got outta hand, she said with that shrug that seemed only slightly affected.

Mick Doherty had been about to react, when he’d looked at his daughter’s profile. It was the same one she was displaying to him now; glassy and vacant, her arms folded across her chest. Back then it was still the chest of a child, he considered, now swamped by a vision of Lindy in her communion dress. How could this be his little girl? How could this have happened?

Now she was sitting there, watching the infomercial, and Mick felt as shut out from her life, her thoughts, as ever. Her behavior was rendered all the more incomprehensible, given the parental framework he and Jenny — for all her faults had provided their offspring. And her sister, his younger daughter Joanne, was now working in the war and famine zone of Darfur, trying to help imperiled children.

One kid attempting to save the world, the other seemingly determined to fuck it to death.