Martin Amis - Lionel Asbo

‘You give a tip?’ asked Eamon.

‘Service included. Goes on your bill. No questions asked.’

Lionel said, ‘I’m not bothered.’

A day or two later he finally admitted it. He was bothered. Well. How else do you get through all the hours before seven-thirty (when the casino opened)?

This, at any rate, was how Lionel put it to himself. Thereby evading a recurrent question, and one of enormous size. Why, with the exceptions of Cynthia and Gina (both, for different reasons, exceptional girls), had he steered so abnormally clear of the opposite sex?

Too busy with me career , he murmured. Workaholic, if you like. Earning a crust and keeping the old wolf from the door … But now? Resentfully Lionel twisted round in his chair. Load of bollocks, all that. Never paid for it in me life. More trouble than they worth. Stick to porn, mate. You know where you are with the porn. No, you can’t go far wrong with the …

A day later Lionel pressed Companionship and gave the bloke a reasonably unsalacious description of Gina Drago. An hour later he heard a tactful knock … She was called Dylis, she was twenty-seven, she was from Cardiff, she was dark and round. Very soon it became clear, even to Lionel, that he was the wrong kind of man to consort with prostitutes. Dylis took her leave twenty minutes later, trying to hurry but swaying about quite a bit and bumping into things …

That’s a turn-up , he said into the silence. Christ. Frighten meself sometimes. No, mate. No. Anyway, look at the time! A quick shower. Then off to the penthouse floor (have a steak sandwich around ten), the green baize, the little white ball gliding and then hopping up and down in the twirl of the spun wheel.

Lionel was shaving — he relied on the plastic razor provided by the South Central (and faithfully replaced every day). Becalmed for a moment in front of the mirror, he weighed the toylike implement in the palm of his hand … Hollow. Hardly there. Not like the bloody great spanner provided by Mr Firth-Heatherington (which Lionel had lost in the Castle on the Arch or the Launceston). They called the South Central the heavy-metal hotel, but everything was light, the cutlery, the glassware, the furniture, even the bedclothes (his white duvet caressed him like a mist) … Without warning the flow of water hesitated, paused for a mesmeric minute, gave a polite cough, and coolly resumed. Amazing how fast they patched things up and got them working again. That afternoon, a well-known vocalist on the floor above had dropped a kind of hand grenade into his toilet bowl …

That’s what I need , said Lionel. A fucking hand grenade in me toilet bowl . His insides had loosened, somewhat; but his crouched vigils bore little resemblance to the thoughtless evacuations of old. All the same he felt light, light, insubstantial, hardly there. Every time he went to the casino and the lift came to a halt on the penthouse floor, Lionel expected to keep on surging upward, past the helipad and the Century City Eyrie and out into the summer blue … The weightless world, the light limbo, of the South Central, where nothing weighed, nothing counted, and everything was allowed.

He peered into the mirror; it peered back at him; he raised thumb and forefinger to part his sticky lids … A process was under way within Lionel Asbo, within his head and breast. He was twenty-four — and he suddenly had time to think. Money, money (his sole and devouring preoccupation since infancy), was now meaningless to him. Lionel , a voice would say. Yeah? What you want? Then silence. Then, Lionel, mate . And he’d go, Jesus. What? What you want? Then they’d talk. Lionel was no longer merely thinking out loud. He was having a conversation with what seemed to be a higher intelligence. The voice was cleverer than he was. It even had a better accent.

Lionel dressed with slow care. He was going out to dinner. Table for one. Just him and his thoughts. Before he left he popped up to see Scott Ronson: they were going to have a little smoke on his balcony. That feeling again in the elevator. He stepped out and paused. Right floor — but what was the number? Lionel barged around for a bit. Ah, there he was. Scott had just sawn off the top half of the door to his suite, and he was standing there waiting like a horse in a stable.

At 7.45 p.m. Lionel had a few words with the girl at the desk, and extended his stay for another three weeks.

In fact he wouldn’t be returning to the South Central — not for another three years.

‘OFF TO A function, are we, Lionel?’

‘What, no Megan, Lionel?’

‘Any truth in the rumours, Lionel?’

‘Rumours? Me and Megan? No, footloose and fancy-free. That’s Lionel Asbo. More trouble than they worth if you ask me.’

‘… Off to a function, are we, Lionel?’

This was a second reference to Lionel’s oufit, which of course had raised no eyebrows in the hotel. In the hotel there were loads of people dressed up as pirates and nuns and Nazis. But now Lionel was out and about — strolling across Sloane Square and down Sloane Street, in flawless weather. The traffic, seeming to shrug something off, rolled forward into the ease and freedom, the innocuous proficiency, of a London summer, beneath a flattering sky. Lionel said buoyantly,

‘No, lads, I’m off to me new job. Bouncing in a bingo parlour. But tonight I’m calling the numbers!’

There was laughter from the three representatives of the Fourth Estate. This laughter went on for longer than usual — because Lionel did in fact quite closely resemble a bingo caller. His tuxedo, true, and his vast trousers were impeccably and superaccurately cut; his buxom bow tie was no elasticated clip-on but a fine length of schmutter (Eamon, who earned his living in a bow tie, showed him how you looped it); and the shoes, at ten thousand pounds apiece, performed as expected — two padded floats of glistening ebony. On the other hand, only an unusually confident and sexually secure bingo caller would have consented to wear Lionel’s shirt and waistcoat. The waistcoat was of canary-yellow suede, with turquoise buttons. And the white shirt was an impossible orgy of vents and flounces (his hands were only just visible beneath the ruches of its cuffs). He slowed as he lit a cigar, saying,

‘Here, lads, I got one for yer. What’s got lots of balls and screws old ladies? … A bingo machine!’

‘You won’t win a hundred and forty mil on the bingo, Lionel.’

‘You know, lads, back in Diston, me mum used to take me to the bingo. Every Friday. Friday. Reno Night. Can do all the numbers, me. Legs eleven. Sweet sixteen. Thirty — dirty Gertie. Ninety — top of the shop.’

‘Where’s the function then, Lionel?’ persisted the man from the Sun .

‘ What fucking function? … No, seriously, lads. Remember the uh, remember that bistro I popped into for a minute this afternoon? Down that little alley behind Harrods? Well I booked a table.’

‘For two, Lionel?’ said the man from the Daily Telegraph .

‘You deaf? I’m on me tod tonight. Get a bit of peace. And read me paper.’

‘Which paper, Lionel? Where’s your trademark Lark ?’ said the man from the Lark .

‘It’s all in hand, son,’ said Lionel, patting his trouser pocket. ‘It’s all in hand.’

To a relay of encouraging cheers he climbed the seven steps to the restaurant (which was called Mount’s). Obligingly he paused and posed — but soon drew back beneath the awning, his head and shoulders lost in shadow, and the three men turned away, leaving him in quiet communion with his cigar … It should at this point be revealed that Lionel had just smoked two nine-paper joints on Scott Ronson’s balcony: Swaziland skunkweed marijuana. Now, in normal times the fiercest possible intoxicants made no mark on Lionel Asbo. Tonight would be different. And the difference had to do with the recent activation of his subliminal mind. For the time being, though, Lionel was in excellent fettle, and imagined that a nice little treat lay ahead of him. A quiet dinner, and a thoughtful read of the Morning Lark .