Martin Amis - Dead Babies

"Mar was cool but I was shaken up. Kept thinking, uh-oh, Popeye, some Trogs have been having fun, let's get out of here before they have some more, but Marvell said we'd better get him to somewhere and he was right. I put a blanket down for him in back and we like shoveled him in? We thought he might go stiff on us right there but then he started to groan and struggle, even saying things — like, 'I'm all fucked up… I'm all fucked up.' Marvell gunned it into Prescott, see what they could do there, said we could go on to Phoenix if his condition necessitated it. Bastards in Prescott Casualty said they couldn't even take his fucking temperature without State Reg. — and this guy doesn't have anything, no ID, no cash. He was like nobody. So it was LA, not knowing whether we'd have a stiff in back when we got there. LA they kind of roped him together again but they still wouldn't take him in. So we had to."

"I got some medic friends along. No problem. Skip was delirious for days, wriggling around in bed, moaning about his father and beer cans and stuff. When he came to he didn't appear to have any recollection of what had happened to him or of anything before it — found myself in there explaining that we were on the planet Earth, a spherical body revolving around the sun. The Sun? big fire in the sky? Most of it returned to him, though the stuff about his father comes and goes. It was strange, you know? Like bringing a new human being to life, like creating something. You feel strong things

then. And, Christ, if you'd seen the way that guy responded to

affection. Made you sick to think what his life had been."

"He used to tell these positively prehistoric stories about his father? Some animal. Skip's eyes would practically come out of his head when we told him about our parents — you know, mine are all house-on-the-hill and Marvell's used to be very heavily Yiddisher — that they were rich, affectionate, indulgent. Totally alien to his thought-style. He was kind of relieved when we told him they were all divorced now and that we only saw them for cash. Marvell explained to him about control, about how you don't need parents for much or for long, that you phase them out soon. If only Skip could have."

"Right. I don't think he thinks about his earlier life at all now. The father's still around, however. The authorities forwarded us a letter when we put Skip on Californian Reg. just before we came out here. Shit, what a document. I'll show it to you. We never handed it on to Skip. It would wreck his head to be taken back to those days again. Want to see someone go really wild? Ask Skip about his father. I don't recommend it. Anyhow, so it goes. It was no sweat for us; we had the cash and the space, he helps around the apartment, helps me on projects, fixes the car. He's happy."

"We're like his mother and father as well as his lovers." "Yeah, and he's. let's just say he does things for us."

Whitehead had just drained his first glass of Pouilly Fume", had just turned down Celia's disdainful offer of a piece of crispbread topped with smoked salmon and, alas, butter, had just agreed with Roxeanne that Capricorns seldom got along with Leos (a proposition that Andy, a self-elected representative of the latter sign, began to pooh-pooh), when a ghastly bark sprang from between his lips, bringing all conversation to a halt.

In a tone of mock-heroic formality Keith begged the picnic's pardon, and the conversation cautiously resumed, what time awful quickenings started to occur inside his stomach. It hissed, whooped, spat — Keith whistled popular tunes in an attempt to drown its loud awakening; he was moreover obliged to squirm about on the blankets in order to contain the balloon of air that romped friskily around his colon. As the picnickers began actually to raise their voices to: make themselves heard, little Keith decided that he wouldn't wait to see what his metabolism was going to pull on him next. Hardly caring what sort of spectacle he made of himself, he slipped some paper napkins into his pocket, stood up, and looked quickly about him.

"Saw some interesting — I've got to go, to see. " No one stirred as Keith took his leave, as he trotted down the hill under a heavy fire of eyes.

Whitehead picked his way through the outskirts of the thicket, wading through not particularly long grass, his trousers creaking in alarm every time he lifted a foot to clear a log, his high heels wobbling and bending on each anthill and tuft of grass. He walked a tormented half mile, becoming ever easier to please as regards possible sites, but only after he had twice been brought to a kneeling position by the wedge of pain that rocketed from his coccyx to his perineum did he turn and stare back through the tent of nervous leaves. First removing his boots, then his trousers (which required him to lie on the ground and wriggle out of them like a snake shedding its skin), Keith crept in between two dense bramble bushes and melted backward against a severed trunk. A tight-chested grunt was followed by a moan of ecstasy.

"Hi."

Emerging silently from the trees Skip had come to a halt about five yards away. He now closed that distance and un-elongated himself into a crouch, his knees almost touching little Keith's. A grass stem remained motionless in the corner of his mouth as he said, "You like threes, Keith?"

Whitehead would have answered if he could.

"Threes," Skip ponderously repeated. "You and two guys. You and a guy and a girl."

When his voice did appear Keith was, retrospectively, most impressed by its performance. It did not gurgle or whimper, neither did it jump octaves or turn into a corky burp of adrenalin — all things Keith couldn't have blamed it for doing. In fact, it sounded urbane, detached, almost bored.

"Well, you know, Skip, I haven't really got strong views on the subject, although of course I try to be tolerant about that

kind of thing."

"Mm-hm. You like getting head?" ". Sorry?”

"Head. Getting blown. Getting sucked off."

"Oh! Well, not mad about it. But again of course it's all part of the basic. Yes, I'm for it, on the whole."

"Mm-hm. You like to be fucked?"

". Well, as I say, it's not one of the things one customarily. but you naturally try to keep an open. "

"Mm-hm." Skip swayed languidly on his haunches. "Mm-hm."

"Look— Skip— I don't want to seem abrupt but do you think we could finish this chat another time?"

"Pardon me?"

"Another time. I am on the toilet here."

"Sure you are," Skip said reassuringly. But then he rolled his eyes so that his pupils disappeared upward, revealing two sacs of glistening blood at the base of either socket. "Oh, sure, man. Another time."

"I must say, Roxeanne," Celia observed briskly, "you have got the most marvelous breasts."

"But they're so awfully big," said Roxeanne. "I think Diana's are so pretty? Really the perfect size."

At this Diana curled her lip slightly, as if to suggest that she had heard that line before. Celia resumed, "Yes, Diana's are pretty too. But yours are so enormous and so marvelously. solid. Look at mine. Yours seem to point upwards. They don't sag in the least."

Roxeanne shrugged, corroborating this. "Well," she said happily. "Hey, Quentin, is it cool if I take off my pants?"

As the afternoon sun had intensified, had seemed indeed to bear down on them with an invidious strength, Diana and Roxeanne had spent a lot of time — Diana shrewdly, Roxeanne vaguely — wondering which of them would be the first to remove her top. In almost any other company Diana would have had few reservations about taking the lead: her breasts, as Celia had pointed out, may not have been large but they were pretty; they covered a fetchingly disproportionate area